Message Center
What Is the Message Center?
The Message Center is where the IntuneAssistant platform communicates directly with you. It carries platform-wide announcements from the IntuneAssistant team — scheduled maintenance windows, newly released features, security-related warnings, and general information messages.
Messages are filtered by your license server-side. This means you only ever see messages that are relevant to your subscription level and the features you have access to. There is nothing to configure — the right messages arrive automatically.
Read and unread state is tracked in your browser. No personal preference data is sent to the server. When you mark a message as read or unread, that choice is stored locally and survives page navigation within the same session and across sessions on the same browser.
Why Would You Use This?
You want to know whether the platform has scheduled downtime before you run a large bulk operation
You spotted a new feature in the navigation and want to understand what it does
You received a warning indicator on your avatar and want to see what it refers to
You are handing over a tenant to a colleague and want to make sure they are aware of any active notices
How to Get There
Navigate to Message Center using any of these routes:
Sidebar menu
Expand the user section at the bottom of the sidebar and click Message Center
Avatar badge
When unread messages exist, a pulsing orange dot appears on your avatar — click it to open the user menu, then click Message Center
User dropdown
Click your name or avatar at the bottom of the sidebar → Message Center in the dropdown
The Unread Indicator
Whenever you have unread messages, IntuneAssistant surfaces a visual indicator in three places simultaneously so you never miss an important notice:
Avatar (sidebar trigger)
A pulsing orange dot at the top-right corner of your avatar circle
Display name row (expanded sidebar)
A small orange pill showing the unread count next to your name — e.g. 3
Message Center item in the dropdown
A Bell icon with an orange count badge inline — e.g. Message Center 3
All three indicators disappear as soon as unreadCount reaches zero, which happens automatically when you mark all messages as read.
Page Layout
The Message Center page is divided into three areas: the page header, the filter tabs, and the message list.
Page Header
The header shows the page title and the total unread count. When unread messages exist, an orange pill appears directly after the title text — for example, Message Center 4.
A Refresh button on the right re-fetches messages from the API immediately. This is useful if you have been told that a new message has been published and it has not appeared yet.
Filter Tabs
Six tabs let you narrow the list to exactly the messages you are interested in:
All
Every message available to your account, regardless of read state or type
Unread
Only messages you have not yet marked as read — the orange count matches the avatar badge
Maintenance
Only scheduled maintenance notices
Feature
Only feature announcements
Warning
Only warning messages requiring your attention
Information
Only general information messages
Each tab shows a live count badge next to the label. The Unread count badge is orange; all others are muted grey. Switching tabs clears any active selection.
Message Cards
Each message is displayed as a card with a coloured left border that immediately communicates its type. The colour coding is consistent across the entire application:
Information
Blue
Warning
Amber
Maintenance
Purple
Feature
Green
What Each Card Shows
Title
The message headline in bold
Type badge
Small inline badge showing Information, Warning, Maintenance, or Feature
Description
The full message body — multi-line text is preserved as written
Timestamp
Relative time — e.g. 3 hours ago, 2 days ago
Expiry date
If the message has an expiry, shown as Expires 25 May 2026. Warning expiry dates are highlighted in amber to draw attention
Unread dot
A small filled orange circle at the top-right corner — present on unread messages, absent once read
Selecting Messages
Click anywhere on a card to select it. Click again to deselect. There is no separate checkbox — the entire card surface is the selection target.
Selected state — a primary-coloured ring wraps the card and a small animated checkmark circle appears at the top-left corner. The unread orange dot is hidden while a card is selected to avoid visual conflict.
Select all — a small square toggle in the toolbar (visible when the list is not empty) selects or deselects all currently visible messages at once. It reflects the current selection state: filled when all are selected, empty otherwise.
Toolbar Actions
The toolbar appears below the filter tabs whenever the message list is not empty. It shows the selection toggle, a selection count, and the available actions.
Mark as read
At least one selected message is currently unread
Adds the selected IDs to the read list — their orange dots disappear
Mark as unread
At least one selected message is currently read
Removes the selected IDs from the read list — their orange dots reappear
Mark all as read
unreadCount > 0 (regardless of selection)
Marks every message in the current list as read in one action
Both Mark as read and Mark as unread can be enabled at the same time when your selection contains a mix of read and unread messages. After either action the selection is cleared automatically.
How Read State Works
Read and unread state is stored entirely in your browser's localStorage under the key ia_message_center_read_ids. The value is a JSON array of message UUID strings.
What this means in practice:
Marking a message as read on your laptop does not affect how it appears on your phone or in another browser
Clearing your browser data resets all read state — all messages will appear unread again
The platform never knows which messages you have or have not read
The unread count shown on your avatar, in your display name row, and in the Message Center dropdown item is always calculated live from this local list against the messages currently returned by the API.
Last updated