The Time of Day tab allows you to schedule when you would like your alerts to run. By default the “Alert is always enabled,” so it’s running 24x7. Or you can choose when you want the alert to run. So I will click on Specify time of day, then click the Add Schedule button.
In the pop-up dialogue, you can add a name to your schedule, but it’s not mandatory. Next, choose whether to include or exclude blocks of time, and choose the frequency; either Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
You can add multiple time periods to the same schedule as long as the time periods are all of the same type. In other words, the time periods would all have to be inclusions or they would all have to be exclusions. And they would all have to running on the same frequency, either daily, weekly, or monthly. If they aren’t, then you would need to add the time periods in separate schedules.
For instance, suppose I need my alert to run only during regular business hours excluding lunch time, and every Thursday night from 7:00 to 10:00 PM, but never on New Year’s Day. Let’s start with my regular business hours. So I’ll choose to enable the alert Daily… but only during business days… from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM… Now I need to exclude lunch time. I can’t choose to disable a block of time in the same schedule, so there are two ways to handle my lunchtime exclusion. I can either split my business day into two time blocks in my current schedule, or I could create a second schedule and choose to disable the alert only during lunchtime. I’m going to split my work day, so I’ll schedule my first time block from 8:00 AM to noon. And add a second time period from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Now for this particular schedule, it would be just as easy to have this alert run only during off business hours. I would just choose disable during this time period rather than enable. But I want enable, so I’ll click Add Schedule.
Now I need to add my Thursday nights, so I’ll Add a new schedule. This will also be an enable time block, but my frequency will now be weekly… every Thursday only, from 7:00 to 10:00 PM. And I’ll go ahead and name this schedule Thursday nights. And click Add Schedule.
And now to exclude New Year’s. So Add Schedule again. I’ll call this schedule “Exclude New Year’s.” Now this time I’m going to DISable during the time period. And I’ll set the frequency to monthly. I’ll choose January, the first day of the month, and this will be an all-day event.
Now before I click Add Schedule, notice you can also choose to have your schedules start or end on particular dates and times.
Now I can see all my schedules. If I hover over the preview icon, I can see the details of what times blocks the schedule covers. And of course I can edit, copy, or delete the schedules. So the time of day tab gives you tremendous control over scheduling your alerts.
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