The application refreshes its directory of web parts when the Reminder Service starts and at the time specified here (24hr notation). This is a potentially expensive operation, especially if you have a large site - so it is best to schedule this to happen at a time of the day when your SharePoint server is under less load.

Under normal operation the Reminder Web Parts will notify the Reminder Service when updates take place. However if you perform an operation such as a database restore you will either have to restart the Reminder Service or select "Refresh Now".

Note - If you plan to restore a SharePoint site from a backup it is recommended that you stop the Reminder Service, perform the restore operation and then restart the Reminder Service which will initiate a directory refresh when it starts up

Logging

You change change the level of information that is output to the log files and the event log and the number of days log files are kept on disk until they are deleted.

Typically you would want the keep the logging level at High whilst you are setting the software up and then reduce it to Medium so you will still get errors in the event logs. If you want to reduce event log messages to a minimum you can choose Low.

Run Diagnostics

This runs a series of tests to verify your SharePoint configuration, test Reminder has the required permissions for access and check your email infrastructure are setup correctly.

Check Every Warning Threshold

A warning is displayed on the web part if the 'Check Every' time is set to less than this threshold.

Setting a low 'Check Every' time can impact performance - for example if you have 10 web parts and each is set to "Check Every 1 Minute" then the service is starting an operation every 6 seconds. Reducing this to just 5 minutes will reduce he load imposed by SharePoint Reminder by ~80% whilst 30 minutes will reduce the load by ~95%

Typically you may want to set this time to 1 minute for testing and setup purposes and then increase the time. Very few situations require an almost immediate email.

You an also see the setting for each web part on the Web Parts in Use page.