The reason your sales and CS teams stop sending feedback isn't that they're too busy. It's that nothing ever comes back.
Feedback loop notifications fix that: when a teammate submits feedback to Harvestr, they get told what happened to it, automatically, through the right channel.
These notifications go to the teammate who submitted the feedback, not to your customer. Harvestr never emails your customers directly.
Where to set this up
Everything lives on one page, Settings > Notifications, and works on two levels:
Organization rules: the events that notify submitters, for every channel at once
Per-channel rules: an optional exception for one channel, such as Slack or Zendesk
This is new. Notification rules used to be set on each integration settings page, one channel at a time, with no way to define them once for the whole organization. Each integration page now only shows a summary of its rules, with a Configure notifications button that takes you here. If you had set rules before, see how they were carried over.
Only Editors and Owners can change these rules. Everyone else sees what is configured, without being able to edit it.
The four events
These are the moments that can reach a submitter:
Event | What it tells them |
Their feedback arrives in Harvestr | It landed in your inbox and did not vanish. |
Their feedback is linked to a discovery | It is now tracked alongside similar requests. |
A teammate comments on their feedback | Someone from the product team replied. Top-level comments only, not replies. A reply inside a thread, or a comment anchored to a piece of text, does not notify the submitter. Comment notifications are never posted on a ticket or a thread: they go to Harvestr or to email. |
The linked discovery changes status | The discovery containing their feedback moved to a status you chose. You can pick Specific statuses (typically Planned and Shipped) or Any status of a type, which also covers statuses you create later. If no status is selected, status changes notify nobody. |
Organization rules
The Organization rules card is where you turn the four events on or off. Whatever you set there applies to every channel, unless you give a channel its own rules.
Set your rules at the organization level. It guarantees that everyone in your team who submits feedback hears about the same events, whether they sent it from Slack, Zendesk or the Chrome extension. Keep per-channel rules for the rare channel that genuinely needs to behave differently.
Integrations you connect later follow the organization rules automatically, so there's nothing to configure when you add one. The only exceptions are Gong and forms, which start Off on new workspaces.
Per-channel rules
The Per-channel rules card lists every source of feedback you have connected. Open a channel to choose how it behaves:
Follows organization rules: it tracks the organization rules, including later edits
Customised: it holds its own set of events, and changes to the organization rules no longer apply to it
Off: nothing is ever sent for feedback from this channel
Reset all to organization rules puts every channel back on the organization rules in one click.
Slash-command feedback in Slack is always acknowledged. That first message is the thread other updates reply to, so turning the arrival event off for Slack only silences the acknowledgement for feedback sent from a message action.
Feedback from the Harvestr feedback widget and spreadsheet imports never sends notifications.
Who is notified, and where
Teammates who submit feedback. Your customers are never notified.
Submitters aren't notified of their own changes, only of changes made by teammates, automations or integrations. If you create a piece of feedback yourself, you won't get the arrival notification for it.
You choose the events, but not the delivery: where the message lands depends on where the feedback came from.
The submitter | What they get |
Sent the feedback from a ticket or a thread (Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Slack, MS Teams) | An internal note on the ticket or conversation, or a reply in the thread |
Has a Harvestr account | A notification in Harvestr and a line in their email digest, following their own notification preferences, whatever their email domain |
Has no Harvestr account | A direct email, sent immediately, only if their address is on an approved domain |
For support tickets, one more setting changes the delivery: Reopen support tickets if they are closed. When it is on, a closed Zendesk, Intercom or Freshdesk ticket is reopened, so the note lands back in the agent's inbox. Your support tool may also send its own notification when the ticket reopens, depending on its settings.
You'll find it at the bottom of the Organization rules card, and each of those three support tools can override it in its own channel settings.
An email notification:
A notification in a support tool (Intercom, Zendesk, Freshdesk):
A teammate whose feedback came from a ticket gets the note on the ticket, not a notification in Harvestr. That is deliberate: the update belongs where the customer conversation is.
Emails to people without a Harvestr account
They are sent immediately, not digested.
A status change is merged into one email per person and per discovery, listing all their feedback on it.
They are rate-limited: at most one per hour on the same discovery, and five per person per day.
Every email carries an Unsubscribe link. One unsubscribe silences all of them.
Only addresses on your approved domains can be emailed. To edit approved domains, contact Harvestr support.
Your own notification preferences
The organization rules decide what is sent. Your own preferences, in Settings > My account > Your notifications, decide what reaches you personally:
Email digest frequency: never, every 5 minutes, hourly or daily
Status updates on your feedback: feedback you submitted arrives, is linked to a discovery, or its discovery changes status
Replies to your feedback: someone comments on feedback you submitted
The two options about your own feedback are on by default. Note the order: if an Editor turns an event off for the whole organization, your personal preference cannot bring it back.
Notify every submitter of a discovery at once
In a discovery comment, type @ and pick Submitters to reach everyone who sent feedback linked to that discovery, minus yourself. The row tells you how many people are in Harvestr and how many will be emailed.
Only Editors and Owners can use it.
The audience is fixed when you post the comment: feedback linked afterwards does not notify anyone.
It is capped at 100 external recipients and 200 teammates. Above that, mention people individually.
Checking what was sent
Every feedback has a Notifications section listing each delivery, newest first: the note posted on a ticket, the reply in a thread, the email sent, or the reason nothing went out.
Common reasons for a skip:
the submitter is the person who made the change
no email address on file
the domain is not approved
the daily limit of five emails was reached
the rule is off for that event
At the bottom of the settings page, a summary shows how many notifications your rules sent over the last 30 days, and the main reason for the ones that were skipped.
If you were using the previous per-integration rules
Your existing rules were carried over automatically, so nothing stopped working. For each organization:
the channel with the most rules became your organization rules
every other channel with the same rules was set to Follows organization rules
a channel with different rules kept them, as Customised
a channel that had no rules was set to Off
If you had several Zendesk or Intercom brands with different rules, they were combined into one set for that channel. A banner at the top of the page tells you how many channels ended up customised or off.
A channel set to Off sends nothing, including comment notifications. If a channel went quiet after the upgrade, this is why.
Bringing every channel under the organization rules
We recommend moving to a single set of rules, so every submitter is notified on the same events:
In the Organization rules card, turn on the events you want and pick your statuses.
In the Per-channel rules card, click Reset all to organization rules, or open each channel and choose Follows organization rules.
Only keep a channel on its own rules if it really needs to behave differently.