Short Introduction

The main purpose of the CERN Alerter application is to provide one-way messaging system for distributing important CERN information to the users. Information is distributed in form of special RSS feeds and can be targeted to a specific set of users/machines. Those feeds are called CERN obligatory feeds and their subscription is enforced by the administrator. In addition to that some functionality for handling other (normal) RSS feeds has been provided. This allows user to subscribe to any RSS feed and use CERN Alerter notification mechanism, as a way of informing the user about new coming items.

CERNAlerter functionality

• CERNAlerter Menu
  • Help button - opens the help (this) page
  • About button - opens the CERNAlerter about dialog
  • Refresh button - searches for new RSS feeds
  • History button - opens the obligatory CERN feed in a new browser. The user can see all CERN messages.
  • Preferences button - opens the CERNAlerter configuration window
  • Quit button - stops CERNAlerter application

• CERNAlerter About Box:
  
  
  

• CERNAlerter Balloon Warning:
  • If specific feed cannot be read then warning balloon message is shown. This can be due to temporary feed unavailability, wrong formatted feed, connection problems...
  • All balloon warnings close automatically after 10 seconds

• CERNAlerter balloon message
  • All balloon messages have title (in this example title is 'test'). It is configured on feed creation.
  • All balloon messages have short description
  • All balloon messages close automatically after 30 seconds. This does not mark the message as read.
  • All balloon messages have close button. This does not mark the message as read.
  • All balloon messages have 'Yes, View' button. This marks the current message as read and opens the RSS URL in a browser. The message will not pop up again.
  • All balloon messages have 'Ignore' button. This marks the current message as read. It will not pop up again.
  • All balloon messages have 'Ignore All' button. This marks all messages as read. They will not pop up again.

• CERNAlerter CERN balloon message
  • CERN balloon messages are marked with a CERN logo.
  • Same rules as for regular balloon messages apply.

• CERNAlerter Preferences
  • Save button - saves the current configuration. Remember that if you do not press 'Save' button your changes will not be saved.
  • Cancel button - discard all changes.

• CERNAlerter Preferences Add New Feed
  • In order to add new feed you have to fill feed name, feed URL and press 'Add' button.

• CERNAlerter Preferences Inaccessible Feed
  • Feed validation on new feed add and feed URL change is done. If the feed is not accessible a warning is shown. However, you can still save the configuration

• CERNAlerter Preferences Edit Feed
  • Feed properties can be edited by clicking on the desired feed's property.

• CERNAlerter Preferences Delete Feed
  • Feeds can be deleted by selecting the desired feed and pressing 'Delete' button.

• CERNAlerter Preferences Base Configuration
  • In Base Configuration tab CERN specific information can be configured Username and hostname are automatically get by the application (the current user and host are used). They are important for selecting the CERN specific messages. Often the current user differs from the actual LDAP user and CERN Feeds use the LDAP user.