Gemini provides a rich interface for staying on top of what matters. Whether that is by creating the workspaces to focus on those key items, or whether it be the notifications you receive by email, there is usually a scenario to meet people’s needs. This post is about the Email Notification options within Gemini and to batch, or not to batch.
Firstly, let’s define a couple of things. There are three types of notification which Gemini will send out. These are:
- Creator / Reporter / Resource alerts
- Follower Notification
- Workspace Alerts
Creator / Reporter / Resource
alerts will happen automatically, and are dependent on this option being enabled. This is a global level change.
This option will send the Creator or Resource(s) an email using the:
When Created, When Resourced, When Updated email templates. Like all templates, these can be customised within Gemini, either globally, or per project.
Follower Alerts
These alerts are for any visible ticket/item. They allow any user, with permission to the item, to follow the item. That is, they will get an alert when things change in the ticket/item.
These are controlled individually, on a per ticket basis, and can actually include non Gemini users. Simply add the email address into the followers screen.
There is also a short cut on the right hand tool bar which will toggle the following of the email. The middle flag/tag icon has the cross when the ticket is being followed.
This is the usual way for standard users to follow, because they should not have access to the list of people watching a ticket. However, this is a business call to make.
Followers will receive the Followers alert template type.
Workspace Alerts
The last type is probably the most powerful. Workspaces allow you to filter across project and across project template and view whatever you want. So Workspaces really do you let you organize your data in a way that is truly meaningful to you. You will get the workspace badge count in Gemini when something is updated/created/commented on a ticket/item which matches the filter setup. So, you don’t really need lots of emails, merely and eye on your workspace bar! However, if you’re not regularly in Gemini, then an email prompting you that something has happened, by definition, to the data which is most important to you.
You can request alerts based on three events:
- Created,
- Updated, and
- Commented
These alerts are sent using the all summarised using the Workspace Alerts template, again customisable by Project, or Global.
It is possible to see a complete list of the workspaces to which you are subscribed to notifications from your profile and the Alerts tab, shown below:
To batch or not to batch
Gemini will send emails, for the most part, when the Email Notification Engine runs. This is configured in the Customise | Apps | Timer section of Gemini. You can schedule how frequently you would like to receive notifications from here. This is global, not per user. If you assume one change is made every 1 minute if you set this value to 60, then you will get 60 emails once per hour with all the change notifications. If you set 30, then you’ll get 2 batches of 30 emails per hour. etc. However, you could be waiting up to 59 / 29 minutes respectively, for any change to be notified, so it is a trade off between getting distracted by the noise of notifications, or the bulk dump.
To help with this, Countersoft recommend that you set the engine to 5 minutes. This is not an unreasonable time to wait for a notification, and you can also keep an eye on the workspace list, and you will see the badge count increment before any email is sent. Also, if a change is made to an issue over the duration of the 5 minutes, you will get one email summarising all those changes, rather than 5 emails with 1 change every minute.
Furthermore, if 5 items are updated, you will get 5 emails and you may find this too many. You can request Gemini to send emails in batches. This will send the summary of the workspace changes, rather than an email per item. However, there are pros and cons (as always!) to this approach. If you get a batch of emails, then the subject line is very generic and importantly YOU CANNOT REPLY to the batched email, and expect Gemini to handle it (it will create a new ticket). If the email alerts you to 5 changes in 3 tickets, which ticket should the email reply be attached to? You can only reply to an individual alert. This choice is per user, so you can decide what works best for you, and your colleagues/customers can decide what works for them. In fact, workspace notifications are per workspace per user. So maybe one workspace you receive a summary for, and yet another you get the individual alerts so you can reply .
The above shows the options for the workspace which is set in the workspace configuration, and below for the follower alerts, set in the user profile
You will also notice the option to not get alerts for changes you make yourself. So if you don’t want a confirmation, probably best to uncheck this, and then you won’t get told of what you have done.
Let us know your comments if you have any questions on the email notification settings for Countersoft’s Gemini.
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