Help us design reminder/alarm syncing

[cwood]

In the early versions of Spanning Sync we synchronized reminders/
alarms, but the feature wound up confusing some of our users and
posing a design problem to which we haven't yet found a good solution,
so we removed the feature and instead let each calendar system use its
own defaults. We'd like to get input from our users on the problems we
encountered, so here they are in detail:

First, some users were confused by multiple reminders/alarms for the
same event going off in different applications on their Macs (e.g., a
popup in Safari from Google and a message with a sound in iCal), and
on their iPhones (e.g., SMS from Google and message with sound from
the iPhone calendar), or even worse, all of the above.

We might be able to address this issue by adding a preference to
disable/enable reminder/alarm syncing, but adding preferences is a
slippery slope--should that be per-calendar? what does the UI for that
look like? is the setting retroactive, thereby forcing a complete
resync whenever it's changed?--and we try to keep Spanning Sync as
clean and straightforward as possible.

But the bigger issue we faced was a design problem. You'll notice that
I keep saying using the awkward phrase "reminders/alarms"--that's
because Google Calendar reminders and iCal alarms don't quite match
up, and guessing at how to force them to do so becomes a nasty design
problem.

Google supports up to five reminders of three different types (email,
SMS, popup) for each event, while iCal supports at most two alarms of
five different types (message, message with sound, email, open file,
run script) for each event. This raises some questions without obvious
answers.

For instance, if more than two reminders are set on Google which ones
get sent to iCal? And how do the types map to each other? If a user
sets four reminders for an event on Google, which two should we sync
to iCal? And if he then deletes one of the iCal alarms, which gCal
reminder should we delete, and should we then sync one of the others
to iCal?

If Spanning Sync were to sync reminders/alarms, how would you want it
to work? We'd very much appreciate your input.

Thanks,
Charlie

[Dave Messina]

First, some users were confused by multiple reminders/alarms for the
same event going off in different applications on their Macs (e.g., a
popup in Safari from Google and a message with a sound in iCal), and
on their iPhones (e.g., SMS from Google and message with sound from
the iPhone calendar), or even worse, all of the above.

In the general case, I think this is inevitable, unfortunately. Without some ridiculously fancy real-time location monitoring and inter-application awareness, I don't see how it would be possible to keep alarms synced and *not* have them all go off as expected.

This happens even without Spanning Sync. Using just iCal and iSync for years I had my cellphone alarm and my iCal alert go off simultaneously.

Lately though I think I've worked around this problem for the most part. I'm not sure it's generalizable, but hopefully at least it will stimulate some ideas.

In my life, there are basically two categories of reminder/alarms:
1) Low priority

At some point in the future, I want to remind myself of something. It's not super time-dependent; as long as I will see the notification within a day or so, that's good enough. Examples would be "buy Mike a birthday present" or "call AT&T about overcharge".

For these I set an email notification.

2) High priority.

This means I *have* to do something within minutes of the reminder/alarm going off, like go to a meeting.

For these I send myself an SMS. Since I always have my cellphone on me, I know I will always get the notification. Of course this means that I always have to set these up in gCal, but that really hasn't been a big deal for me.

In my mind, the key to this whole thing is to think in terms of priority. I need only two levels of priority. Some people might need more, of course, but I think for most two will do.

If you assign one notification type to each priority (and only that priority), then I think that goes a long way toward resolving the mapping between gCal and iCal.

So let's see here. For each priority, pick one for gCal and one for iCal:
Priority    gCal               iCal
--------    ----               ----
High        SMS, email, popup  message, message w/sound, email
Low         SMS, email, popup  message, message w/sound, email

The user chooses a notification type for each of gCal and iCal, then that determines the mapping. Note that you can only assign a notification type to one priority. In my case, it would be:

Priority    gCal              iCal
--------    ----              ----
High        SMS               message
Low         email             email


The tricky thing is that the user also has to choose whether both gCal and iCal does the actual reminding. I think in most cases, only one or the other should do it: after all, no need to get an email from both for the same event, right? I haven't thought through it too much, but gCal seems like the logical choice since it's "always on" to send emails or SMSs. There's a little trickiness in how to do the sync that I'm ignoring here, but I think if you draw out all of the possible alarm states on both sides, it could be set up such that only gCal does the reminding.

In all of this, I have been ignoring iCal's "open file" and "run script" reminder types. To me these don't have an equivalent context on the gCal side and should therefore be ignored. In other words, if the user has set them, fine, just leave them there, but they don't have any influence on gCal or the syncing.

So, that's how I've been thinking about the problem. The number of notification options offered by both gCal and iCal are nice, but I think casting those notifications into priorities  forces us to think about how we use them and allows us to simplify the system.

Dave

[PetriSirk.]

Hi Charlie,

I have so far managed this with having two calendars. One that has no
reminders set up and another that defaults on sending SMS 15 minutes
prior to event.

For any event that I want an reminder I make a copy into the reminders
calendar. Since GCal has the reminder as default any new synced event
gets it there.

-Pete

[AndrewIsAHokie]

So finally I find the answer to my problem... I've been trying to
figure out why my iphone stopped reminding me of my calendar
appointments... the reason? You guys decided to disable it? The
whole point of buying Spanning Sync was to get my gCal calendar onto
my iphone with bidirectional sync. This was working perfectly. There
is Zero value in a calendar sync if the calendar that ends up on my
iphone doesn't ever pop up reminders. I've been looking everywhere
for a work around, if you guys have some idea please let me know. In
the mean time, I'm really pissed that I bothered to spend cash buying
a product from you only to have you disable THE key feature that lead
me to buy it in the first place.

Are people really that "confused" by having the same appointment pop
up in multiple places? Better that than to have the appointment show
up in three places that to not pop up on the one device you have with
you (ie the iPhone). I can't tell you how many meetings I've missed
due to this change.

Frustrated,
Andrew

[Brett Adam]

Couple of thoughts

1 please put reminders back on the iPhone. Far from being confusing to
have multiple devices alerting, most of us *need* this!

2 the types of reminders/alarms between apps are not the same. Thus,
only sync the like types and ignore the others. If configure an extra
reminder type in one service, treat that as just for that service.

Brett

Sent from my iPhone

[PetriSirk.]

Hi,

I am a user of Spanning Sync.

1. The reminders are not turned off by Spanning Sync. The reminders
are just not SYNCED with Spanning Sync.

2. Spanning Sync does not sync to iPhone. It just syncs iCal <=>
Google Cal on a Mac OS X computer. You use Apple's sync software
between iPhone and iCal.

Just make the appointments that you want to have alarms on the iPhone
(or iCal if they sync from there to the phone, I do not have one yet).
Or use the Google calendars SMS alerts as a substitute.

-Pete

On Aug 1, 9:37 pm, Brett Adam <bpja...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Couple of thoughts
>
> 1 please put reminders back on the iPhone. Far from being confusing to  
> have multiple devices alerting, most of us *need* this!
>
> 2 the types of reminders/alarms between apps are not the same. Thus,  
> only sync the like types and ignore the others. If configure an extra  
> reminder type in one service, treat that as just for that service.
>
> Brett
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>

[doogald]

I would prefer that alarms get synchronized. My suggestion, based on
your questions:

- yes, allow the user to specify of they want alarms/reminders synced
on a per calendar basis. I have some calendars that do not use
reminders, and I do not want them "snuck in" after a sync to Google
(or vice versa).

- ask the user which service takes precendence - Google or Mac - and
have that be the master reminder setting for any alarms/reminders,
etc.

- sync the first two Google reminders listed with iCal, and sync the
first two iCal alarms with Google reminders, but do not touch the last
three otherwise.

If I am missing something (i.e., there is no such thing as "the first
two Google reminders") then let me know. (In that case I would suggest
the earliest and the latest reminders - so if somebody has reminders
for a week, a day, six hours, an hour and five minutes, set the week
and five minute ones for iCal.)

[Chris]

I sync my ical to gcal via spanning sync and iphone via mobile me. I
want to have a default alarm that goes off for every event, without
having to set it. This is the #1 priority for me. If they go off on
all my devices, so be it. Ideally when you acknowledge one, the others
would go away as well.

Best would be to have the alarms go off only on one device, for me
that would be the iphone, but the user could choose that on a per
calendar basis, or globally.

I know this might not be easy, but I think it would be worth it for
many power users. How does Blackberry do it?

Chris

[cwood]

Chris-

You can do just what you're looking for with Spanning Sync. Just set
default reminders on your Google calendars and default alarms on your
iCal calendars. Events that are synchronized by Spanning Sync will
inherit those defaults, so you'll get notifications everywhere.

Thanks,
Charlie