NewsGator Inbox – Options (Update Subscriptions)

The next tool that we will look at from the NewsGator Inbox Options is the Updating Subscriptions Options. The NewsGator team has jammed a lot of customization options into this tool as well.

From the main options window, under the Update Subscriptions heading, you can set the NewsGator Inbox to run the update automatically or if you prefer you can run it manually instead. If you choose to have it update automatically you can set the timing for how often it will update. This is done in number of minutes up to 9999. Since I usually only check mine every couple of hours, I reset it to 120 minutes. Once you have set it all you have to do is hit OK and it will be locked in.

Now if we dive a little deeper into the tool, we find that by clicking on “Update Options” launches a new window with several additional options to further customize the update function. The first option allows you to set how many minutes you want it to wait after you start outlook before it will run the update. I found this option particularly useful on my work computer because I could set it to update after I have already gotten my day underway. It also keeps the update function out of the way of the normal Outlook tasks, like downloading emails from the server or updating the calendar, until a later time. Outlook takes so long to load that adding one more thing to update at startup just drags it down even more.

The next option is one that updates the subscriptions automatically when Outlook is offline. I did not find very useful (that does not mean that it is not useful, it just did not enhance my experience with the tool) because I am typically online with Outlook all day. The next option tells the tool to only find and return posts that are unread. If you have read a post that previously exists it will not bring back that post again. This is somewhat misleading because it does not mean that it will bring in another copy of a posting that you have not read yet, just that it will not look at any posts within the subscription feed that you have already marked as read. You can also set the update to ignore the post categories. What this will do is strip out the categories that the feed has assigned to the post. This means that if you use the Outlook functionality to sort by categories then it will not be available. It will not change where and what folders your posts are delivered into.

The next couple of options are purely visual. The first one puts an Icon in your system tray (the bottom left area of you screen or the far right side of your start bar). This is an icon that appears only when the Subscription Update is running. It will disappear as soon as the update completes. The second option, which will appear in the same area of the screen, is a bubble that will pop up to tell you how many new posts were just downloaded. These options are followed by the option to have a dialog box open when the update is running. This provides a listing of each of the feeds that are being updated. You can further customize this dialog box to scroll through the feeds that are being updated. This is handy if you have numerous feeds that are being updated which is more then can fit in the little dialog box. The last option available in this window pertains to NNTP Newsgroups. The option allows you to set the total number of post to download from the newsgroups. This can be useful because, as we discussed in the post NewsGator Inbox Options – Add Subscriptions (Vol.3), newsgroups are like forums so there can be a high volume of posts.

Next time I will do an update of previous posts about Folders and the NewsPage since these can be accessed through the options window.