During a recent client visit, I came across an interesting application of technology that I had not seen in quite a while. On the intranet home page was displayed a box notifying employees that a critical system was experiencing service degradation. The message included a link to a page with more information.
This notification solution reminded me of the “etc/motd” file that exists on Unix systems. The “Message of the Day” is automatically displayed on a user’s console after login. I can still remember a young college student working in the computer lab who updated the motd file each day with the hockey standings in the old Norris division! I was inspired to replicate this functionality in SharePoint.