There are 2 different actions that pop up messages in WinAutomation the "Display Message" action and the "Display Notification" action. They can both be found under the "Message Boxes" category.
1) The "Display Message" action, is the action that will display a small popup window with a predefined set of buttons (Yes/No, Ok/Cancel etc). You can set it to disappear automatically, or you can wait till the user presses a button. You can find some more options that are available through the "Display Message" action if you click here.
2) The "Display Notification" action, does not work that way. When you are running a job from the WinAutomation's console, a small window appears in the bottom right corner of your machine, informing you about the job's progress (assuming that you have enabled the option for this window to appear).
If you use the "Display Notification" action to print a message, this message will appear in this small notification window, which only appears when you are running your job from the console.
However, although these 2 actions may seem to serve the same purpose and you may possibly think that they overlap, there is a clear distinction about when you should use the one and when the other. Their main difference is that the "Display Message" action stops the job execution and prompts the user to click on some option (Yes, No, OK, Cancel etc) while, on the other hand, the "Display Notification" action just displays some information on the screen. So, if you want to stop the job's execution and draw the user's attention on a message before the job continues, you should use the "Display Message" action. If you just want to print a message that will inform you about the current progress of the job, or the value of a variable at a specific step, without interrupting the job's execution (e.g. when there are thousands of iterations to be executed in a job, I'm guessing you wouldn't like to have to click on an OK button all the time), then you should use the "Display Notification" action.
Notice, that the notification window does not appear when the job is executed through the designer (this is a choice that has been made during the design of the specific action).
A final difference between the "Display Message" and the "Display Notification" actions is that if you compile your job to an executable, and in the "Advanced Options" you choose to compile it as a "Console Application", the messages that you chose to print through the "Display Notification" action, will appear in a console while the executable is running.
For more information regarding this specific subject, please check the corresponding knowledgebase article
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