Viewing notifications
The IBM Cloud Notifications page is a centralized place to view and control all incidents, maintenance, announcements, and security bulletins. Events that are displayed on the Notifications page are ones that specifically impact users based on the preferences that the account owner or administrator sets. You can also view events from the past year that are now completed on the History page.
Pages specific to the IBM Cloud classic infrastructure are deprecated. The new Notifications page hosts all classic infrastructure notifications. You can view classic infrastructure history for planned and unplanned incidents and announcements on the Notifications page.
To view the page, log in to the IBM Cloud console, and click the Notifications icon 
on the menu bar.
The new notification experience provides enhancements to how users are notified about important changes on the IBM Cloud platform:
- The Notifications icon on the IBM Cloud console shows a red indicator that is only visible when a new notification is available. You can
see the details and interact with new and archived notifications.
- The Notifications page is account that is scoped and shows only notifications for the account that is selected on the menu bar. You can switch accounts to view notifications that are affecting a different account.
- The severity or impact is listed for each notification type. Depending on the notification, you might see severity 1 listed for an unplanned incident notification and high impact that is listed for a planned maintenance notification.
- You can use the search field to locate a specific notification or filter by a notification type.
- Navigate to a specific notification by using the unique URL that is associated with each notification. You can save and share the URL with users in the account.
- You can access the Notifications page with the applied filters to view only applicable notifications. Make sure to save the URL to view the Notifications page with the applied filters.
- If you want to receive future updates about a specific type of notification, click the Email icon next to each notification item in the list.
Notification types
The following table describes the different types of notifications that are displayed.
| Notification Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Planned maintenance | Scheduled maintenance that is required to keep the IBM Cloud platform and infrastructure operating at optimal status. |
| Security bulletins | Announcements about security vulnerabilities and the required actions. |
| Announcements | Updates on new infrastructure features and services in IBM Cloud. |
| Incidents | Unexpected impacting events that can cause an outage or restrict functionality. |
| Account | Invitation email, or console notifications for inviting users to the IBM Cloud platform. |
Subscribing to email notifications
You can select whether to receive email notifications about IBM Cloud platform-related items, such as announcements, billing and usage, additional notification preferences, and ordering. Or, about resource-related items, such as incidents, maintenance, security bulletins and resource activity. Additionally, if you have a Pay-As-You-Go or Subscription account, you can choose whether to receive IBM Cloud infrastructure service updates about changes, such as OS reloads, assigned IPs, and image and firmware updates. For more information, see Setting email preferences for notifications.
You cannot set email preferences for receiving account type notifications. On the IBM Cloud Notifications page, you can use the search field to locate an invitation or filter by the notification type called account.
Users already present in IBM Cloud receives an email and a notification with an invitation link. If an email address does not correspond to a known user in IBM Cloud, an invitation email gets sent to accept, but users can also choose not to accept the invitation. For more information, see Setting email preferences for notifications and Inviting users to an account.
The invitations expire after 30 days. New users to IBM Cloud can only accept an invitation by using the invitation link that they received through email.
Checking the delivery status of email notifications and viewing email history
On the Communication history page, you can check the status of all email notifications that are sent to you, and you can verify whether the emails are delivered successfully. You can also view the last 90 days of IBM Cloud email history, which can help you save time by troubleshooting any delivery issues without you having to contact IBM support.
To view your email notification history and check the delivery status of an IBM Cloud email, complete the following steps:
- In the IBM Cloud console, click the Notifications icon in the menu bar.
- Click Actions > View communication history.
- In the Subject field, enter any keyword that applies to the email that you want to check.
- Specify the date range of the email notification, and click Submit.
- Filter the email notifications by the delivery status:
- Select Delivered to find emails that were successfully delivered to you.
- Select Not delivered to find emails that were sent to you, but weren't delivered successfully.
- Select All to find both delivered and not delivered emails with the same subject.
Getting advanced notice for disruptive maintenance
IBM Cloud tries to limit disruptive, required maintenance for Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service offerings. Most maintenance is done in a nondisruptive manner to avoid the impact to your business, but when disruptive maintenance is necessary, we provide as much advanced notice as possible.
Iaas
For IaaS offerings, IBM Cloud provides advanced notice that's dependent on the severity of the impact. The following table defines the types and levels of the possibility of an impact.
| Possibility of impact | Definition | Advanced Notice Guidelines |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | Customer Impacting Event (CIE) | a minimum of 24 hours |
| High | Certain, likely, or has the potential to cause an extended or brief service disruption. | a minimum of 30 days |
| Medium | Low to moderate possibility of a brief disruption. | a minimum of 21 days |
| Low | None to negligible chance of a disruption or routine change. No assumed risk or a disruption that is isolated to a single customer. | offering-specific |
PaaS
For PaaS offerings, IBM Cloud provides advanced notice that's dependent on the severity of the impact. The following table defines the types and levels of the possibility of an impact.
| Possibility of impact | Definition | Advanced Notice Guidelines |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | Customer Impacting Event (CIE) | a minimum of 24 hours |
| Disruptive | Certain, likely, or has the potential to cause an extended or brief service disruption. | a minimum of 7 days |
| Nondisruptive | None to negligible chance of a disruption or routine change. No assumed risk or a disruption that is isolated to a single customer. | None |
SaaS
For SaaS offerings, IBM Cloud provides advanced notice that's dependent on the severity of the impact. The following table defines the types and levels of the possibility of an impact.
| Possibility of impact | Definition | Advanced Notice Guidelines |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | Customer Impacting Event (CIE) | a minimum of 24 hours |
| Disruptive | Certain, likely, or has the potential to cause an extended or brief service disruption. | a minimum of 7 days |
| Nondisruptive | None to negligible chance of a disruption or routine change. No assumed risk or a disruption that is isolated to a single customer. | None |