Agent notifications

Agent notifications email you after a run finishes — either every time, or only when something goes wrong — so you can review the output (or the failure) without having to open Strata and check the run history.

Turn notifications on

Open the agent's form (create a new agent, or open an existing agent and press Edit) and open Advanced settings. The Notifications block is there.

1. Turn Email me when this agent runs on. Its settings appear under it (they stay hidden while it's off).
2. Choose When to email:
   • After every run — success or failure, you always get the email.
   • Only on failures — quieter; the agent only emails you when the run ends in error or timeout.
3. Send to (optional) — leave it blank to send to your Strata account's email, or type any address. Outlook doesn't need to be connected.
4. Turn Include the run output in the email off if you only want the status and not the agent's full output.
5. Click Create agent / Save changes.

The form doesn't offer CC, BCC, or subject and message templates. An agent saved with them before they left the form keeps them, and they still apply (see below).

Who the email comes from

Notifications are sent by Strata's transactional sender (backed by Azure Communication Services) — not from your own Outlook mailbox. This is deliberate:

• The email arrives as a clean "Strata notification" instead of a self-addressed "note to self" cluttering your sent folder.
• Agent notifications work even when Outlook isn't connected, as long as Strata can resolve your account's email address.

The from address is fixed at the Strata deployment level (the AZURE_COMM_SENDER environment variable) — there is no per-org sender override in the admin console. See /docs/admin/notification-templates for the full rundown, including SPF/DKIM/DMARC tips for tenants that quarantine third-party senders.

Note

Agent notifications obey your organization's external-recipient policy, the same way email you send from chat does. If your admin blocks external recipients, an outside address in Send to, CC, or BCC is dropped from the notification before it sends (any internal recipients still receive it), and the action is recorded in the audit log. If every recipient is external under a block policy, the notification isn't sent at all. Under a warn policy the email is delivered and the external recipients are logged. Because an agent's CC/BCC is typed once and then fires unattended on a schedule, keep agent notifications pointed at internal mailboxes to avoid a report going somewhere you didn't intend.

Subject and body templates

An agent that has a Subject template (200 char max) or a Message template (4,000 char max) gets placeholder substitution in it. Available placeholders:

Placeholders are case-insensitive — {STATUS} and {Status} resolve too.

Without a subject template, the subject is:

• Success: Your <agent name> report is ready
• Failure or timeout: <agent name> couldn't finish its run

Note

Throttled runs (rate-limited or hit a transient AI outage) do not send a notification email at all. A throttled run with a cron schedule defers ~15 minutes and re-fires, so a "problem" email would contradict the retry.

Without a message template, the default body:

• On success: includes the agent's output if Include the run output in the email is on, or a single sentence "The agent run completed successfully" if it's off.
• On failure: a styled PROBLEM banner with the error text, optionally followed by any partial output.

What the email looks like

Notification emails use the same dark design as every other Strata email; there is no light version. The agent's name is the heading, followed by the run's Status (green when it finished successfully, red when it failed or timed out), Duration, and Run at time, then the body. Every notification ends with the note This report was generated by an AI agent. Verify critical information before acting on it. See What the emails look like for how they display across mail apps.

Where the output comes from

Agents emit free-form Markdown that's converted to HTML for the email body. Strata's agent system prompt enforces email- and inbox-friendly formatting:

• Use clean structure — headers, **bold**, bullet/numbered lists, block quotes, and Markdown pipe tables for any rows-by-columns data.
• Charts are allowed: an agent may emit a single `chart fenced block (a Chart.js config). It renders as a real interactive graph in the Inbox and run history. Email can't run Chart.js, so the email swaps the chart for a short "Chart is shown in the Strata inbox" note — the agent is told to always restate the key figures in text or a table so no data is lost in the email.
• No callout syntax (> [INFO], > [WARN], etc.) — these are stripped, since they read as raw text outside chat.
• No inline color tags ([red:...], [green:...]) — these are chat-only and would appear literally, so they're stripped. For status emphasis the agent uses inline HTML instead — <span style="color:#15803d">on track</span>, with #b91c1c for overdue and #b45309 for at risk — which renders in the Inbox and run history, mid-sentence included, and adjusts to light and dark mode. The email is always dark, so there those three show in a brighter green, red and amber; any other color too dark to read on it is shown in the normal text color.
• No other fenced rich blocks ( `excel , `pdf , `table , `kpi , etc.) — those render only inside the chat UI and show as raw code here. The agent uses a Markdown table or plain text instead.
• Email subjects emitted in tasks involving emails are rendered as Markdown links so the recipient can click straight through to the message in Outlook.

If you ask the agent to "generate an Excel and attach it to the email", Strata sends a separate email through your connected Outlook account for the actual outbound message — the notification is just the run summary.

Why use errors-only mode

Errors-only is the safety pattern for agents that don't need a daily heartbeat. The SQL anomaly watcher built-in template uses errors-only by default: it runs hourly, finds nothing wrong 99% of the time, and emails you only when something looks off. You stay quiet and trust the silence.

Use After every run when:

• The run output is the actual product (daily briefing, weekly digest).
• You want explicit confirmation the job ran.

Use Only on failures when:

• The agent is a monitor or watcher.
• The output is normally empty (no anomalies found, inbox clean, no new files).
• You don't want to train yourself to ignore the inbox.

In your inbox

Completed agent runs also surface inside Strata, independent of email. When an agent finishes, a notification appears in your Inbox (at the top of the sidebar) with the run's status and a summary of its output. Its Open the chat button opens the run's own chat, where you can read the whole answer and reply to it (see Each run is its own chat). A run that did not start, or that another agent started, has no chat of its own: its notice has View this run, which opens it on the agent's page. Unread notifications count toward the number on Inbox; opening one marks it read. A read agent run notification stays in your inbox for 90 days, then moves to past messages (See past messages). See Inbox for the full breakdown of message types and retention.

This in-app notification does not depend on the email switch under Advanced settings — use email when you want the result pushed to a mailbox, and rely on the Inbox when you just want to glance at recent runs inside Strata.

If Strata pauses an agent because its model is no longer allowed, only the Inbox tells you: a notice titled <name> stopped (Stopped · its model is not allowed) gives the reason and ends This agent is paused until then; press Resume on it to start it again. It arrives beside any report you haven't read yet rather than replacing it. A Run now refused for the same reason pauses nothing: the Agents page shows Could not start run with the reason, and an <name> failed notice arrives instead, also beside any unread report. No notification email is sent for either, and the same notice isn't posted again within 24 hours.

Testing your notification

Click Run now from the agent's detail page to trigger a real run. If notifications are enabled, you should receive the email within a few seconds of the run finishing. Notifications are also sent for runs triggered by the scheduler and by webhooks; they are not sent for test runs (dry runs).

What can go wrong

• email_to must be a valid email — the Send to field didn't pass the email regex. Check for typos.
• email_cc contains invalid email "<value>" (or the same for email_bcc) — one of the comma-separated entries didn't validate. Fix or remove it.
• No email arrived after a run — verify the agent's notifications are enabled (Email me when this agent runs is on, under Advanced settings) and the run actually triggered a notification (success runs in errors-only mode don't). Check your spam folder; ACS-backed senders sometimes land there on the first delivery.
• Email arrived in spam / quarantined — your tenant's SPF/DKIM/DMARC policy may be stricter than the Strata sender's alignment. See the admin notification-templates page for the recommended allow-list and DMARC configuration.
• Output looks like garbled markdown — the agent emitted a chat-only rich block ( `excel , `pdf , `table , etc.) that doesn't render here. A `chart block is fine and renders in the Inbox. Tighten the prompt to ask for a Markdown table or plain prose, or remove the corresponding capability.
• The notification subject contains literal {agent.name} — your template misspells a placeholder. Check the spelling and the braces; placeholders are case-insensitive but must use the exact names listed above.
• An external recipient never received the notification — your organization's external-recipient policy is set to block, so outside addresses in Send to / CC / BCC are dropped before the email is sent. Point the notification at an internal mailbox, or ask your admin about the policy.

Related

• /docs/agents/create — the Notifications block of the agent form.
• /docs/agents/webhooks — triggering from outside.
• Inbox — where in-app agent notifications appear.
• /docs/admin/notification-templates — sender identity and deliverability.