---
title: Instance Observer alert notifications
description: Notifications for alerts and other system activity are displayed on the Instance Observer banner.
locale: en-US
canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/impact/i-o-notifications.html
release: australia
topic_type: concept
last_updated: "2026-03-12"
reading_time_minutes: 1
breadcrumb: [Use alerts to monitor your instance, Monitor instance performance, Platform Health, Using Impact, Impact]
---

# Instance Observer alert notifications

Notifications for alerts and other system activity are displayed on the Instance Observer banner.

A notification indicator is available allowing direct access to the in app notifications that are sent to user email or SMS accounts, such as alerts and new releases.

-   Access the record directly to see the details.
-   Use Notification History to view the entire list from the last 72 hours.
-   Clear the alerts from the notification panel.
-   Access notification settings for Intelligent alerts and Monitoring alerts from the panel.

\[Omitted image "io-notifications.png"\] Alt text: Shows the notification panel with alerts populated and the View notification history link.

The bell \(\[Omitted image "io-bell-icon.png"\] Alt text: Bell icon.\) icon notifies you about new feature releases \(IO Release Notes\) and alerts from Auriga, Self Service, and Monitoring. You can enable or disable notifications using the gear \(\[Omitted image "gear.png"\] Alt text: Gear icon.\) icon.

The \[Omitted image "io-bell-icon.png"\] Alt text: Bell icon. icon displays the number of new notifications, and clicking it opens a pop-up with up to 25 recent notifications, with excess moved to history. The last two feature releases and critical Auriga alerts are pinned at the top. You can open specific pages for new releases, Auriga, Self Service, and Monitoring alerts.

Notifications can be dismissed, marked as read, and managed through options to clear all or view history, which retains unread notifications for 72 hours and read ones for 7 days. The **View notification history** includes filtering and search capabilities by Instance, status, metric, and notification type.

**Parent Topic:**[Use alerts to monitor your instance](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/australia/markdown/australia/impact/io-alerts-intro.md)