Whenever a Ticker message is sent to a user, the Tickler icon will have a number in parenthesis beside it to indicate the number of unread messages for a user.
During the course of a day's operation, the number will change according to the number of unread messages sent to the user. During the day, the user is not alerted via a popup to indicate a new message is waiting to be read; only the number changes.
Whenever a user logs into Denticon, if applicable, a popup window will appear to indicate that there are unread messages.