Alarms
Configuring notifications
Unless your ISP offers you a flat rate, you are likely to be interested in being notified when certain traffic or time limits are reached. CommTraffic can take care of that. Its alert system will notify you when you are about to exceed the limit that you have set.
To set a limit, select Alarms in the View pane.
Click New and a new alarm setup window will appear. Fill out the Alarm name field and select the provider from the drop-down menu. If you want the alarm to be applied to all your providers, or if you don't know exactly which provider to select, select Any in the Provider field.
The next page will list available limit types:
Any limit is valid within a certain period of time. The next screen will let you select a validity period for the limit (day, week, month), as well as its starting point:
Just like in the expense creation wizard, you can see the Reset the limit automatically upon expiration box here. If this box is checked, CommTraffic will set a new limit once the previous one has expired. This "sliding" limit is convenient when you want to be notified about exceeding the limit on a monthly basis.
Go to the next page to specify the limit to be watched as well as the Threshold, upon reaching which, the user will be notified by CommTraffic. Initial Value is an optional field that allows you to enter the traffic volume, time or money that has already been spent as of the moment specified as the starting point.
If your limit is based on the connection cost, the list of available tariffs will be displayed amongst other things on this page. This allows you to select the tariff to be used for calculating your Internet connection costs:
Once the alarm has been triggered, CommTraffic will alert you by sending a user-defined message, playing back a sound file, notifying a Windows NT domain user, or executing a specified command. You can select one or several notification methods on the final page of the wizard:
Once you have closed the wizard, the new alarm will appear on the list. Expired alarms will be displayed in red.
Like expenses, alarms can also be displayed on the Monitor page, on the Floating Monitor, or the Tray Tool Tip window: You just need to configure these windows shown below:
