This release contains a major new feature, the addition of Siri Shortcuts!!
We will detail this feature below, please read all of the release notes to understand the shortcuts.
Important note: This will be the final release of Pocket Informant for iOS 11 as we update our development environments to work with the upcoming iOS 13 and its new features.
The following Siri shortcuts are supported-
Add event
Let’s Write Something (add a note)
Add task
Add checklist
Show me my calendar (Shows the month view)
Show me my tasks (Shows Main Task View)
Show me today (shows Focus View)
Remember when using Siri Shortcuts that you have to do the function in the Pocket Informant application before Siri will be able to add it as a shortcut in iOS 12 or iOS 13. Siri Shortcuts are not supported by iOS 11.
Siri Shortcuts are managed in the device settings when using iOS 12 and the Shortcuts application in iOS 13 they are not managed in the Pocket Informant settings. iOS 11 does not support the use of Siri Shortcuts.
The Siri shortcuts also work as a habit tracker, if for example, you create a note daily at 3pm Siri will learn this and ask you daily around 3pm if you want to create a note.
Pocket Informant already supports Siri commands which are different from Siri Shortcuts so if you have been using the Siri commands with Informant those behaviors will not change.
Please contact our support team if you have any further questions on this great new feature. http://staging.pocketinformant.com/support
Fixed-
Some users had an issue in Dark Mode that would make the event text black when being viewed.
Corrected some lingering long title handling issues that a few users reported
Prevent users from creating an event with a due date set before the start date
Corrected a crash some users had when editing the recurrence pattern of a task to none
Corrected an issue reported where the Smart Filter rules were too dark to read
Amended Smart Filter rules background color to work better with text colors
To avoid confusion with some iOS 13 changes the color themes were renamed, Dark Mode has been changed to Gray Theme and black by Alex has been renamed Night Theme.
We want to thank our beta team for testing the all new Siri Shortcuts feature for us!!!
We also want to express our appreciation to all of our customers. We know you have a choice and we thank you for choosing Pocket Informant!!!
Please provide a cheat sheet, or a YouTube video or something detailing the steps we need to take to use this feature. I like to think I’m good at things like this, I’ve used Informant since my first smart phone, I’ve used shortcuts since they were introduced, but I’ve now spent over a half hour trying to use a feature on my productivity app and failing. I feel stupid now, and I’ve wasted time.
I did contact support, but as of now they only provided the same information above that doesn’t make sense to me.
Please open a case to support and preface with “Siri Shortcuts Advanced” that will route the case differently and you will get a more detailed response. But please be very specific in your question. Your statement above would not give the support agent anything to use to try and address your question.
For anyone confused like me, I heard back from support and it seems I misunderstood what these would do. These are not like the Shortcuts available in the Gallery that perform multiple steps, these are the suggested shortcuts based on tasks you preform over and over again, accessible via Siri & Search / All Shortcuts.
As far as I can tell, however, all “Create Task” does is open Informant to the task screen, it will not actually create a task by saying “create task heater inquiries”, I get an error when I try that, but if I say “remind me heater inquiries”, that WILL create a task labeled “heater inquiries” without any further input from me.
Not sure what the benefit is if it takes longer to create a task using Shortcuts instead of Siri reminders, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Remember, for several years Pocket Informant has supported Siri Commands these are used in conjunction with Siri Shortcuts to dictate items into Pocket Informant. Using “create task” after calling a Siri Shortcut will create an error because you are referencing an iOS Reminders command with a Siri shortcut. These are two different things. We will be making a video soon to show the difference between a Siri Shortcut and a Siri Command and how to use them together. As a 3rd party application Siri integration isn’t always as seamless as the stock iOS applications it is important to keep that in mind as well. It has come a long, long way and works well for many applications but for more complex applications such as Pocket Informant the limitations are more visible. If you are an iOS calendar and Reminders user with Pocket Informant you can simply skip the Informant Siri Shortcuts and use the normal iOS Calendar and Reminders commands to input data into Pocket Informant. For further information please open a case to support and preface it with “Siri Shortcuts Advanced” that will route the case differently and you will get a more detailed response.
I’ve just realised that Informant 5 looks different on larger phones. iPhones like 6s or SE have the infamous garbage “L menu” which appears when you tap the lower right corner, with settings on the upper left. An iPhone XR I’m trying now instead has all links at the bottom – basically the same UI we had with PI 4. Mysteriously, my iPad still has the crap L menus even though it obiously has a large screen.
Is there any way to switch from one user interface to the other? Or it depends on the device? Thanks