It’s an interesting development and nice to have feature in Coda.
I am not aware of the possibility to get this feature working out of the box, neither on how to build this.
Though others might be able to find a way around it, I don’t want to give false hope too!
What comes to mind as a half backed solution (as the message will still be send, but not visible) is that employees should switch on “Do Not Disturb” on their mobile devices not to get messages from the Coda app, during their time off.
notifications (emails) are actions which require a button or an automation.
in both you can add a filter
inside the filter you compare the present via Now() with the max time limit and you simple disable the button or automation based on this rule
it means you need to have per worker a table with this end time (and the doc should be set to local timezone).
Your suggestion regarding employees switching on “Do Not Disturb” makes a lot of sense. It’s how things have tended to play out in most cases.
At the same time, it speaks to one of the core questions being asked here in Aus, and no doubt many other countries. That being, in a time of instantaneous communication, who should be burdened with the responsibility to “disconnect” in the employee/employer relationship?
In our small business, we are very clear that the times an employer can contact and employee should be regulated. Importantly, the burden for managing the communication should fall on the employer as they are the party who already has the balance of power.
I have taken the chat a little away from my original post. I find this stuff fascinating!
I’ve spend many hours working away in Coda with one half of my screen taken up by a Doc and the other with one (or more) of your blog posts.
Come to think of it, the same can be said of the many replies left by @Jean_Pierre_Traets in response to questions in this community. Your responses have been a source of knowledge and learning (and often great relief!).
Thank you both!
@Christiaan_Huizer , to your response, I think I can see where your answer will apply.
Does your response also apply to instances where a person is added to a Person column?
In this instance, if a person is added AND nofitication settings for that column are turned on, Coda will immediately generate a notification within Coda itself. Then, if after 20 minutes the person has not viewed the internal notification 20 mins later, Coda sends the person a notification via email.
There are a number of other instances where a person may be notified via the in-built Coda notification system i.e. when they are @ mentioned, or a comment thread they are involved gets a reply.
It’s mostly these instances I’m referring to in my original question.
Thanks for the feedback on my blogs, I only see numbers but rarely hear people about it
instead of the notification via the column in a people column, you can also disable this one and create an automation that executes the notification. In that automation you can set a condition via the step 2 (if – which is confusing) like Now() > 08:00 AND Now() < 17h00
It is a bit of extra work, but it can be done,
cheers, christiaan
once before 08 or after 17h there is no action taken
it also means that notification get lost and people should understand that.
so an alternative is to bring these message in a helper table and send them out first thing in the morning. Be careful in this scenario, since it implies you start your working day with info from yesterday.
Very interesting.
Do you know of any tutorials/trainings/community threads that explore the design of a helper table used to manage notifications?
With my current capacity to create within Coda, I think i could muddle my way through to something with basic functionality. However, I still have so much more to learn.
of course you have to change the times and you have to realize that this is just getting you started.
you have to deal with non working days (regular like weekends), national holidays, holidays, you have working schedules that can vary person to person and so on.
I have done a great deal of PTO work and the set up to makes that work well is time consuming.
Though others might be able to find a way around it, I don’t want to give false hope too!
