Default reminders configuration

[laurentdinclaux]

It is tedious to set reminders each time I add an event. If I forget to do it, I miss appointments.

Please add a setting to set default reminders per calendar.

For reference: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/default-reminder-in-calendar/3213

[pixelipo]

I would add to a bounty for this. Killer feature.

[tcitworld]

Bounty URL : https://www.bountysource.com/issues/50190368-default-reminders-configuration

[thigg]

Also, please add the possibility to change the default choices of reminder times. Currently they, the default choices, are pretty useless, because they cannot be modified.

Edit and answer to the comment below: @georgehrke
Usually I want to be reminded 2 days in advance and 2 hours in advance. When the appointment is further into the future maybe 1 week in advance.

The default times which are selectable via dropdown offer only the range from 5 minutes up to two hours. Therefore everytime when I add an appointment via the calendar app, I have to manually create the 2 days reminder.

This is pretty frustrating, especially when you never create reminders which are closer to the appointment then two hours.

[georgehrke]

Currently they are pretty useless.

Can you elaborate? Why are they useless? What reminder times would be better? ...

[jospoortvliet]

Better defaults would make sense - making it configurable seems a bit over the top if you ask me?!? Then again, people have different needs/wants. Perhaps the calendar should remember what the user did last time? I also always use the same setup of 4 reminders - 1 day, 1 hour, 5 minutes and on the time. It is indeed a bit tedious to add them.

[msharp1]

We need this feature, 100% agree with the OP.
In a perfect world I would like to see every basic things that is found useful in Google Agenda to be ported in NextCloud Calendar :) At the moment I'm having a hard time convincing my social circle to take the step out from Google because of "details" like this.
And I'm a bit scared to see that this feature is planned for 1.8.0 , du by October 2018 ! This is too far.
I'm ready to back for 15$ , are you still with us @pixelipo ?

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/50190368-default-reminders-configuration

[gessel]

I am agree, the two most useful features of google's calendar are well-thought-out reminders and [off topic remark moved to #856].

[georgehrke]

and proper use of time zone specifications.

@gessel Please don't hijack this issue but instead open a new ticket if you have a feature request. (and please be a bit more precise about what's the current and what's the expected behavior.)

[georgehrke]

Edit and answer to the comment below: @georgehrke
Usually I want to be reminded 2 days in advance and 2 hours in advance. When the appointment is further into the future maybe 1 week in advance.

The default times which are selectable via dropdown offer only the range from 5 minutes up to two hours. Therefore everytime when I add an appointment via the calendar app, I have to manually create the 2 days reminder.

This is pretty frustrating, especially when you never create reminders which are closer to the appointment then two hours.

@thigg Please don't edit your own comments in order to reply questions. I won't receive notifications and your comment just gets lost.

And just click on any reminder to edit it. You can configure it however you want:

[gessel]

(edited previous comment to move off topic content to different issue)

reminder behavior:

What I like about gcal's reminder behavior is that you can set default options for an arbitrary number of reminders via email and notification (this would be a lovely place for messaging and mobile app integration to add options for notifications). These notifications become default (e.g. email 2 days before, notification 1 day before, etc.).

A more advanced than google system would abstract the notification protocol and allow the user to identify the protocol with a descriptive name. For example, I might name one protocol "minor infrequent" and maybe get an email a day before and day of the event. I might create another "major infrequent" and get an email a month before, a week before, 3 days before, and then the day before an email, system notification, SMS, fax, and phone call. So, you know, you don't forget that anniversary again. "Default" might be set to "meeting" which might give send me an email digest the night before of the next day's events, the morning's digest, and then an email and pop-up 30 minutes before each.

It might also be possible to auto-select the protocol by event type - e.g. an event set as "annual repeating" might select the default "annual" etc. This would circumvent some of the limitations of more primitive clients (like lightning) that also have very limited notification capabilities.

[robinx99]

@thigg Please don't edit your own comments in order to reply questions. I won't receive notifications and your comment just gets lost.

That way works only for single events. And it must be done for every event. I can not use such a default for imported events. Once a year I download an ics file from my city, in that file is a list of the garbace collection (normal, paper, recicling, christmas trees) I think it were 53 events in a year. All events are 6:00 in the morning when they collect the trash (I prefer a reminder 11 hours ahead so that I can but the trash out the day befor garbage collection). But there is no easy solution for that problem, there is no default reminder yet. I can't bulk edit all files. The only solution I see is using sed on the .ics file before importing it.

[thigg]

To wrap things up:

• Additionally to configuring single reminders, it should be possible to select a reminder profile. A selected profile means, that a preconfigured set of reminders is added to the event.
  Example: Selecting the profile meeting adds a 30 minute alarm before the event and an 1 hour email notification.
• When importing events (for example from ics files), it should be possible to add a profile to all of them at once.
• Profiles might be suggested automatically, for example by event type.
• A gui would be needed to configure profiles.

Did I get everything?

[robinx99]

@thigg
Sounds quite good, but I would also suggest to be able to link a profile to a calender so that all new events in that calender have the profile (maybe it is already coverd by the point suggested automaticlally)

[gessel]

@thigg - yes, sorry for the delay in responding, but your summary is perfect.

[jospoortvliet]

So this is quite a big task and unlikely to be done by a volunteer. I mean, I can't be sure, but I doubt this can be done in 1-2 days of work. Say it costs a week, that's 40 hours, a decent salary is Eur 60/hour - a bounty would have to be around 2400 euro to cover this. And I explicitly mention bounty, as a consulting company would easily ask that amount PER DAY, not per week...

I suggest we look for a 'minimal' solution that helps in most cases and can be implemented quickly and easily. For example, remembering the reminders set for the previous event. Or a single default that can be set.

[georgehrke]

cc @jancborchardt about @gessel's & @thigg's proposal.

---

To wrap things up:

• Additionally to configuring single reminders, it should be possible to select a reminder profile. A selected profile means, that a preconfigured set of reminders is added to the event.
  Example: Selecting the profile meeting adds a 30 minute alarm before the event and an 1 hour email notification.
• When importing events (for example from ics files), it should be possible to add a profile to all of them at once.
• Profiles might be suggested automatically, for example by event type.
• A gui would be needed to configure profiles.

Did I get everything?

That is way more advanced than what i had in mind.

My plan was a simple dialog that would allow you to define default reminders (also more than one) for all calendars. One setting for timed events and one setting for all-day events.
(There would be a dedicated option for the birthday calendar).

That's how most other calendar applications I'm aware of handle it.

Don't get me wrong, I can see the need of certain power users to have the profile feature, but somewhere we have to draw the line between implementing every feature request that benefits certain power users and a calendar app that keeps general usability for ordinary users.

Nevertheless, we are having plans to make the calendar app extensible in the future (after moving from angular to vue): #812

So I would propose the following:
We just implement what I had in mind in the calendar app, so that it's available to all users and people who need this power user reminder-profile feature will have to enable a dedicated app for that.

[jancborchardt]

Yes @georgehrke, good proposal. We need to keep it simple and first do it step by step. If we overengineer the first solution, it will not be usable. 👍

[mase76]

It would make sense to configure a default reminder for contact birthdays.

[jtagcat]

@pixelipo @msharp1 I'm ready to chip in more, if others join as well

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/50190368-default-reminders-configuration

[freddie-freeloader]

@pixelipo @msharp1 I'm ready to chip in more, if others join as well

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/50190368-default-reminders-configuration

I chipped in 5 bucks. :)

[freddie-freeloader]

I agree with @georgehrke that a minimal implementation would be super useful already.
Selecting every time "1 hour" and then "popup" is quite annoying because I use this for 90% of my items.

[jospoortvliet]

Hum it seems we can close this. At least both my private and work instance have now this:

Say thank you to @tchernobog
(merged last May, should be in most releases)

It is indeed not per calendar, so let me re-open, though this seems almost never a problem - just adding more buttons to the UI.

[jospoortvliet]

I'd love to hear a compelling use case for a per-calendar setting instead from ppl here. For me, at least, this satisfies the need 100%.

[auberginepop]

Hum it seems we can close this. At least both my private and work instance have now this:

Say thank you to @tchernobog
(merged last May, should be in most releases)

It is indeed not per calendar, so let me re-open, though this seems almost never a problem - just adding more buttons to the UI.

Thank you @tchernobog !! I really appreciate this new feature.

[MexHigh]

I'd love to hear a compelling use case for a per-calendar setting instead from ppl here. For me, at least, this satisfies the need 100%.

Well I have a calendar for studying and every lecture lasts 90 minutes whereas private appointments or working hours are scheduled differently. I'm pretty sure there are some more guys out there that have a need for a per-calendar default.

Also thank you @tchernobog from me as well, I like the new feature :)

[robinx999]

I'd love to hear a compelling use case for a per-calendar setting instead from ppl here. For me, at least, this satisfies the need 100%.

Well I have a calendar for Garbage collection. I can download an .ics file from the city with all dates, also including all not regular collections because of holidays (one day later, one day earlier). The problem here is all events are scheduled 6:00 in the morning. I need to get the garbage can out to the street before that, I prefer to get them out the day before, so I would need for that calendar a default reminder of 11 hours before the event, for normal events like meeting a friend I would prefer a much shorter reminder

[ltguillaume]

I've always had different default reminders for all of my calendars and to be honest, I'm a little bit lost without them. For example, meetings have two reminders (1 day before, 1 hour before to get ready), deadlines have 3 reminders (1 week, 1 day, 2 hours before), and personal planning (routine) has no reminders at all.

Currently, I don't create new events from within Nextcloud Calendar at all, simply because only my Android app properly supports setting those reminders, and I'm afraid I'll forget to set reminders when adding from within Nextcloud.

[ChristophWurst]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll try schedule this feature into an upcoming release.

[inthreedee]

Another use-case would be customizing reminders for the birthday calendar, which is currently not possible.

It does not respect the "Default reminder" setting at the moment, so it seems to be special in that regard. Since this is a generated calendar, it probably needs special consideration while working on this.

See nextcloud/server#1505

[jdaviescoates]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll try schedule this feature into an upcoming release.

Did that ever happen @ChristophWurst ? I'm guessing not give this is still open and afaict Nextcloud still doesn't have this feature (I missed a meeting today so would love to be able to set default reminders for all events in my calendar)

[scollovati]

Also the possibility of setting the default notification channel (notification vs email) is really important: #5130

[moniika21]

Hello, it is possible to have several defaults reminders instead of only one in a predefined list ?
Like 1 hour, 4 hour, 12 hour and 1 day before for example ?

TY