Feature of the Month

March 2004

Scheduling Reminders (V7 & V8)

In addition to scheduling various programs to run, the Retail Pro Scheduler can also be used to display reminders at predetermined times.

To begin:  if the Scheduler is not already running, launch it by clicking on Tools>Scheduler.  You will know that the scheduler is running when you see the following icon in the system tray:

To access the scheduler, double-click on the icon.  You may be asked to log in.  If so, type in your username and password and click on OK.  You will then see the scheduler screen:

Note: You may already have tasks listed in the scheduler.  If this is the case, leave these alone!  The purpose of this feature is solely to use the scheduler to display reminders.  To do this, click on Edit>Add Task.  You will see the Task Properties window:

The ‘Action’ should already be set to Show Message.   Leave this alone.  In ‘Task Name’ type in a short description of the reminder.  In ‘Text’ type in the full text of the reminder, such as :REMEMBER TO RUN END OF MONTH REPORTS!  If you like, you can put a check mark next to ‘Remove After’ and define a number of seconds to display the message.  Otherwise, the message will be displayed until a user clicks on OK in themessage window.  Now click on the Schedule tab.  You will see the following screen:

On this screen, you will define the time at which the message will be displayed.  You have 4 options: Instance, Daily, Weekly and Monthly, each with different options.  Once you have defined these options, click on the OK button at the bottom of the window.  You will be returned to the main Scheduler window and you will see your task listed.  To test the task, right-click on the task and left-click on Run Now.  You’ll see a window similar to the following:

The window will disappear if you’ve checked ‘Remove after’.  Otherwise, click on OK to remove the message. 

At this point you can either add more tasks, or save your work.  To save your work, click on File>Save.  Lastly, you will want to make sure that the scheduler restarts whenever you reboot the computer, and you’ll want to make sure that the scheduler loads the correct list of tasks when it does restart.  To do this, click on Options>Run On Startup (make sure a check mark appears next to Run On Startup), then click on Options>Make Current Scheduler Default.  Then minimize the scheduler.

You can also have Retail Pro monitor whether or not the scheduler is running, and have it restart the scheduler if needed.  To do this in V7:  From the main menu, click on Preferences>Options>Scheduler Restart.  Put a check mark next to ‘Monitor for and restart scheduler if required’, then click on OK.  To do this in V8, click on Options>W/S Preferences.  On the left side of the screen, expand System and highlight Scheduler.  Put a check mark next to ‘Monitor for and restart scheduler if required’, then click on OK.

If you have any questions regarding the procedures outlined here, please contact BHD Technical Support at 916-368-1070.