Please help me understand reminders for calendar entry
Charles McCrea
I don't understand what reminders do. I read in the Administration/Configuration section the following:
"Simple Groupware can automatically send e-mail reminders for upcoming events like birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, password or account expires, open tasks and open contact activities. All reminders are sent via e-mail. The mail recipients for each dataset are defined in its notification field. All jobs are scheduled Monday to Friday at 5pm."
But if I create a calendar entry, there is a reminder drop-down where I can pick a time, 5 min, 10 min, etc.
If all jobs are scheduled at 5pm, what is the point of picking a drop-down entry? Or are we talking about 2 different reminder functions?
I've also never been able to create a successful reminder when creating a calendar entry. I've followed the instructions on Administration/Configuration...I've created a mail identity called cron. In this mail identity I've put in the smtp server for our offices mail server. With Paul's help I've created a .bat file to call the cron.php.
It would seem that all that is necessary for a reminder email to be sent we only need two things, a user in mail identity called cron (with a valid smtp server entered) and the cron or .bat file scheduled for every 5 minutes. With this setup, all users on our SG system will have a reminder sent to the cron email address in the mail identity. I did not put anything in the notification section of the calendar entry I created.
Please correct me where I'm wrong in my understanding. What might also be helpful would be to give an example of how to test this calendar reminder. If I setup a reminder for 5 minutes, what should I put in for my start time in order for this reminder to be sent out.
Thanks!
paulzarucki
For some reason I too found the reminder function a bit confusing at
first, probably because I tried to test it using a reminder that was
due to be sent less than 5 minutes in the future. In this situation
the reminder won't be sent. If you have set a reminder for X minutes
before the event, the reminder e-mail will actually be sent X+5
minutes before (assuming you are running <sgs-dir>/bin/cron.php every
5 minutes). I presume SG does this in order to ensure that the
reminder is never sent later than the due time.
I now use the reminder function regurlarly and can't understand why I
ever had difficulty with it! I have successfully tested the following
procedure on a fresh install of SG 0.604.
Regards,
Paul.
Calendar reminder demo:
- select Calendar in the folder tree at left.
- click the New tab and enter the following into the new record:
- Subject = "Meeting"
- Begin = now + 20 minutes
- End = now + 30 minutes
- Reminder = 5 minutes
- Notification: click the tabs at right, select the desired
recipients and click the << button to copy them to the left-hand list.
- Click "Save and go back"
greavette
Sorry, still can't get my reminder to work? Can someone please tell
me what is needed to get the reminder to work? What I mean is what
id's do I need to create?
Does cron need a user id?
Does cron need a mail identity id?
I've read the documentation, but I'm confused as to what id's need to
be created to get this working. I have my .bat file running every 5
minutes. If I add a notification to a module to notify me of a change
to something, I receive that email...but I don't receive emails for
reminders. I would think that if my notification works, that means my
smtp settings have been setup properly.
Thanks,
Charles.
On Feb 16, 4:01 pm, paulzarucki <paulzaru...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> For some reason I too found thereminderfunction a bit confusing at
> first, probably because I tried to test it using areminderthat was
> due to be sent less than 5 minutes in the future. In this situation
> thereminderwon't be sent. If you have set areminderfor X minutes
> before the event, theremindere-mail will actually be sent X+5
> minutes before (assuming you are running <sgs-dir>/bin/cron.php every
> 5 minutes). I presume SG does this in order to ensure that thereminderis never sent later than the due time.
>
> I now use thereminderfunction regurlarly and can't understand why I
> ever had difficulty with it! I have successfully tested the following
> procedure on a fresh install of SG 0.604.
>
> Regards,
> Paul.
>
> Calendarreminderdemo:
> - select Calendar in the folder tree at left.
> - click the New tab and enter the following into the new record:
> - Subject = "Meeting"
> - Begin = now + 20 minutes
> - End = now + 30 minutes
> -Reminder= 5 minutes
> - Notification: click the tabs at right, select the desired
> recipients and click the << button to copy them to the left-hand list.
> - Click "Save and go back"
>
> On Feb 15, 4:31 am, Charles McCrea <charles.sw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
>
> > I don't understand what reminders do. I read in the
> > Administration/Configuration section the following:
> > "Simple Groupware can automatically send e-mail reminders for upcoming
> > events like birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, password or account
> > expires, open tasks and open contact activities. All reminders are sent via
> > e-mail. The mail recipients for each dataset are defined in its notification
> > field. All jobs are scheduled Monday to Friday at 5pm."
>
> > But if I create a calendar entry, there is areminderdrop-down where I can
> > pick a time, 5 min, 10 min, etc.
>
> > If all jobs are scheduled at 5pm, what is the point of picking a drop-down
> > entry? Or are we talking about 2 differentreminderfunctions?
>
> > I've also never been able to create a successfulreminderwhen creating a
> > calendar entry. I've followed the instructions on
> > Administration/Configuration...I've created a mail identity called cron. In
> > this mail identity I've put in the smtp server for our offices mail server.
> > With Paul's help I've created a .bat file to call the cron.php.
>
> > It would seem that all that is necessary for areminderemail to be sent we
> > only need two things, a user in mail identity called cron (with a valid smtp
> > server entered) and the cron or .bat file scheduled for every 5 minutes.
> > With this setup, all users on our SG system will have aremindersent to the
> > cron email address in the mail identity. I did not put anything in the
> > notification section of the calendar entry I created.
>
> > Please correct me where I'm wrong in my understanding. What might also be
> > helpful would be to give an example of how to test this calendarreminder.
> > If I setup areminderfor 5 minutes, what should I put in for my start time
paulzarucki
> Does cron need a user id?
No.
> Does cron need a mail identity id?
Yes!
> I would think that if my notification works, that means my
> smtp settings have been setup properly.
For your account, yes, but not for cron. Thomas will correct me if I'm
wrong, but I think that a notification, resulting from a change that
you have made (e.g. creating a new record which has a notification
set), is sent using your mail identitity. In contrast, a reminder is
sent using the cron mail identity and its SMTP setting.
Here is the mail identity that I use for cron (and for admin):
Id: cron
E-mail: <my e-mail address>
Users: "admin" and "cron" (selected from the Default tab at right)
Name: Simple Groupware System
SMTP: <my SMTP server>
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Paul.
Thomas
> For your account, yes, but not for cron. Thomas will correct me if I'm
> wrong, but I think that a notification, resulting from a change that
> you have made (e.g. creating a new record which has a notification
> set), is sent using your mail identitity. In contrast, a reminder is
> sent using the cron mail identity and its SMTP setting.
Yes, that's correct.
The manual section for activating reminders:
http://www.simple-groupware.de/cms/AdministrationConfiguration
bye
Thomas
Charles McCrea
So does the reminder get sent to the Participants?
Paul, when you said the following:
" - Notification: click the tabs at right, select the desired
recipients and click the << button to copy them to the left-hand list."
So cron is used in the mail identity to pick up the smtp server and send the reminder to the participant. The smtp server in the participant isn't used at all. Only the email address of the participant is used to send the reminder notice by cron using cron's smtp server.
No other setting is required to send the reminder.
Is the above true?
Sorry for asking so many questions about this...just want to get it straight.
Thanks very much for your time in helping me with this!
Charles.
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paulzarucki
> So does the reminder get sent to the Participants?
No, only to the people and groups specified in the notification field.
Now that I think back, I recall that this confused me as well.
My understanding is that the participants field is not involved in
notifications and reminders, they are completely separate. Once again,
I trust Thomas will correct me if I am wrong.
Regards,
Paul.
On Mar 1, 12:36 am, Charles McCrea <charles.sw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Paul and Thomas. I'll give this a try...
>
> So does the reminder get sent to the Participants?
>
> Paul, when you said the following:
>
> " - Notification: click the tabs at right, select the desired
> recipients and click the << button to copy them to the left-hand list."
>
> Do you mean participants?
>
> So cron is used in the mail identity to pick up the smtp server and send the
> reminder to the participant. The smtp server in the participant isn't used
> at all. Only the email address of the participant is used to send the
> reminder notice by cron using cron's smtp server.
>
> No other setting is required to send the reminder.
>
> Is the above true?
>
> Sorry for asking so many questions about this...just want to get it
> straight.
>
> Thanks very much for your time in helping me with this!
>
> Charles.
>
> > simple-groupwa...@googlegroups.com<simple-groupware%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
Charles McCrea
I think you've filled in the missing piece for me! I had been focusing on the participants field and not been filling in the notification field at all.
So by putting it in the notification field, I will be receiving two messages...one for the creation of the of the entry in the first place and then again for the reminder.
I would rather not send the notification...Our users will be editing each entry and if there is an email address in the notification field for the reminder, we will be getting many notification messages which we don't need to see. We only need to have a reminder of the calendar entry sent to us (set to 3 months in the future). Is there a way to have only an email sent as a reminder and not have all these notifications sent each time the entry is updated?
Thanks,
Charles.
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greavette
So in addition to my question about only sending a reminder and not
the notification...I would also like to know if it's possible to do
the following.
Is there a way to set the default for the reminder notification so the
user does not have to input it?
Can the notification box be moved to another tab. How would I do
this?
I know how to add the code to my module to remove the notification
box, but to add the notification box means I have to remove this code
so I'm not sure how to do the above?
Thanks!
Charles.
On Mar 1, 12:41 pm, Charles McCrea <charles.sw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Paul,
>
> I think you've filled in the missing piece for me! I had been focusing on
> the participants field and not been filling in the notification field at
> all.
>
> So by putting it in the notification field, I will be receiving two
> messages...one for the creation of the of the entry in the first place and
> then again for the reminder.
>
> I would rather not send the notification...Our users will be editing each
> entry and if there is an email address in the notification field for the
> reminder, we will be getting many notification messages which we don't need
> to see. We only need to have a reminder of the calendar entry sent to us
> (set to 3 months in the future). Is there a way to have only an email sent
> as a reminder and not have all these notifications sent each time the entry
> is updated?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Charles.
>
> > <simple-groupware%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com<simple-groupware%252Buns...@googlegroups.com>
greavette
Learning lots here. I think I've found how to enable the Notification
field, move it to another tab and give it a default value. Correct me
if I'm wrong Thomas...I don't want to give out misinformation to
anyone else reading these forums.
The notification field seems to be added by default to every module
which is why I don't see it in all the .xml modules. When I want to
remove the notification field, I would enter this in my module:
<field name="notification"/>
But to have the notification field displayed in your module so that I
may modify it, I needed to add this:
<field name="notification" displayname="Notification"
simple_type="multitext" multiple=", " hidden="true" noteditable="true"
simple_tab="responsible" simple_default="te...@gmail.com">
</field>
It would seem by adding a displayname to the 'field' tag, the field
can be displayed. Not adding a displayname makes it invisible.
So now I'm able to add the notification field, set a default in it,
make it not editable by anyone and move it to another tab.
I'm thinking of a way to manage all the notifications we will be
getting when anyone modifies an entry. We only use one email address
in our office, so I think I could setup a gmail account with a filter
on it. Notifications will be sent to our gmail address. On our gmail
account, emails from our office email address with a subject of
'notification' will be left on the gmail address. Emails from our
office's email address with a subject of 'reminder' will be forwarded
back to our offices email address. This way we only see the reminder
emails and not all the notification emails.
I would rather not use this method, so if there is a way to turn off
all the notifications, yet still use the notification box for
reminders, I would be greatly appreciative!
Thanks,
Charles.