Alerts
Designing a smarter way to stay aware — without staying on edge
DATE
Q4 2024
ROLE
Lead Product Designer
TEAM
Riley Hendrickson, PM
Sanath Yapatla, Lead Engineer
Vinod Badhavat, BE Engineer
CONTEXT
On the Core team, I led the redesign of Alerts — Sortly’s system for keeping teams aware of what matters across their inventory.
The goal was to evolve alerts from static one-time triggers into a continuous awareness system that mirrors how inventory moves through its lifecycle. By introducing range-based thresholds and automatic reset behaviors tied to replenishment, Alerts now help teams anticipate issues before they happen, act quickly when they do, and return to stability without extra effort.
CONTEXT
PROBLEM
The Blind Spots Between Thresholds
Sortly’s alert system was built to notify — not to adapt.
Once triggered, an alert stayed that way until the user manually updated stock beyond the threshold.
There was no sense of rhythm or recovery — just a binary on/off signal.
As our inventory workflows matured, this broke the loop.
We wanted a system that could not only warn users, but also recover — one that understood the lifecycle of an item from depletion to restock to stability.
Inventory moves in cycles, not thresholds
Inventory isn’t linear — it ebbs and flows.
But our system treated it like a fixed event: hit zero, fire an alert, stop there.
Through user research, we realized that alerts should behave more like inventory itself: dynamic, repeatable, and self-resetting.
This shift in thinking led to two breakthroughs:
Designing range-based alerts (Min → Reorder → Max).
Introducing a lifecycle loop that ties alerts to replenishment actions.
J
Jane Dover
If I move 20 instead of 10, I basically have to start over.
S
Stephanie Kirk
We’ve had to rebuild counts from scratch just because of one mistake
D
Destiny Santoro
There’s no quick way to back out of an error. It’s stressful
J
Justin Heffins
I believe we need to leave sortly if we don't get functionality like this. We need this and premade pakouts, or picking lists!! It takes way too long for our team to function within this structure at current.
K
Keefa Dru
Any unwanted move action needs to be removed from the report summary. Undo action is definitely helpful in this case.
SOLUTION
A continuous loop of awareness
We redefined alerts as part of the replenishment flow.
Now, when inventory dips below the reorder point, the system doesn’t just notify — it offers a Restock action.
Once replenished, alerts reset automatically, restoring the item’s status and closing the loop.
If a reorder point isn’t set, the system intelligently falls back to the Min Level as the trigger — ensuring users are never left without guidance.
For the first time, alerts behave as a self-sustaining system that understands the full life of an item.
1
Toast Notification
Undo is possible for quantity updates and item moves immediately when they happen, for those dreaded 'oh sh*t!' moments.
4
Activity History
Undo is also available for up to 7 days, ensuring users can fix mistakes even if they missed the toast.
Bulk-select multiple items and return them to their origins in just a few steps. Perfect for post-job resets or end-of-day inventory cleanup.
original action, undone
undone action
4
Mobile Experience
Translated undo solution onto mobile, with parallel behavior. Undo in toast, or within 7 days in Activity History.
Undo from mobile success toast, display time increased to 6 seconds.
Use of sheet overlay to allow for undo reason & notes
Return to Origin fits seamlessly into Sortly’s ecosystem—designed to be powerful, yet invisible.