The value of notifications appears when the team can explain the decision before discussing implementation. The practical scope is to send only a named event to an authorized audience through a consented channel with a useful destination. The central risk is that unbounded alerts train users to ignore important messages and create delivery cost.
Scope: Notifications
This scope covers event triggers, recipient rules, consent, channel choice, templates, delivery state, deduplication, preferences, and opt-out. Two-way case resolution belongs to customer support.
Turn "done" into observable behavior: Notifications
Acceptance criteria for notifications should identify the actor, starting state, action, durable result, denied path, repeated action, and recovery evidence. The interface may report success while unbounded alerts train users to ignore important messages and create delivery cost. The criterion therefore has to compare visible feedback with the server-enforced policy and auditable state transition.
Cover the states that change the decision: Notifications
Test ready, empty, invalid, denied, delayed, duplicate, partial, successful, and recovered states where they apply. Add a case in which access is revoked, an owner is absent, or a repeated request arrives after partial completion. Each case should say whether input is preserved, whether retry is safe, and which record a reviewer inspects. Avoid criteria such as "works" or "implemented" because two reviewers can interpret them differently.
Test authority, not visibility: Notifications
The expected behavior must hold for an allowed actor, a denied actor, a revoked role, and a direct request that bypasses the normal interface. A denial should leave protected state unchanged and produce a useful audit record without exposing secrets. The accountable actor should have only the permissions required for notifications.
Attach evidence to every important claim: Notifications
Use allowed and denied tests, audit records, ownership dates, recovery notes, and redacted logs. Record the environment, configuration, and time range so another reviewer can reproduce the result. A passing test supports only the behavior it exercised; it does not prove every security, accessibility, performance, or operational claim. Monitor denied-action accuracy as a release signal.
Decision map: Notifications
- Trigger event. Name the owner, authoritative record, expected state, and denial behavior for this part of notifications.
- Authorized audience. Document the normal transition, one interrupted transition, and the smallest safe recovery.
- Consented channel. Attach a reproducible test, dated result, and reviewer who accepts the remaining risk.
- Useful destination. State the input, output, permission boundary, and removal condition before adding automation.
- Delivery state. Record how repeated action behaves and which evidence distinguishes retry from duplication.
Boundary cases: Notifications
- When the recorded value for trigger event changes after authorized audience is stored, name which value wins and how the losing state is reconciled.
- If evidence for consented channel becomes unavailable while the notifications request is in progress, preserve enough context to distinguish rejection from partial completion.
- A repeated action involving useful destination should return the existing result or expose the possible duplicate effect before retry.
- A denied change to delivery state must leave authoritative state untouched and create an audit record that reveals no secret.
- Recovery should restore the smallest trustworthy state first, then verify the visible notifications outcome against the maintained record.
Measure the decision, not activity: Notifications
Track denied-action accuracy and unowned exceptions. Before collecting results for notifications, define each measure's population, environment, time window, and owner. Activity is useful only when it clarifies whether the protected notifications outcome became safer or easier to recover.
Set the investigation threshold for notifications in advance. The acceptance review should also name the permitted response, the evidence required to close the issue, and the next review date. Stop collecting notifications data when it no longer distinguishes success, denial, delay, duplication, or recovery, or when it no longer changes a decision.
Sources and local proof: Notifications
These primary references document platform behavior relevant to notifications. For notifications, those references establish terminology and constraints; they do not verify the local implementation.
Any publishable notifications claim still needs dated local evidence: configuration, test output, screenshots, logs, queries, or recovery results from the named product. The acceptance review should say exactly which artifact supports each important claim.
A related InMyDraft example: Notifications
InMyCitizen provides a local example of an inspectable product boundary relevant to notifications. Its project catalog records this implementation detail: A civic timeline, direct messaging (citizen, support, community, and AI conversations), a document wallet, civic reports with photo and location, bills, and appointments are all wired into the same resident account.
The comparison between InMyCitizen and notifications is deliberately narrow. It shows how one product makes state and evidence visible; it does not prove that every notifications recommendation has been implemented. Use the InMyCitizen example to review notifications, not as a substitute for testing the product in scope.
Review checklist: Notifications
- Given a valid starting state, the accountable operator with the narrowest required permission can complete the intended notifications outcome.
- Invalid and unauthorized requests leave the server-enforced policy and auditable state transition unchanged.
- A repeated action does not duplicate a protected side effect.
- The team can demonstrate that it can deny permission, expire a subscription, repeat delivery, and verify preference changes.
- Failure and recovery produce evidence another reviewer can reproduce.
A notification decision is ready for the next stage when another accountable person can reproduce the evidence, explain the failure boundary, and perform the recovery without relying on the original author's memory.
