i think i would try to solve the problem like this: in the client app, at every 1 minute or so, i would run a query that finds the products that need to be reordered. if the resultset is empty, then no products need to be reordered and the user will not be bothered. if you the query returns results, then show the pop-up box with the products. this will work if the app is running on the client machine, and if access suports timers, or something equivalent.
also, the products shown need to be somehow marked as "shown", since you don't want to bother the user every minute to reorder the same products, over, and over again (until they are reordered). also, the query for identifying the products that need to be reordered needs to filter out the products that have been shown in a popup box to the user. i think you get the ideea.
i think this solution is called a pop solution, since the client is geting the data from the server. another solution, a more complex one, would be the "push solution"; in this case the server should push the data to the clients, but this means that the server must have the possibility to send this data to the client, wich means that a second channel for communication is needed. this channel could be a tcp/ip channel, which means that the server needs to know the ip addresses of the curently connected clients, and the clients need to "listen" for incoming data from the server. or the client could initiate the tcp/ip connection, sometime after it initiates the database connection. as you might see, things get pretty complicated.
i never had to do any of the above, but if i would need to do it tomorow, i would try the pop solution.
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