Upcoming Feature: Know what's going on in your group

I understand your dilemma--at least partially. Personally, I would rather see a report after each release that mentions improvements, new features, and fixes, with links to more information (as applicable).

As an organizer, it seems I am blind sided by emails sent out by AirSet, putting me into a damage control mode more often than I would like. There are still a great many marginal luddites out there that have email and cell phones, several of which belong to my groups. When these folks get an email that says AirSet and is not something they understand, I am sure to get an email, phone call, text, or face to face conversation (and sometimes it is all four!) about the email that they received.

I know as an organizer that this is my role, but I'd sure like to minimize the impact and consequences. Especially the unexpected instances.

Thanks for listening,

Jim

P.S. Sorry, I meant to add that a one time email is ok, but the everyday emails is going to be a bit much for folks that only want to know about the events that have them listed as a participant.

Hi Sherrie,

Thank you for the Notifications feature! I'm happy that it is finally there! Fundamentally, I think it is good. However, there are problems. The following applies only to the Calendar app.

I immediately turned notifications off for the entire group. I understand Jim's situation completely. At the moment, it is hard to see the wood for the trees. Also, this is yet another setting for an administrator to remember when making a new Web Computer (I'm sure many of us are not paid to do this job!).

I can see changes in events which I'm involved in, but switching this setting actually prevents me from seeing new events coming in. That seems counter-productive to me. If I would like to monitor new events as they are added to the calendar, I can only do this by wading through everything which happens on that calendar. I can't do that to my calendar members: they'll just walk away. They are not interested if some other group member has just put something in their personal calendar. They want to know about changes in the events they are already involved in and they want to see all new events. Basically, that's just an extra toggle in the filter: calendar/only my events/plus new events.

One other scenario which I would like to see is to be able to limit the notified acitivities to those of the administrator(s). Did you consider putting a parameter in the roles dialog to turn notifications on or off for that role? That would reduce the traffic very considerably.

Well, that's my 2c. Hope it helps.

Cheers,

Melvyn

@ Melvyn - When group members add events to their personal calendars, it should not generate a notification to other members since they can't see a members personal calendar, they will only get notifications of changes to the group calendar. Also, the group default that you set in Administration is just a default. Each group member can over-ride this for themselves:

To Change Notifications for Individuals:

• Go to the web computer desktop and click on the View Options drop down menu and choose Change Email Settings
• 
  In the dialog that appears you can set notification options for yourself, this will not affect the group default

From what I understand, you might want to disable notifications for the group and then send an email to all of the group members that you believe would want notifications telling them how to turn these on.

Brian,

sorry to be confusing: my phrase "put something in their personal calendar" was intended to mean ticking yourself off as a participant in an event in the Group Calendar. In this way, the event gets "added to the personal calendar"! But it also generates a Notification message which is probably (my guess) - for most users - superfluous traffic.

Cheers,

Melvyn

Is there a way to minimize the activity feed box on the desktop?

Currently one of our members is complaining about getting lots of emails from the activity feed. I have set the default activity feed for the group to never. His personal settings for that Web Computer are shown in the screenshot which he sent me. All the same, he is receiving notifications for events which he is not involved in. This is what I was referring to in my earlier posting. Are we doing something wrong?

Cheers,

Melvyn

Hi Melvyn, I just tried this configuration and am seeing anomalies as well... I've alerted our notifications engineer as to the issue, namely getting notified about changes to other events on the calendar even when you aren't a participant - and he is looking into it. Thanks for letting us know of the issue.

Useful as the notifications feature potentially is, there is one aspect which we are finding less than helpful: the date of the appointment is not mentioned in the email we receive, nor in the listing that appears on AirSet. That means one cannot select and view items from the list based on date. This makes for very inefficient working practice. It is aggravated severely by the slow server response from AirSet - many of our members have complained about that.

See also the following entry from gwailin99 regarding best practice:
http://gsfn.us/t/6s7o

Cheers,

Melvyn

Thanx for the quick reply, Jim. Here's just another gripe to add to the list: I'm sure you're more than aware of it, but I think it is good to show that some users are too:



Which events have been removed? Are any of them relevant to me?

Cheers,

Melvyn