Alerts in your Assistant Feed

Alerts keep you updated on your work habits and provide tips and suggestions to help steer your workday, so you can spend the most time on the things you care about. Alerts show up as notifications on your Mac or Windows desktop computer. Most Alerts, after appearing as notifications, are viewable on the Assistant in the feed or as pinned Alerts. 

A few Alerts are featured below; RescueTime is actively working on new types of Alerts and improving how they respond to you.

Feed Alerts

Feed Alerts appear in the RescueTime Assistant feed and desktop notifications. Each feed Alert has a different lifecycle, and will eventually expire. 

• The Morning Briefing Alert* displays at the start of your workday with a quick overview of what your workday looks like your scheduled meetings and Focus Sessions based on your connected calendar, and your focus opportunities (Focus Zones) - the best time for you to focus. It will also indicate how feasible it is for you to meet your Focus Work goal, considering how much time you have available.  

• The Focus Work Goal Met Alert lets you know when you've accomplished your Focus Work goal for the day. You can learn more about Focus Work goal here. 

• The Distraction Alert* appears when you have shifted too frequently to Personal Activities and Communication (i.e. 12 or more shifts to Communication and Personal Activities). A shift is when you switch from one productivity scoring to another (i.e. Focus Work to Personal Activities). You can learn more about shifts here.

• The Balance Alert displays when you work outside of your work hours based on your work schedule. This can appear during breaks or after work hours (recharge time).

• The End of Day Report Alert gives you a brief rundown of your computer activities that day, including how much time you've spent on Focus Work, how often you've shifted to Personal Activities and Communication, and your top activities in Focus Work and Personal Activities. This review typically occurs at the end of your workday, however, you can change this in your Account Settings > Work Schedule page under "Delivery time of daily report."

• The Weekly Review Report displays your total work for the week with a breakdown of your total work logged, the best time to focus, Focus Work, distractions, and meetings. 

Pinned Alerts

Pinned Alerts appear in the RescueTime Assistant as a yellow box beneath the Focus Work goal bar and above the Alert feed. Pinned Alerts generally expire after a few hours.

• The Focus Zone Alert* appears as a pinned Alert when you've entered a 1 hour or greater block of time in your available work time void of meetings. It's an ideal time to do Focus Work. You can click on the "Start a Focus Session" button to get the important things done on your computer. Learn more about Focus Zones here. 

• The Join Meeting Alert* appears as a pinned Alert when you have a scheduled meeting in your connected calendar. This alert will show up a few minutes before your scheduled meeting time. If you have a Zoom or Google Meet link in your calendar event, then you'll see a "Join meeting" button that you can click on to directly join your meeting. Learn more about meetings here.

• The Vacation Mode Alert* appears when RescueTime detects a vacation indicator in the title of the calendar event of a connected calendar. During this time most of your alerts and notifications will be silenced on the Assistant. Learn more about vacation mode here. 

* RescueTime Premium features only