Alerts and Notifications

JXCirrus Diary will let you know if any of the diary entries need urgent attention. This could be because a task is over its due date, or you are missing an appointment. There are also several ways that it will notify you.

The ways of notifying you:

The warning dialogs and system tray icons can be controlled using Preferences.

Types of alerts

This table shows all of the different things that the system will alert you about:

Alert
What it means
Alert Colour
Database error
This is shown if your Database Schema has an error, a Script you wrote has an error, or your database has failed its integrity check.
Red
Item overdue
If we have already passed the due date for a task, or an appointment is due to start now (and you have not marked it as complete or started a session on it). Red
Clashing plans
If you have made a plan that is the same time as another plan, or you have 2 appointments that overlap.
Red
Item urgent
If there is not enough available time to finish a task, even if you started it right now. The system is a bit clever about this... If it is currently 10:30am, and you have a 1 hour job to finish before 12:00, but you have a 1 hour meeting at 11:00, then it will give a warning about the task. It also takes available time into account (for example if a 4 hour task is due at 9:00 on Monday and it is now 5:00 on Friday, and you don't work on weekends). Orange
Item delayed
The automatic task planning can't get the task to finish by its due date. Light Yellow
Reminder
When you are within the reminder time (which can be set in preferences) before an appointment.
Orange
Should start now.
If you have manually planned to work on something, but aren't working on it right now. Light Yellow
Over-spent time
If you have already spent more time on the task than was allowed.   An example of this is when you have spent 90 minutes on a 60 minute task.   NOTE: This warning only appears for a task that is Active. Orange
May over spend
If the time spent on a task looks like it might go over the allowed time.   An example of this is when you have spent 45 minutes already, have 30 minutes, and only allowed 1 hour.   You can make this go away by increasing the duration of the task.   NOTE: This warning only appears for a task that is Active. Light Yellow

Controlling Alerts

You can control the alerts by going to the Preferences page, and clicking on the tab marked "Notifications".

All of the different types of alerts are shown, and you can decide what the system will do to tell you.    To change what the system does, change the value in the drop-down box next to that alert type.

Here are the options:

Response
Meaning
Show an alert dialog.
This will pop up a dialog that will try and grab focus off whatever else you are doing.   NOTE: This won't happen if you are currently using this program.   It will only happen if you are using another application on your desktop.
Pop up a warning message.
This will pop up a balloon message near the system tray.   On MacOS, it will also put a message in the notification centre.   On iOS, it will show a popup notification.
Set the badge icon number.
(MacOS and iOS only) The badge icon will show the number of problems.
Show in the notification list.
A warning will be shown in the warnings list on the main application screen.
Don't show a warning.
None of the above will happen.  However, there are a couple of things (listed below) that always happen.

On MacOS and iOS, the next notification (for overdue tasks or appointments) will show even if the app is closed.   NOTE: Due to restrictions on the notification centre, only the first notification will appear - In other words, when you get a notification, it is best to start up the app.

You can't keep the system completely quiet, though.   The following this will happen for all alerts:

System Tray Icon

One last setting has to do with the system tray - You can choose whether the application icon is shown on the system tray (also called the notification area on some systems - the right hand-side of the taskbar, next to the clock for Windows, and the top right of the menu-bar on Mac).   Some systems don't have a system tray (iOS and some Linux systems), so in those cases, this will have no effect.   Un-ticking this option means that the system will NOT show the icon in the system tray.