Q: I just signed in to the web-based application. Now what do I do?

A: The first thing to do is examine the client default settings and configure your personal Interests, Triggers, and delivery option Settings, by opening the client application as previously described.

Interests are predefined categories that serve as a broad filtering mechanism to the types of local and/or personal content you're interested in receiving.

Triggers are your personal keywords or phrases that will deliver alerts to you (regardless of the Interests you selected), when an exact match to them is found in an article headline or story

Various delivery options (found under Settings), control how new incoming alerts will be delivered to you. These can include popup alerts, an alert ticker, a daily e-mail summary digest and/or cell phone delivery. Note that there are checkbox email settings to have breaking alerts sent to you immediately.

Q: How do I interact with the web-based client application?

A: The main window to the client application is displayed by left-clicking with your mouse on the BayNews9 system tray icon (lower right area in your desktop toolbar). The main client window will open and display a number of named buttons both vertically and horizontally, which are activated by selecting each to present their respective views within the client window.

The client application menu is accessed by right-clicking with your mouse on the system tray icon (lower right area in your desktop toolbar). The menu provides access to a number of controls for the client application. Please refer to the online documentation for more information regarding client controls via the Application Menu.

Q: How do I set up the Categories I am interested in receiving alerts from?

A: Open the client application window as previously described. Click the Interests button and then click the Edit Interests button. You can now check or uncheck those Categories you want or don't want to receive alerts in respectively. Note that some Categories may present you with sub-categories (an example being different county names). In that case, you can check (or uncheck) as many sub-categories you decide you want to receive articles from.

Also note that some Categories cannot be turned off (such as Breaking News or Breaking Weather). The checkbox for these appears in light red shading to indicate they are locked and clicking on them will produce a small dialog box indicating this category cannot be unselected. Please refer to the online documentation for more information regarding Interests.

Q: How do I enter Trigger words to get alerts on certain words or phrases that specifically matter to me?

A: Open the client application window as previously described. Click the Triggers button. Click on the Edit Triggers button. This will now allow you to enter up to 20 of your own words or phrases into the fields provided.

After your Triggers are entered, select the "Save Changes" button to update your active Triggers list. Please refer to the online documentation for more information regarding Triggers.

Q: When I attempt to enter certain words as a Trigger, I get a warning dialog box stating "You must remove this particular word from your list of Triggers before it can be saved"

A: This is normal behavior. Some words are disallowed from use as Triggers because they may generate too many alerts due to their common usage in all news stories. Words like "the", "or", "for", etc., fit this category. Other words may generate only warnings, and as such, can remain in the active Trigger list after you decide they are acceptable. For more information with regard to disallowed Trigger words, please refer to Stop and Warning Words in the online documentation.

Q: I'm running anti-virus / anti-popup / firewall software that appears to prevent any alerts from being displayed. What do I need to do?

A: The most common cause of not receiving alerts initially is that your computer's firewall may be blocking the connection between the client application and the BayNews9 servers. At the time of installation, your firewall software probably asked you for explicit permission to allow this application to be installed. If you accidentally denied that permission, the software did not install and there will be no connection. Consult the help section of whatever firewall application you use to find out how to "allow" the BayNews9 application to make a connection if you initially blocked it.

Many anti-virus programs and even some browsers contain built-in suppression of popups, ads, and / or images. Since the installed BayNews9 application runs as a native program on your computer, popup alerts will not be prevented from occurring.

For example, Norton Internet Security™ may require you to disable Ad Blocking, but not Popup Windows, as shown below.

For your particular software, experiment with similar configuration schemes beginning with the most conservative settings and reattempting to view your alerts between changes.

Q: When I open the main client window and the Alerts window is displayed, some alert headlines are in bold and others are not. Some headlines also appear as italicized text and some may even have a red background. What does all this mean?

A: All yet-to-be-viewed alerts display in bold text. All previously viewed alerts will display as un-bolded text, to help you quickly identify whether you've already read them or not.

Headlines in italicized text headlines denote articles that have been reissued for whatever reason from their original broadcast. If an alert was reissued, previously read (un-bolded) headlines will re-bold and re-sort according to their newly published date and time.

IMPORTANT: If a headline appears with a red background, this indicates it is a breaking alert.

Q: When I receive a popup alert, it is in an area on my screen that covers important desktop icons, an undesirable part of my browser, etc., making it somewhat annoying. Is there any way I can move it to another location on my screen where it won't block my view of anything?

A: Any type of window within the Baynews9 system can be custom located to any area of your screen. That includes the popup alert, the temperature pill, the alert ticker, the search bar, even the main client application window itself.

For the popup alert, place your cursor any where over the top bar of an alert and the arrow will change to a hand icon. You can then left click/hold the mouse key down to "drag" the alert where you want it to permanently display for all subsequent alerts.

A similar paradigm is employed for the client application window. The temperature pill, alert ticker and search bar can be moved by left clicking/holding the far left hand area of their respective displays, then dragging them to where you want them to appear on your screen.

Q: Sometimes when I receive a popup alert, I see one or more words highlighted in yellow. What does this mean?

A: Words that appear in a subject header and match your personally-specified Trigger words or phrases will highlight in yellow as a visual indicator they caused the alert to be delivered.