Scheduled reminders

Turning them on

On the client’s People tab, open the actions beside a person and choose Schedule reminders. Schedules are off by default. Turn Automatic reminders on, check the address it will go to, then choose Every day, Every 2 days, Every week or a custom interval from 1 to 365 days, and give it a first date, a time and a time zone (London time or UTC). Email must be set up first, and the switch stays locked until it is.

What a reminder contains

One email, listing only the requests in active packs that are still awaiting that person’s reply. Requests you are already checking are left out. If nothing is awaiting a reply, nothing is sent and the schedule waits for the next time. Each reminder carries a 30-day link to those requests.

Reminders go to the people you asked. To be told when one of them replies or uploads, turn on notifications for yourself.

When they stop

• When nothing assigned to that person is unfinished, the schedule ends itself.
• When the client is no longer active.
• When you turn the switch off, or withdraw the person’s link.
• They never send for draft or completed packs.

Timing

London schedules follow British Summer Time. If the app was off when a reminder was due, at most one reminder is considered when it comes back and the next time moves into the future; you never send a backlog. Delivery failures are shown against the schedule and retried at the next scheduled time.

To see which requests are late before you chase, give them a needed-by date: see Due dates.

Reminders tied to a date

Under Settings, then Branding & defaults, an admin can switch on Needed-by reminders. From then on, three days before any request’s needed-by date and again on the day, each person with requests still awaiting their reply gets one email about what is due, with a link straight to it. A request that is answered or complete is not chased, and nobody is told twice about the same day. It sits alongside the every-few-days schedule above; a person can have both.

Repeating a pack

Monthly bookkeeping, a quarterly site check, a club’s yearly renewals: a pack that comes round again can repeat by itself. Choose Repeat this pack under Pack options, say how often (every month, quarter or year) and on which day of the month, and give the next one its title. {period} becomes the month, quarter or year just ended, and {month}, {year}, {quarter} and {date} work too. Decide whether the same people stay assigned, then Start repeating.

On the day, the newest pack in the chain is rolled forward: every request back to awaiting, needed-by dates moved on by a period, and the new pack left as a draft. Nothing goes out until you send it: open the draft and press Send pack, which emails everyone assigned and makes the pack active. A pack that repeats says so under its title, with the date the next one is due, and Stop repeating ends it.

Read next