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The difference between reminders and appointments, and how to set just a reminder for a specific date/time
From my experimentation, this is how I understand Sandy to work on this topic:
- If I send an item with a specific time/date (things like 'today at 2pm' or 'tomorrow morning' or 'February 3rd'), Sandy will interpret the item as an "appointment" and set the appointment time to the time I gave. She will set the reminder to the default reminder interval (in my case, 15 min before).
- If I send an item with a relative day/time (things like 'in 10 min', 'in 12 hours', or 'in 7 days'), Sandy will interpret the item as a "note" (? or maybe a to-do if it is so tagged?). It will not have a date/time it is set to happen, and will have the reminder set to the time/date I specified.
First, please confirm that's correct. If so, it seems that it is impossible to set a simple reminder with a specific date/time, which is something I often want to do. I try not to use "appointments" at all because I have a separate calendar app and just use Sandy for to-dos and reminders. But many of my items end up categorized as appointments, which means that they don't show up (by default) in my lists after the original date/time has passed. I have to make a point to check all my items from time to time to make sure they haven't disappeared into the past.
I'm not sure of the exact best solution, but I thought I'd share my confusion about this so you can figure out a better way. Thanks.
- If I send an item with a specific time/date (things like 'today at 2pm' or 'tomorrow morning' or 'February 3rd'), Sandy will interpret the item as an "appointment" and set the appointment time to the time I gave. She will set the reminder to the default reminder interval (in my case, 15 min before).
- If I send an item with a relative day/time (things like 'in 10 min', 'in 12 hours', or 'in 7 days'), Sandy will interpret the item as a "note" (? or maybe a to-do if it is so tagged?). It will not have a date/time it is set to happen, and will have the reminder set to the time/date I specified.
First, please confirm that's correct. If so, it seems that it is impossible to set a simple reminder with a specific date/time, which is something I often want to do. I try not to use "appointments" at all because I have a separate calendar app and just use Sandy for to-dos and reminders. But many of my items end up categorized as appointments, which means that they don't show up (by default) in my lists after the original date/time has passed. I have to make a point to check all my items from time to time to make sure they haven't disappeared into the past.
I'm not sure of the exact best solution, but I thought I'd share my confusion about this so you can figure out a better way. Thanks.
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Inappropriate?Hi again Kate :)
In my opinion all items that have a date/time set are appointments. You may notice one thing when you look at the edit form of an appointment item. You can specify date/time in two places. One is the field of date/time when the item is actually happening and another place is the reminder date/time. It was quite difficult for me to grasp this at the beginning. The way I see it now is that you can have an item (not necessarily an appointment) with a reminder or you can have an appointment with a date/time and a reminder at specific date/time that may be different from the item's date/time.
If you want to have reminders to items then it's easier than if you would want to have appointments with dates/times and reminders on top of it. You just send: remind me blah blah tomorrow 2pm. If you want keep that item in the loop even if it's past alarm time, just add a tag (like @todo) and it will stay around until you change it to @done. Oh and you might want to set the "Reminder interval" to '0' so that if you set the reminder time it will happen on the time specified and not 15 minutes earlier :)
I hope i didn't complicate it too much :)
I’m tired
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Inappropriate?Hi Kate,
I have same problem. Here's a workaround I use:
1) Send Sandy an task tagged with @todo and NO date/time
2) She'll reply to make sure she got it right (assuming your auto-reply is turned on, if not add the tag @reply above)
3) Reply back to her: Remind me (whenever date/time)
I've found this creates a todo, not an appointment, and allows you to customize the todo reminder for a specific date/time. The negative is it takes two emails for a single todo, but it has worked well.
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Inappropriate?By the way, ^ works on appointments too if you want to set the appointment reminder other than 15min ahead without going to the website.
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Inappropriate?Thanks, norbiq. I understand the difference between appointments and reminders (what field the date/time is in).
The problem is if I send it "remind me blah blah tomorrow 2pm" as you suggest, it creates an appointment rather than a reminder. I'd love to be able to create a reminder instead. -
Inappropriate?Thanks, Chris, that's a good workaround. I will try that.
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Inappropriate?Sandy's changed a little in the past several months. Here's how I understand how she works now.
1) Anything entered into Sandy is an "item" (use whatever word you want.)
2) Any item with a date is an "event". Items without dates are not events, they're something else. (Bookmarks, Contacts, Lists, or a Note without a date)
3) An item with a date (an event) is usually the same thing as an "appointment". Except there are bugs with this. (see further below)
4) a "reminder" is an alarm attached to an item. You can set the alarm to go off at a certain time, etc. You can set the action you want Sandy to do when the alarm goes off. (send you an email, an sms, or a Tweet) If the item has a date, then the reminder can be set to go off a certain number of minutes or hours before the date. (i.e. the reminder date can be made relative to the event date.)
In my opinion, any item should be capable of having multiple reminders attached to it. Sandy doesn't allow this now, but she should. (Google Calendar does) This is also the easiest way to understand the difference between an event date and a reminder date. Realize that any single item can have multiple reminders, but it only happens once.
The "big meeting" happens on Friday at 4pm, but I may want a reminder to start preparing for the meeting 5 days before, and 2 days before, and also 30 minutes before. This last one is sent as an sms, so I can get to the meeting on time.
5) types have been odd in the past. It was possible to create an item without a date (a Note) and then add a date later. But the item type stayed as "Note", it wasn't changed to "Appointment." This also worked in reverse. It was possible to create an item with a date (an Appointment) and then later remove the date. So you could have an Appointment without a date.
6) It seems they've done some fixing recently. An Item's type seems to correctly switch back and forth between a Note and an Appointment when you add or remove a date. Adding a date to a Note turns it into an Appointment and vice versa. (It is still possible to have a List with a date. Adding a date to a LIst doesn't change the List into an Appointment.)
7) a todo is not a fundamental type. At least, not anymore. Anything can be tagged as a todo. A List, A Bookmark, even a Contact can be a todo.
Oh, and it's now possible to create both an appointment and a reminder for the appointment in the same email. Use the @reminder tag.
> remember to go to the store Friday at 3 pm. @todo @reminder 1 hour before -
