Reminders

This page is for anyone who's ever thought "someone should really service that in a few months" and then forgotten, along with everyone else. A reminder is Shelf's way of making that thought into an email that actually arrives.

What a reminder is

A reminder is a one-off, scheduled note against a single asset: a name, a message, a date and time in the future, and the team members who should be told about it. When that moment arrives, Shelf emails everyone you assigned — the message you wrote, plus a link straight back to the asset.

That's the whole feature. It's not a maintenance-scheduling system, it's not recurring, and it doesn't do anything to the asset itself — no status change, no lock, nothing that stops the asset being booked or checked out in the meantime. It's a message with a delay on it, aimed at a specific piece of gear.

Typical uses:

• "Test and tag due — 14 March" on gear that needs a compliance check.
• "Insurance renewal for this lens — 1 June."
• "Follow up with the hire company about the return of this case."
• "Battery calibration due" on something with a rechargeable pack that degrades if it's never fully cycled.

Setting one

From an asset's Reminders tab, or from the Reminders page in the sidebar (which lists every reminder across the workspace, not just one asset's), choose Set reminder and fill in:

• A name — short and searchable. "Test and tag" beats "Reminder 3."
• A message — this is what lands in the email, so write it for whoever reads it in six months with no other context: what needs doing and why.
• A date and time. Must be in the future — Shelf won't let you schedule one for a moment that's already passed.
• At least one team member. Whoever you pick gets the email; you can assign more than one person if the job is genuinely shared.

What happens when it fires

At the scheduled moment, Shelf emails every assigned team member the message you wrote, with a link to the asset, and adds a note to the asset's own activity so the trigger is on the record — useful if someone opens the asset months later and wants to know whether that service ever actually got chased up.

If someone assigned to a reminder has since left the workspace, the email falls back to the workspace's owner rather than silently disappearing — so a reminder set for a freelancer who's moved on still reaches somebody.

What it doesn't do

Worth being clear about this, because the name invites more expectation than the feature delivers:

• It doesn't repeat. There's no "every 6 months" option. If the test-and -tag cycle really is every six months, the practical move is to set the next reminder the moment the current one fires and gets actioned — or, for gear that needs it constantly, put the interval in a custom field instead and track it that way.
• It doesn't block anything. An asset with an overdue reminder can still be booked, checked out, and handed around like nothing's due. A reminder is a nudge, not a hold.
• It's not a report. If you want to see everything coming due across the whole fleet at a glance, that's the Reminders page, not a filter on an existing report — reminders and reports are separate systems that both happen to read from the same assets.

Related

• Assets, kits & labels — the asset a reminder is set against
• Organising your gear — custom fields, for tracking dates and cycles reminders don't cover
• Reports — the standing numbers, as distinct from a one-off nudge
• Audits — checking gear is actually where it should be, separate from reminding someone about it