# Your inbox

> From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-inbox

**Inbox** is the row under **Next submission** in the left navigation of your
judging screens, at `/judge/inbox`. It is where a festival's announcements and
FilmScorecard's own notices about your work land, in one list — and it carries an
amber count of everything waiting on you, across every festival you judge.

The screen has three tabs, in this order: **Messages · Alerts · Invitations**.
The Inbox row opens the second one, **Alerts** — the list — which is what this
page covers. The other two have their own pages: **Messages**, where you write
to festival staff and read their replies
([Messaging festival staff](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-festival-staff.md)), and
**Invitations**, where every festival's offer to you lives and where you accept
or decline it ([Your invitations](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-invitations.md)).

## The amber number

The count on the **Inbox** nav row is **everything waiting on you: unread inbox
items, unread messages, and invitations you have not answered**, added up across
all of your festivals. No number means nothing is waiting.

It moves the moment you act on something — opening an unread item, archiving,
marking all read, answering an invitation, opening or sending a message — and
**it also moves on its own**: it is re-read about every 30 seconds on every
judging screen, the Inbox and the rest alike. Nothing is re-read while the
browser tab is behind something else; coming back to it reads the count again
at once.

**An invitation is part of that number now.** If the badge will not go away after
you have read everything, check the [Invitations](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-invitations.md) tab: an
unanswered offer keeps it lit, and **Mark all read** does not touch it.

Each tab carries its own pill: an amber count while something on that tab wants
you — unread items, unread messages, or unanswered invitations — and a plain grey
total otherwise. **The pills move with the amber number**, on the same rhythm.

## Two kinds of item, one list

| Type | What it is | Where it comes from |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Announcement** | Something a festival wrote to its judges — a deadline note, a season update. It has a sender and a body you open and read. | The festival's staff. |
| **Notice** | A one-line record that something happened — a film returned to your queue, a coordinator writing to you, your categories changing. There is nothing to open; its title is a link to the thing it is about. | FilmScorecard itself. |

**A festival chooses who receives each announcement.** Some go to a season's
whole roster; others go to a narrower group — the creative judges, say, or
everybody who still holds an unfiled scorecard. So two judges on the same
season do not always hold the same announcements, and a festival that has not
written any leaves you with none. **You are never told who else received one**,
only how many.

One honest footnote about what actually arrives today:

- **FilmScorecard writes three notices by itself: a film sent back to you** after
  you reported a problem with it, **a message from a coordinator**, and **a
  change to the categories you judge**. The other notice kinds — deadlines,
  invitations — arrive as the features behind them ship. **An invitation does
  not put a notice in this list**; it appears on the Invitations tab instead.
  **Nor does a scorecard a festival sends back to you for changes** — that
  comes by email and is listed on your judging home.

## Reading the list

One row per item, newest first, across **every** festival you judge:

| Column | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| **Item** | The title, a one-line preview under it, and — on a film sent back to you — an amber **Action needed** chip. |
| **Type** | Announcement or Notice. |
| **Festival** | Which festival it belongs to. |
| **Received** | When it arrived — "Aug 18, 06:00". **Times are in universal time (UTC)**, not your local time zone. |

**On an announcement, Received is the moment the festival posted it** — the day
it reached you. A coordinator may have been drafting it for a fortnight; the
date they started never appears anywhere on your side, and it is the posting
date that orders the list.

Every column heading sorts the list; press it again to flip the direction.

**An unread row is the loud one**: white, a thin indigo line down its left
edge, and a bold title. A read row goes quiet and grey. An archived row is
never counted or drawn as unread.

The line at the foot of the card sums up what you are looking at — "9 items,
all 2 festivals, any type, newest first, 3 unread" — and when every unarchived
item is read, its tail reads **"all read"**.

**The list shows your latest 200 items.** The counts stay right regardless;
older items simply fall off the bottom.

## Searching and filtering

- **The search box** matches an item's title, its preview line, and the
  festival's name.
- **Showing** switches between **Inbox** and **Archived** — one or the other,
  never both.
- **Type** narrows to **Announcements** or **Notices**.
- **Festival** narrows to one festival.

The moment the three filter buttons would run onto a second line — and always
on a phone — they fold into one **Filters** button that opens the same
choices, with its own Clear. Otherwise a **Clear filters** link appears
whenever anything is narrowing the list.

Filtered down to nothing, the list says so — "No item matches these filters",
or "Nothing matches *what you typed*" — with a **Clear filters** button. An
inbox that is genuinely empty says "Your inbox is empty" instead, with no
button, because there is nothing to clear.

## Read and unread

What marks an item read:

- **Opening an announcement.** Arriving on its reading view marks it read.
- **Mark as read** in a row's menu (the three dots at the row's right edge),
  or on a selection — see [Acting on several at once](#acting-on-several-at-once).
- **Mark all read** in the toolbar.

What does **not** mark an item read: **following a notice's link.** The link
takes you to the film or the screen the notice is about, and the notice stays
unread until you mark it. **Reading the message a notice was about does not
mark the notice read either** — the two counts are separate, and a message you
have read in Messages can still leave its notice bold here. Every row menu also
offers **Mark as unread** to put the dot back on something you want to come back
to.

**Reading the email does not mark it read either.** An announcement is emailed
to you as a courtesy, and the festival's own record of who has read it counts
only people who opened it here.

**Mark all read marks everything.** Every unarchived item, on every festival,
both types — **whatever the filters are showing at the time**. It is one
press to zero the inbox side of the amber badge, and it never touches
archived items, your messages, or your invitations. When nothing is unread the
button is absent rather than greyed out.

## Announcements

An announcement's title opens its reading view at its own address. On it:

- The festival and season, small, at the top.
- The subject, then **the sender's name and their role** — "Nadia Brandt,
  Coordinator" — with **the date it was posted** and an Announcement chip.
- The body, as written. **Plain text**: a festival cannot send you formatting,
  links, images or attachments, so an announcement is never a document to
  download or a button to press.
- A monospace line: **"Sent to 24 judges on the 2024 Pine City Film Festival
  roster"**. That is a count, and only ever a count — **no announcement
  anywhere shows you who the other recipients are.** It is also historical: it
  says how many judges received it at the moment it was posted, and a judge who
  joins the roster afterwards neither receives it nor changes the number.

**Announcements are read only.** There is no reply box and no forward — the
footer says so, and points at **Open Messages** as the way to reach the
coordinators. **Archive** sits beside it, and the back link at the top
returns you to the list you came from — the inbox, or the archived view if
that is where it lives.

**A festival cannot take one back.** Once an announcement has reached you it
can never be edited or deleted by anybody, so what you read is what was said.

## Notices

A notice is one line: a title, a short second line, and nothing to open — a
notice has no page of its own, and typing an address for one lands on "page
not found". **The title is a link to the record the notice is about**: a
returned film's title opens that film's scoring page; a coordinator's message
opens the Messages tab; other kinds lead to the festival's judging home or to
your account. When the thing it pointed at is out of reach — a season you no
longer judge — the title is plain text instead of a link.

**A notice can also disappear.** It points at a real record, and if the
festival removes that record — a submission deleted, an import rolled back —
the notice goes with it rather than surviving as a dead link.

### The film sent back to you

When a coordinator fixes what you reported and hands the film back:

- The title reads ***"Solstice" was returned to your queue*** and links
  straight to that film's scoring page.
- The second line is **the coordinator's own note about what changed** — or
  "It is back at the head of your queue." when they wrote nothing beyond the
  fix.
- An amber **Action needed** chip sits beside it until you archive it.

The film itself is also at the front of your queue with the same note on its
card, and you are emailed — the notice is the third copy, for the record. The
whole story is on [A film came back to you](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/a-film-came-back-to-you.md).

### A coordinator wrote to you

When a member of a festival's staff sends you a message:

- The title reads ***Nadia Brandt* sent you a message**, and the second line
  is the festival it is about.
- **The title opens the Messages tab**, not one conversation — find the row
  with their name on it and open it there. See
  [Messaging festival staff](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-festival-staff.md).
- **There is no Action needed chip.** A message is not a deadline.
- **The message itself is never in this list.** The notice says one arrived; the
  words are in the conversation, and in the email you are sent about it.

### Your categories changed

When a festival adds categories to what you judge, or takes some away — on
its roster, or by adding a new category to the season:

- The title reads **Your categories changed**, and links to that festival's
  judging home.
- The second line says what changed, one sentence per category: "You can now
  judge *Drama Film* at $8.00 per scorecard." — with no figure on a volunteer
  place — or "You no longer judge *Comedy*. Scorecards you filed there are
  unchanged."
- **There is nothing to accept.** The change is already in place: new films
  from an added category reach your queue, and none from a removed one do. **A
  film you are holding in a removed category is still yours to finish**, and
  pays your agreed rate.

You are emailed the same sentences. One festival change is one notice, however
many categories it touched.

**Both notices can be switched off**, with the **In-app** switch on their row on
[your account's Notifications tab](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md#notifications). A message
from a coordinator makes no notice here: it lights the **Messages** tab instead.

| The notice | Its row |
| --- | --- |
| A film sent back to you | **A scorecard was returned to you** |
| Your categories changed, when anything was added | **New submission assigned to you** |
| Your categories changed, when categories were only taken away | **An assignment was withdrawn** |

Switched off, the notice is simply never created — it does not arrive late when
you switch it back on, and **nothing else is affected**: the film still comes back to your
queue, the message still arrives in Messages, your categories still change, and
the emails are separate switches.

**Announcements cannot be switched off**, in-app or by email. They are not
among the notifications on that tab, and a festival's announcement always
reaches both your inbox here and your email address.

## Archiving

**Archive** — in a row's menu, on a selection, or on an announcement's
reading view — moves an item out of the inbox. Nothing is deleted, ever:

- Set **Showing** to **Archived** to read everything you have archived.
- Archived rows' menus offer **Move to inbox**, which puts them back.
- An archived item is outside the unread accounting — archiving something
  unread takes it out of the amber numbers without marking it read.
- **Your archive is your own.** A festival archiving an announcement on their
  side does nothing to your copy, and archiving yours tells them nothing.

**Invitations cannot be archived.** They are on their own tab, they have no
archive, and every one you have ever had stays listed. See
[Your invitations](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-invitations.md).

## Acting on several at once

Tick the checkbox at a row's left edge (on a desktop it appears when you
hover; on a phone it is always there) and a bar rises from the bottom of the
screen: the count, one line naming the consequence, **Clear selection**, and
the actions —

- **Mark as read**, only while an unread row is selected, and
- **Archive** (or **Move to inbox**, in the archived view) as the blue commit.

Changing any filter clears the selection, and so does committing.

## On a phone

The card runs to the edges of the screen, and the toolbar is one line: search,
**Filters**, and **Read all** while anything is unread. The tabs are one line
too; if they do not fit, swipe them sideways.

The rows stay rows. The list scrolls sideways under a frozen header, with the
checkbox and **Item** columns pinned to the left so you always know which row
you are on. The scroll region can be focused and moved with the keyboard.

## What this screen does not have

Named plainly so you do not go looking:

- **No replying and no forwarding.** Announcements are one-way; the Messages
  tab is the way back. See
  [Messaging festival staff](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-festival-staff.md).
- **No deleting.** Archive is as far as it goes.
- **No recipient lists.** Who else received an announcement is a number,
  never names — the same rule that keeps every judge invisible to every
  other judge.
- **Nothing from other judges, ever.** Judges cannot write to each other
  anywhere in FilmScorecard, and nothing about another judge's work can appear
  here.
- **No new rows while you watch this list.** The amber number and the tab
  pills keep themselves up to date, but the rows of this list move when you act
  on something and when the page is reloaded. A new announcement shows itself
  in the count first; reload to see its row. The **Messages** tab is the one
  that keeps its rows up to date — see
  [It keeps itself up to date](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-festival-staff.md#it-keeps-itself-up-to-date).

## Related guides

- [Your invitations](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-invitations.md) — the middle tab: every offer a
  festival has made you, and accepting, declining or blocking from inside the
  app.
- [Messaging festival staff](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/messaging-festival-staff.md) — the third tab:
  writing to a coordinator, and reading what they write back.
- [A film came back to you](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/a-film-came-back-to-you.md) — the event behind
  one of the three live notices.
- [Your account](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md#notifications) — the Notifications tab,
  including the boxes that control all three notices.
- [Your judging home](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-judging-home.md) — the screen the Inbox row
  sits beside.