Not sure if this is a macro question or not, I have a database for appointments, these appointments are out in the field and the crew is dispatched to the appointment, I would like a message box to appear if the crew is not dispatched before a preset time, say 5 minute prior to the pickup

there are approximately 5 appointments per hour during a 10+ hour day

being that several people view/access this database, I would also like the warning to close automatically after a set time, say 5 minutes

thanks for any help/advice

You may want to consider buying a pager service. You can use Access with pagers. Another thing that may be risky, although it works, is to run a continuous timer in your database to cover this task.

You may want to consider buying a pager service. You can use Access with pagers. Another thing that may be risky, although it works, is to run a continuous timer in your database to cover this task.

we already use verizon field force (text messaging to phones for business, as long as we use their web page it's suppose to be an all in one price, like unlimited texting

this is for a non-emergency ambulance service, running 8-10 trucks from 7am to approx 7pm and 2 trucks from 7p-7a 6 days a week, so a 24 hour timer wouldn't cause any problems

What I currently do is run a timer from the start of the day until the end of the day in one of my programs. It continually checks for the next task time and sends a pager message out to the user's pager 5 minutes before a task time. You could do something like that. I personally don't like code running like that all day long, but it does work.