paul's dashboard

Is there something specific you have to tell Sandy to make her understand .ICS files? I just sent her one and she didn't even reply to my message! I checked online and the appointments aren't added. I've done this once before and it worked like a charm.

Paul's answer will work fi it's a regular appointment (same day every week). Otherwise, you can use a "power move" and send an email like so:

remember lunch with Steve +
* 1/30
* 2/5
* 2/23
* 3/31

And it will schedule 4 separate appointments.

Second Wednesday, last Wednesday and so on - This is a must-have! ...please. – Tom, on July 21, 2008 17:21

Huh. This used to work and now I get just one event, instead of the 8 in the ics file. [yuugh]

If any of Sandy's staff are about, here's the file I sent.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:Untitled
PRODID:-//Apple Computer\, Inc//iCal 2.0//EN
X-WR-RELCALID:0BE74E07-9004-4BA1-B06E-06C70BC751CC
X-WR-TIMEZONE:US/Pacific
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:US/Pacific
LAST-MODIFIED:20080703T221626Z
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:20080309T100000
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
TZNAME:PDT
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:20081102T020000
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZNAME:PST
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DURATION:PT2H15M
LOCATION:Laurelhurst
DTSTAMP:20080703T221548Z
UID:4E9B1D46-0F5C-4ABA-BF0E-73E693990268
SEQUENCE:4
DTSTART;TZID=US/Pacific:20080707T183000
SUMMARY:Summer baseball
RRULE:FREQ=WEEKLY;INTERVAL=1;UNTIL=20080801T065959Z;BYDAY=MO,TH;WKST=SU
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Elizabeth,

There are at least 2 different types of feeds, the Calendar Feed and the Daily Digest Feed (i.e. the Google Calendar Gadget). (see http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...)

The "Daily Digest" feature (the Sandy icon) is available for every day. Some people have complained that the icon appears on every day, even on those days where there is nothing scheduled. However, these people didn't understand that the Google Calendar Gadget has a different purpose and is not a regular calendar feed. Instead it implements the Daily Digest feature.

I know that there is a delay in the Calendar Feed. Google updates the calendar feed about every 3 hours, (or longer). There have been many discussions about Google Calendar not updating feeds promptly and people unsubscribing and resubscribing the get it to update. Look at some of the links on the right or do a search. (Other links: http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy... and http://getsatisfaction.com/iwantsandy...) I'm not sure now often the "Daily Digest" feature is updated.

Am I the only one still having issues? When I set it up as a calendar feed, it's not updating. i.e. the events I had when I set up the feed are there, but that's it. If i set it up with the thing from the sandbox, it puts the face on EVERY day and doesn't integrate the information in anyway. It just puts the two seperate bits of information within the same browser window.

Am I just totally missing something??

Seems we need to differentiate between something we need ugging about daily until we've done it and then stop bugging, and somethig we need reminding about everyday and keep bugging tomorrow.

I suppose I have to learn to "forget" my daily todo if I no longer want remining but not intuitive

This has worked for me, the only problem is that I use Google Calendar and Sandy doesn't recognize yearly events

I put together a tutorial of how I got it iwantsandy to update my Google Calendar and my mobile phone using scheduleworld.com
http://ozlady.com/2008/05/17/synchron...

I have it so that I use the public ics feed for Sandy in my Google Calendar, but I 'hide' it. I then set up a 2nd calendar called Sandy in Scheduleworld, then synchronise it to the Sandy calendar in my Google Calendar. My mobile phone is set to synchronise every hour, so when it synchronises it automatically pushes the Sandy entries into my calendar (which is 'shown' on my Google calendar page). I can't update Sandy from Google Calendar, but Sandy can update Google calendar via my phone synchronisation.

Hope that makes sense.

More information is available at:
http://scheduleworld.wordpress.com/su...
it says: ScheduleWorld has a 1:1 mapping between ScheduleWorld and Google calendars. Simply create two ScheduleWorld calendars, map each of them to a different Google calendar, and configure your SyncML device to sync both ScheduleWorld calendars. – ozlady, on May 17, 2008 14:16

I like this because it follows the same model as Sandy working via email, in that you essentially bring her into the conversation; you would bring her into the meeting. – Geek Pirate Roberts, on May 08, 2008 17:35

How do you get this to work? I tried about 5 times and kept getting the email telling me that she had no idea what I wanted.

I've just started with Sandy. I use Google Calendar from Apps for Your Domain. Still trying to understand what I get from Sandy that I don't already have with Google Calendar. Two-way sync, even if primitive, would definitely make Sandy a sweet girl indeed: she'd be my email interface to Google Calendar.

Thank you! – Stanislav Shalunov, on April 16, 2008 03:22

I wasn't able to get this feature to work consistently, so I did some investigation.

I think the feature is supposed to work like this, the website now treats recurring events specially and there is some additional information when editing recurring items. There is an option to edit "Only this occurrence", and "All future occurrences". The recurring item does not have to be marked as @todo. The additional options show up for all recurring events, whether or not they are tagged as @todo. (At least, I think it is intended that way, there are some bugs.)

When I mark a recurring item as @done, Sandy creates a new item, a copy of the recurring item, with the same tags. The differences are that the new item has today's date, is tagged as @done and is not tagged as recurring (@daily, @weekly, etc). So marking a recurring item as @done results in one additional item being created. The original recurring item is not changed, but it no longer shows up on the Daily Digest. (Example: a @daily item that I tagged as @done no longer shows up on the daily digest when I refresh the daily digest page. Even though the item was not tagged as @done.)

There are some confusing points though. First, not all of my current recurring items were recognized as recurring. There wasn't always an option to edit "Only this occurrence", etc. Second, the feature works oddly on recurring items starting at dates in the future. The recurring item should have a date of today or in the past. Third, when I mark a recurring item as @done, the new item created is tagged as @done but it also sometimes retains the recurring tag. (@daily, @weekly, etc.) This is confusing.

When marking a recurring item as @done, it is possible that Sandy looks to see if the item that would be created (the new item tagged as @done) has already been created or not. If it already exists, then Sandy might do something else instead of creating the new item yet again. This would explain some inconsistent results that I had. (Think of making a mistake and checking the box too many times. Every third click, the recurring event would be "marked as @done" and a new item would be created.)

Some tests:
I added a task "remember to take out the trash on Friday at 6 pm @todo @weekly". Today is Saturday so Sandy added a task in the future. Then I checked the box on the website to mark the item as @done. Sandy marked the entire recurring event as @done, There was no new item created.

I had Sandy forget all "trash" items and started over again, I added a task "remember to take out the trash April 4 2008 at 6 pm @todo @weekly". Then I checked the box on the website to mark the item as @done. Sandy marked the entire recurring event as @done. There was no new item created.

I started over again and added a task "remember to take out the trash at 6 pm @todo @weekly". This created a recurring event for every Saturday at 6 pm. (today is Saturday) Then I checked the box on the website. This did the same thing. Marked the entire series as @done and didn't create a new item.

Howdy, folks!

With yesterday's update, this is finally done!

As Sandy just announced on the site:

"""
NEW FEATURE You can now toggle individual occurrences of a repeating to-do! Just click a to-do's checkbox and — if it is one of a series of repeating to-dos (a weekly reminder to take out the trash, for instance) — only that day's to-do will be marked as done. Neat, eh?
"""

Enjoy! (And I'm sorry this was such a long time in coming.)

—R

Looks like Calendar is experiencing some technical difficulties:
http://groups.google.com/group/google...

"Hi everyone,
Google Calendar is currently experiencing temporary performance
issues. This is affecting both Google Account and Google Apps users.
The team is aware of these problems and working hard to resolve them
as soon as possible. Please check this thread for updates.
Thanks for your patience,
Becky"

ics doesn't work very well. The reminder time is set semi-correctly, it doesn't take into account a time zone change. The meeting is set as an all day event and not for the correct time period.

I'm having a problem using ical feeds and thunderbird- essentially whenever I "dismiss" Sandy's reminder in Thunderbird-Lightning it comes back to haunt me every 10-15 minutes... it was horrendous yesterday, it's a bit better today. Basically, even though I've updated Sandy with the reminder status, it still produces an iCal event that pings me (can't dismiss).

I'll attempt this in iCal.app (Apple's application) and let you know if I think it's a Mozilla problem, or if it's in both, it may be on Sandy's side of things.

Cheers!

This would be a great addition