There are two ways you can access notifications in Productive. 

Hovering over the Inbox will show you the most recent notifications in chronological order. If you want to open any notification, simply click on it. 

If a notification has the purple @ symbol, this means that someone has directly @mentioned you, so you should probably keep an extra eye on this particular notification. 

If the background is entirely white, this is an unread notification. If the background is grey, this is a notification you've already seen. 

Clicking on the Inbox will expand it completely and keep it open at all times. 

In the example above, you can see that the Inbox, once opened, also opens whatever the notification is for on the right. In this case, the first notification relates to a Firefox bug, which is a task that has immediately been opened on the right. 

This helps you deal with tasks and other issues one by one, instantly skipping on the next issue in line when you archive the notification you're currently looking at. 

If you want to see fewer details from the notification itself, turn on the Compact view, as seen below. 

You can also filter notifications here.

To archive, a notification, click the button that shows up when you hover over the notification itself.