Aitese's dashboard

You can set the reminder time via the website once you've scheduled the event. Specifying the exact reminder time via the email is possible, but still in testing so I'll let Rael decide whether or not he wants to start advertising that :)

Any news on this?

Hi all,

The way I have been told, as I have asked this question before, is to set your reminder for the event as normal:

"r super meeting on wed 14:00"

But if you don't have email confirmations set to AUTOREPLY you can force a reply with "@reply"

So it is now:

"r super meeting on wed 14:00 @reply"

Sandy will confirm your 2pm meeting with an email and set the email reminder for 1:45pm:

"Good morning, HeG!

I added this to the calendar:

#1 super meeting on Wed 14:00
- Email reminder at 13:45"

The workaround is to the REPLY to the confrimation email with the actual time you'd like the email reminder:

"r 10am" or
"remind me at 10am"

The SCHEDULED time will remain the same but the REMINDER time will change to 10am (or whatever time you have chosen)

"Hi, HeG!

I updated this for you:

#1 super meeting on Wed 14:00
- Email reminder at 10:00"

Hopefully they will impliment being able to set a schedule entry AND reminder time in the same email soon.

I would also love to have this ability. The standard interval is great for most things, but if an appointment is across town I might need 30 or 40 minutes lead time to get there. I don't need an exact "remind me at 8:15a" per se, but if there was a way to override the default reminder interval to a custom one (i.e., @alert30) for that reminder that would be fab.

Amazing...funny what you find when you look properly.

Thank you

Once you get the confirmation email

#1 12:00pm Dinner
- Email reminder at 11:00am

#2 14:30pm Show
- Email reminder at 13:30pm

you need to update each item separately, so just reply:

update #1 remind me 10:30am

update #2 remind me noon

That should give you:

#1 12:00pm Dinner
- Email reminder at 10:30am

#2 14:30pm Show
- Email reminder at 12:00pm

The point with Sandy is that you're not supposed to be addressing yourself...you're supposed to be addressing Sandy at all times as if you're emailing a person. To an untrained person what I have propossed would not be any different.

For example:

Remind me about dinner at 16:30pm

Would do what Sandy always does and send an email reminder at your default interval (15 mins before or more)

Remember dinner at 16:30pm

Should do the same for anyone who has not explored any other options. The difference I propose would be a check box for "remember" in your preferences that opt's out of automatic reminders for the verb remember. So people who don't know about it won't be affected...they bet thier default email reminder as they have always done...when they are ready for a more intuative system it's just a quick read of the FAQ's and a check box away.

So once you switch from the default to the "advanced" scedular, you now have to specify when you want your reminder or Sandy will fall back to your set default .

Remember dinner at 16:30pm. Remind me at 13:00pm

If you don't set the reminder then Sandy will remind you 15 minutes before (or whatever you have set it to)

The point is Sandy would understand the context of the word as we would. You wouldn't naturally "schedule" a phone number or your favourite foods; you'd "remember" those things with no time or date. So the idea is if you have a meeting you say to Sandy:

Schedule meeting with Brad on/at time/date. (Hopefully they could implement someway of indicating start and finish time so Sandy can inform you of overlaps/double bookings)

The DEFAULT action chosen by you in the settings could be to ONLY put the appointment in the calendar OR do that plus remind you at your default set time, i.e. 15 minutes before etc.
If you have your settings to NOT automatically remind you of anything posted with a date or time you would append to the end of the request a reminder:

Schedule meeting with Brad on/at time/date. Remind me on/at time/date

You would use "schedule" specifically to enter an appointment in the calendar and Sandy would expressly look for a time/date...possibly email you back to ask when the request should be scheduled for and keep prompting you until she has all the info needed:

You: Sandy, schedule meeting with Mark
Sandy: When do you want this appointment scheduled for?

At this point Sandy would receive a time or date AND time...but she wouldn’t stop prompting until the time data specifically is completed (what’s a good secretary/personal assistant if they don’t nag you every now and again?)

Basically she would, when reading the word “schedule” look for:

1 What the appointment is
2 When it starts
3 When it ends
? The day

The last one would be optional as if that is not provided she would schedule the appointment for the same day.

The big problem I found is short cuts...the shortcut for “remind” is “r” so what would be the shortcut for “remember”?

There are problems with using the word "schedule". Using the word "schedule" may seem natural an intuitive to you, except for when you start asking Sandy to stat "scheduling" things that have no date or time. Remember that Sandy can store all sorts of things, not just your schedule.

The word "schedule" implies a limited, known amount of time. You can't use the word "schedule" in the more general sense, with things that don't have a time, or things that have an unknown amount of time. In the strictest sense, Sandy can't schedule *anything* appropriately. Because although she knows when an event begins, she almost never knows when an event ends. (I certainly never tell her.) How long will it take me to "pay my bills" or "go running" or "do my taxes"? I don't know.

Imagine the following examples:

> Sandy, schedule David likes grapes.
> Sandy, schedule pay my phone bill on Monday.
> Sandy, schedule lunch with Foster 3 pm Tuesday @sms.
> Sandy, schedule grocery list * grapes * bread * milk

The only one of these that make sense is the "lunch with Foster" because it has a date and a time. Even the "pay my phone bill on Monday" sounds odd, because a time isn't specified. It sounds like you're asking Sandy to specify a time for the event. Like you're asking her to evaluate your schedule for Monday and fit that task in at some point in the day. I agree with hanleyman that this would eventually be a good skill for Sandy to have, but it's not going to happen in the near future. So I think the command word "schedule" should be reserved until that feature is implemented.

I think that Sandy should continue to use the word "remember" as the instruction to add things to her memory. However, I agree with Aitese that the word "remind" is fundamentally different than the word "remember". "remind" should create a reminder. I think that makes sense. I think it would make more sense if "remember" didn't create any reminder at all, regardless whether the item has a date and time associated with it. The default reminder of 15 minutes doesn't help me out much anyway.

> remember to buy eggs on Friday. (this will remind me at 6:45 am?)
> remember lunch with Brian Tuesday at noon. (takes 30 minutes to get there)
> remember Cooper likes string cheese.
> remember Allan's birthday 5/6/08 (this will set a reminder for 6:45 am?)
> remember to pick up my dry cleaning at 3 pm Thursday. Remind me at 2:30 pm @sms. (How I think reminders should work.)

I disagree. While the core point is valid that you may use both "schedule" (as a noun) and "remind/remember" together fairly naturally, I think "remind me" and "remember" are relatively synonymous in this sort of usage -- one is addressing "Sandy" as a person, the other is more addressing yourself, but the distinction is really artificial and would be hard for untrained users to understand or intuit. The idea of separating reminders from calendar/schedule items is still useful, though, and I think the "schedule" verb is natural and intuitive. There are already plenty of cases of ambiguous parses even in the current system, and the solution is always just to be at least slightly careful, and to use quotes when you're doing things that are clearly confusing like using a date/time string in the reminder text, itself.

I think that Iavardera and Aitese have it pretty well thought out. I second their ideas.

It should be possible to both SCHEDULE an event and specify a REMINDER for the event in the same email. I will point out that it should also be possible to set *multiple* reminders for the event in the same email. Each reminder having its own scheduled time, and its own tags. Different calendars let you do this. (Google Calendar, etc.)

It seems that the best way to schedule reminders would be to use multiple sentences. Just like they've been suggesting. Trying to cram everything into one sentence wouldn't allow for support of multiple reminders. Maybe Sandy should pay attention to where the period is and then interpret the following sentences accordingly. If the sentence starts with the word "remind", then it's a reminder for the event scheduled in the previous sentence.

The time/date in the reminders should be allowed to be relative to the time the event is scheduled for. I expect that the word "before" will be used a lot.

Format:
> Remember A at time/date. (The event is scheduled. Either a default reminder is scheduled or no reminder is scheduled.)

> Remember A at time/date. Remind B at time/date @email. Remind C at time/date @sms.

Examples:
> Remember A at 09/12/07 at 7pm. Remind me to leave at 6 pm @email. Remind me to stop and get chips at 6:40 pm @sms.

> Sandy, remember Meeting with Joe on XXFeb08 12:30pm. Remind me to prepare 1 day before @email. Remind me to leave 1 hour before @sms.

Maybe this idea would be easier to implement using the tag "@reminder". The keyword could be used to specify a reminder that attaches to the previous sentence. (We already have the tag @noreminder, so this tag would make sense.) The advantage to this is twofold. First, Sandy doesn't have to distinguish between "remember" and "remind", instead, a new command is being added. Second, this might make it easier for Sandy to spot where the reminder commands were.

> Remind me about GZA at KOKO on 09/12/07 at 7pm. @reminder to leave 45 minutes before @sms. @reminder to buy chips 1 hour 30 minutes before @email.