If you manage an organization operating 7 days a week, you’re probably only needed at the office Monday through Friday but still want to keep an eye on Saturday’s and Sunday’s workload. Unfortunately e-mail notifications in previous versions were a bit all or nothing. If you were logged into the Helpdesk on a Monday afternoon you would still receive any (matching) messages in your e-mail client, even if you already saw them.

With the 4.2 “time of day” criteria you can limit this to only forward on weekends, or any other days and times of your choice. Now you can login and work with the Helpdesk during your regular work hours, while casually monitoring any Helpdesk activity on your days off. To try out this system, click ‘my account’, ‘E-mail Notifications’ and add a notification.

In the edit window, pick what kinds of activity you want to watch. In the screenshot I’ve chosen to watch all outgoing and incoming mail and worker comments. Then in the “matching criteria” section, click ‘Current Date/Time’, and in the expanded dialog click ‘Day of Week’ and pick Saturday and Sunday. At the bottom of the window make sure you checkmark your watcher forwarding address and save changes.

From now on you’ll only be notified of any activity over the weekend, so you can still try and enjoy your time off ;)

-joegeck@wgm