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Where notification preferences live

Go to Settings → Profile → Notifications and scroll to the Action items section. Everything described on this page lives there.

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Start with a preset

The fastest way to set up action item notifications is to pick one of four presets. Each applies a sensible set of defaults across every subscription source at once.
Notify me about every change to every item I’m connected to. Use this if you want zero chance of missing something, and you’re comfortable with an active inbox.
Completions and deadline alerts. Skip metadata edits. A middle ground between Standard and Minimal — you hear when items get finished or come due, but not every little title or label change.
Completions and deadline alerts on items assigned to you. Nothing else. Good if you only want to hear about your own work, and only at the key moments.
Pick a preset and you’re done — every subscription you have uses those defaults from that point forward.

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Customize per situation

If a preset is close but not quite right, expand the Customize per situation section and fine-tune it. Your customizations stack on top of the preset — change something, and only that specific setting departs from the preset; everything else still follows it. Customizations are grouped by situation — the way you ended up subscribed:
Items a teammate explicitly assigned to you. The defaults here tend to be the loudest, since you’re accountable for the work.
Inside each situation, you toggle notifications on a set of change types.

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What you can be notified about

The change types you can toggle, grouped as they appear in the settings:
  • Status changes — choose Any change / Completions only / Off. “Completions only” is the sweet spot: you hear when items get done or cancelled, but not every intermediate Todo ↔ In progress flip.
  • Item deleted — on or off. When something is removed outright.
  • Priority changes — someone raises or lowers the priority.
  • Due date changes — the date is added, removed, or moved.
  • Assignee changes — people are added to or removed from the assignees list.
  • Labels — labels added or removed.
  • Attachments — choose Off / Added / Removed / All.
  • Dependencies — choose Off / Blocks / Blocked by / All. For when an item gets linked to another item it blocks or is blocked by.
  • Title or description — text edits to the title or body.
  • Approaching due date — a reminder fires at one of your configured offsets before the due date (see Deadline reminders).
  • Past due — the item is overdue and still open.
Toggle them per situation. Setting “Priority changes” off for Bulk-assigned won’t affect notifications for items directly Assigned to you.
If you’ve customized a lot and want to start fresh, the preset card at the top shows a “[N] customized — reset” button when you have overrides. Click it to wipe your customizations and return to the preset as-is.

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Deadline reminders

Deadline reminders fire at a chosen interval before each item’s due date. You configure the intervals globally — they apply to every subscription that has deadline alerts turned on.

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Adding reminders

The Reminder schedule section lets you add any number of reminders. Each one has a value and a unit:
  • 2 hours before
  • 1 day before
  • 3 days before
  • 1 week before
You’re not limited to these — pick any number and any unit (minutes, hours, days, or weeks). Add 45 minutes, 6 hours, or 2 weeks if those match how far in advance you want to be warned. Quick-add buttons for the four most common combinations are there to save typing.

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When reminders fire

A reminder only fires if:
  1. The item’s due date is in the future when Helm evaluates
  2. The item is still open (status is or )
  3. The relevant situation has Approaching due date turned on in your preferences
Once the due date passes, reminders stop and the Past due notification takes over (if you have it on).

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New booking summary

If your organization uses templates that auto-create action items, new bookings can fire several notifications at once — one per item assigned to you. The new booking summary collapses that into a single notification. Three modes, in the settings:
  • Off — don’t send booking summaries. You’ll get the individual item notifications instead (according to your preferences).
  • Only when I’m assigned — send a summary only if at least one of the new items is assigned to you. Bookings where you got nothing from the templates stay quiet.
  • Always — send a summary for every new booking, even if nothing’s assigned to you. Use this for oversight — “I want to know every booking that comes in.”
When summaries are on, the individual “you were assigned” notifications are suppressed for the bulk-assigned items on that booking, replaced by the summary. You don’t get both. Later changes to those items (status, due date, etc.) still notify you as normal — the summary only replaces the initial assignment alert, not the full stream.

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Email and in-app

Every notification can be delivered by email, as an in-app notification, or both. Toggle channels under Settings → Profile → Notifications — the same surface that controls the Action items section controls delivery channels for all notification types. Email notifications for action-item changes are batched per event over a short window. If several items on the same event change in quick succession, you get one email listing them together, not one email per item. In-app notifications stay individual and arrive in real time.