I really don’t even know what to classify this question… This year we had a new family join our troop. Dad must have access to emails that come in through the night and must have his notifications on. His issue is that TT sends out emails in the middle of the night for calendar events and such. He wants to know if there is a way to turn that off on his account so that emails only come through during business hours. We’ve have tried to tell him to turn on the “do not disturb” feature on his phone but it stops his email notifications. We’ve recommended that he use a different email for TT and manually retrieve email, but for some reason he can’t/won’t. Does anyone have any suggestions other than, “suck it up dude”?
Seriously, we are at the end of our sanity dealing particular situation. My coordinator has gone out of her way to give suggestions, but he is adamant that there should be a way to keep TT from emailing him in the middle of the night. Really I settle for for some technical jargon as to why emails must go out after midnight and why.
Hi - I have been in IT for 30 years from developer to now QA Manager. First - there will always be those few customers of a product that feel it will never behave as they expect it. And then there will always be those customers that think some changes they want are really small and won’t take a lot to modify the product, either because they have seen things like that in their industry(but on a different platform with different technology), or because it doesn’t seem like a big change on the front end. (in reality some small changes to functionality can take long and some changes to functionality that seem big can take a few changes) Then there are some “techies” that want all messages/txts/notifications to go to only one email.
There is no one product that does everything that everyone wants. Products are developed for functionality that will benefit the most customers unless it is custom written for a customer. Are there additional features that would be beneficial to you or someone else? Sure. Would they be used by the majority of customers - probably not - these are low reward functionalities that developers would put energy into something to benefit a few when they could take that same energy and code something that most would benefit from. (If customers of our product want something very specific, we will customize the coding only if they pay for it since that is the only way it is beneficial to us.) The parent needs to know that one application cannot satisfy everyone, bottom line.
Our company has scheduled batch jobs that run in the background every night at specific times for specific reasons such as dependency on other batch jobs finishing, processing various things - a few send out emails which seems like TT. Many times emails are sent out when there are not a lot of users on the system so the emailer does not impact performace of the users. That’s how some systems are written and not easily changed
I would tell him TT does not have that feature to change email notification times since it is not a commonly desired / required functionality and doubt TT would be making such a change anytime soon, if at all. Many times customers buy products and still have to alter their processing in some minor way, which is what happens when a customer buys an already existing application which was not developed exclusively for them. This probably needs to be done by this parent.
TT has a lot of good functionality. Is there some stuff I wish it did for me? Sure. But it doesn’t so I have to make adjustments on my end. It seems like this parent is not open to any accommodation on his end. You need to tell him there are options on his end which he can do for this one scenario because this is an “off the shelf” software package and was not custom written.
If TT were to put every low reward functionality into the TT application, the cost could go up tremendously with many features that only a few use and the majority do not. Tell him you don’t know what to say other than it was brought up to TT and doubt it will be developed since it is not a heavily requested feature and there is the option of using a separate email for TT emails. Ask him what the issue is of not using a separate email for TT. Probably only convenience on his end - my experience says he might be a “techie” and wants 1 central spot for all his notifications. Sorry for the long winded reply. Good Luck!
I use the “do not disturb” feature on my phone. LOVE IT! I still get all my messages in the morning without night-time disturbance. I love, also, the fact that the “do not disturb” feature has the ability to let through messages/calls from certain people…my aging parents and adult child. Nothing else disturbs me…I agree with TT rep response…cannot please all the people all the time. You’ve got yourself a high-maintenance parent. Sorry.
Great response from William. When I hear requests like this, an example I like to use is to say: “What you are asking is like asking Microsoft to change from using a * to using % as the symbol for multiplication.”
Exactly @WilliamBagdi! I need to get him to see that. So far my coordinator has tried to explain all that. I’m going to copy/paste several bits of your reply and send it on to her! Thanks so much!
Thanks so much!