Managing project information successfully means having good communication with other project members and staying on top of new and changing information. With eRoom, you can
Track the status of your eRooms on your My eRooms page.
Inform others of changes by sending email alerts.
Receive automatic notification when items in your eRooms are modified.
Make announcements (if you are a coordinator) on the front page of your eRoom.
Use the intercom to hold text conversations with other members present in your eRoom.
If your eRoom has access to them, hold online meetings in real time.
Follow unread marks
(
) that point you to new or changed information.
You can send an email alert message to other members, notifying them about a new or changed item, inviting them to join you in an intercom exchange, or just to contact them.
In an eRoom, click 
("send an
alert") in the eRoom control
bar.
The Choose Members page opens.
Pick the member(s) you want to alert and click "OK".
The Alert page opens and contains the text "eRoom alert" in the Subject box, and default text in the Message box, including a link to the page from which you are sending the alert.
Customize the subject and message if appropriate, and click "OK" to send the alert.
Note: From the intercom, you can send email
directly to a member by clicking their name in the list of members present.
In order to receive alerts in email, members need email addresses.
If you send an alert about a new or changed item, eRoom sends the email even if recipients have notification for the item turned off. Further, eRoom provides in the message a convenient link to the item's notification settings page so recipients can turn it on if they choose to do so.
Whenever a particular item changes, or anything in an eRoom changes, you can receive an email notice either instantly or overnight. You can choose to receive your email notification messages in HTML format (example) or in plain text format (example), depending on how this option is set in Community Settings.
In the map or in the item box, right-click an item's icon and pick "Notification" from the pop-up menu.
To change notification settings for an entire eRoom, go to the map and right-click the icon to the left of the eRoom's name. Pick "Notification" from the pop-up menu.
Or, select an item's check box and click "notification" in the command bar.
Or, in an email change report, click the link to change notification settings.
On the Notification page, choose whether you want to be notified about changes as they happen, just once a day, or not at all.
If you want notification email sent in HTML format, select that check box on the Notification page.
Click "OK" to put your settings into effect.
Note: If you turn
off notification for the entire eRoom, you can limit change reports to
the selected item.
Information in a nightly change report includes:
the eRoom or item name, the notification date, traffic light and status summary (for eRooms, but not for items), plus a link to where you can modify your notification settings for the eRoom or item being reported on
names of database entries that are waiting for your approval or that are overdue
your upcoming calendar events (this might also indicate your upcoming real-time meetings)
any other changes within the scope of the report (eRoom or item)
In general, the changes eRoom reports are when an item is created or edited. For some items, however, eRoom reports additional change information:
Polls -- eRoom reports when a poll closes, reopens, is reset, or when its display settings are changed. eRoom reports changes to votes as long as you can see poll results; if you can see results and votes, you can see voter names too.
Databases -- If more than 100 entries in a database change between notification reports, eRoom reports the number of entries that changed instead of their individual titles. Entries moved into an approval-process step are reported as "new" in that step. Detailed change information at the database-field level is only reported in database-specific notification reports (as well as database change logs).
Files -- eRoom reports new file versions when version tracking is turned on for a file.
When you enter an eRoom, you see unread marks () in the
eRoom map, and on each individual item. Click on a map icon to go directly
to a changed item, or use the "next unread" button (
) in the control bar to read through all new and changed items
in the eRoom.
If you don't plan to read an item, you can flag it as read. If you read an item and want a visual reminder to return to it, you can flag it as unread.
Right-click the item and pick "Mark Read" or "Mark Unread" from the pop-up menu.
Or, in the item box, select the check box
next to the item. Then, in the command bar, click 
or 
.
Note: If you click or when no items are selected in the item box, the command applies
to all items on the page.