It would be good to have changes to notifications - I’m thinking specifically of messages to install Presets and warnings about backups.
It’s important that users are shown the option of improving their workflow by installing presets. However, if they pass on it, showing it to them again (and again) becomes irritating. IMO the only reason to show it to them (if they have decided not to install) is if the Preset has been updated / improved.
The warnings for backups are important but currently they’re appearing every time Metagrid is activated. It would be good if the system can check the date on the backup file and only show the message if the date falls outside the backup frequency.
I am getting notifications on my ipad for Grid Sync every dang time I load Metagrid Pro and cannot figure out how to turn it off. I’m not sure if this is the reason, but I installed Metagrid on my Mac a while back to test it and ended up uninstalling it not long after as I saw no benefit.
As for the backup notification, I turned off auto-backups altogether so I didn’t have to deal with the constant pop-ups.
I’m still getting notifications about presets and closing / restarting MG Pro seems to start the notifications as well. Apologies if I’ve missed it, but I can’t see any facilities to turn notifications on or off.
David - the Backup Assistant should work as follows:
when the Frequency of iCloud Drive Scheduled Backup is set to Never - you should never see the backup notifications
when you select any other option, the Backup Assistant should fire the next launch and then when you do the scheduled backup, the next notification should trigger after the period you have set - Every 3 Day, Every Week etc.
if you have selected Skip for Today, the backup notification will be displayed the next day regardless of the selected option and will appear every day until you perform the backup.
I’ve only done a brief test - my backup setting is currently every five days. I would normally have it set to daily but I’m trying to find a way round these messages.
On startup I had the Backup Assistant appear and then went to check the settings. I closed MG Pro, reopened it and the message is now for a preset for Safari (as that’s currently the front window on OSX). So, basically, that took priority over the Backup Assistant reappearing. I don’t know if that’s how you want it, or not.
A question (as I’m a bit confused): Is the Backup really automated? It says it is (“Metagrid Pro autosaves your data”), but I’m still being asked if I want to do a backup. Usually with automated backups, the backups happen without any further user input.
I think the current approach is quite intrusive - if it’s not “Never” there will be a reminder every time you load MG Pro. My guess is that will lead to people selecting “Never” most of the time - a shame because backups are necessary - as we all inevitably learn. Is there no way that MG Pro can read the date of backups at startup and if the today’s date is outside the period the user has specified, suggest that a backup is now overdue? Or (better still) just do the backup without a warning when MG Pro starts. However, what shouldn’t then happen is another backup done that same day as the most recent backup will now be within the specified period.
We have the following notifications on Dashboard load:
What’s New
Presets
Backup Assistant
That’s listed in the order of “priority”. So basically it works as follows:
When the Dashboard is displayed:
Step 1. when you update MGP to a new version - the What’s New screen is displayed, when you close it
Step 2. the new / existing preset handling kicks off - so if you have a Safari in front and you don’t have a profile for Safari in MGP, you should see the preset notification. Same if there are some new or updated presets available.
Step 3. Then the Backup Assistant it is the time for the backup.
Now, we can’t do the backup in the background - unfortunately in iOS data serialization/deserialization and creating objects in CoreData is very taxing / memory intensive and some parts of the process should be performed on the main thread so we can’t just do it in the background enabling the user to work and make this process “invisible” - we would really love to have this. But it is not possible I am afraid.
So if you perform the scheduled backup, MGP will automatically save the timestamp and will not bother you again with scheduled backup notifications until the next scheduled backup is due. However, if you skip it, MGP will bug you the next day.
I really wish we could make this process more transparent/invisible for the user - but it is not possible I am afraid.
In which case my suggestion would be to give users the option to turn off all Preset and Backup Assistant notifications, but have them activated to start with. That way those that do turn them off will obviously be doing so because they no longer want to see them.