Informant 5 for iOS 5.03 beta 1, beta 2, and beta 3 are now with beta testers (as of Feb 10, 2017)
[Post updated Feb 10 with beta 3 info]
Beta 1 on 5.03 on Informant 5 for iOS is out to Beta testers as of Jan 9, 2017. Here are some of the items that we plan to have addressed or fixed. Version 5.03 will continue to improve stability and various aspects of our user interface. Here are just a few of the items being addressed in this release:
Beta 1 – Sent to Beta Testers Jan 9, 2017.
- Force-touch change of start time on Apple Event isn’t reliable
- Agenda view intermittently “loses” (or ignores) the calendar filter
- Applying trigger with subtasks might crashing
- Crash when picking a parent tasks from a filtered list
- Pictures embedded in notes not syncing with Informant Sync
- Fix: Force touch to remove start date on task also removed due date
- Fix: Crash in Contacts View
- Localization Improvements
- A handful of time zone related formatting / logic / UI issues
Beta 2 – Sent to Beta Testers as of Feb 2, 2017
- LOTS of improvements to search view
- Fixed crash that could occur when tapping on a recurring event in search results
- Fixed crash that could occur when contacts appeared in search results
- Tapping on a search result now shows you the summary popover instead of taking you to the editor (to be more consistent with how all other views work)
- Tapping on a Birthday Event in search results now shows the contact record for that person
- Search results better handle the situation when there’s a data change while search results are showing
- The search results list should be a lot less “refreshy / jumpy”
- Events in search results are now in chronological order (it was previously sorting All Day events to the top, then starting over with timed events)
- Search results now automatically scroll to the closest event to “today” after they are done loading
- Numerous improvements to the Today Widget
- Tapping weather and the ‘+’ button no longer take you to PI4 if it’s installed
- Numerous stability improvements
- Numerous internal improvements to sizing, redraw, etc
- When collapsing the widget, we now change back to “Today” instead of leaving you on the selected day (this makes more sense because the week row disappears in collapsed mode)
- The widget would not reliably show you the “More…” indicator if there was too much data to fit within the widget
- Force touch on the view picker button now takes you to Focus View
- Logging into an Evernote sync account would loop you back to PI4 if it was installed
- Rotating your device to landscape would hang / crash Informant if you were in the Month Detail View
- Fixed issue where sometimes restoring a backup wouldn’t work as expected
- Backing up settings works as expected again
- The notes editor would shrink if you rotated back/forth on a Plus-sized phone
- The notes editor would shrink to make room for the keyboard even when you weren’t using the on-screen keyboard (i.e. when you use an external keyboard). It also didn’t completely handle the “split keyboard” on iPad very well.
- Plus-sized iPhones were very inconsistent about how they presented the event & task editor while in landscape (sometimes it was full screen, sometimes it was presented as a “page”)
- Fixed issue with saving the change to “Project Type” in the project editor
- Fixed issue where notes cells would appear blank if you set your Task Row mode to Background Color
Plus, these fixes were done as part of M9, and 5.03 beta 2 is inheriting them: - Fixed issue where a default task due date setting of “Next Friday” would really apply “Next Thursday”
- Fixed issue where creating a new Reminder list/project within Informant might not create it in the Apple Reminders App
- Fixed crash when applying a template that contained a location in both the event and task editors
- New Next Action logic:
- Parent / child tasks are treated more like “sub-projects” now. If you set a parent task to “Active”, then the first subtask will become the Next Action.
- This means you can now have multiple next actions within a given project (the first task in the project along with the first subtask of each “active” parent task)
- During automatic Next Action promotion, if the first task in a project is a parent task, it will now set that parent task to Active and the first subtask will become the Next Action
- Next action promotion now stops if it hits a task that is in the Hold or Planning status
Beta 3 – was sent to testers as of Feb 10th.
- NEW: View Picker buttons can now be customized with a new setting (Settings -> View Settings -> Enable Views)
- The Time Picker better handles setting times in other time zones (before it would be inconsistent when what it showed in the picker wheel vs what was displayed in the editor’s date/time row)
- In the editor, selecting a calendar that is locked to a time zone now properly sets the time zone of the date/time pickers
- Sometimes selecting a saved filter wouldn’t properly apply the filter
- Hitting the “Today” button in the column week view would always put “Today” in the first column regardless of your “First day of week” setting
- Column week view would not automatically redraw itself when you changed the First Day of Week setting
- The App Badge was not always being set correctly for “today” (sometimes it would get set to “tomorrow’s” value)
- Fixed issue where you might sometimes see “ghost” duplicate events when editing a repeating event on the Agenda View
- Fixed issue when completing a checklist item on the Agenda View where all checklist items would disappear until you collapsed/re-expanded the checklist
- The “Move Calendar Data” button was broken in the calendar editor
- Sometimes time zone labels could be incorrectly displayed / overlapping on an event row
- Address various minor UI issues
- A few stability improvements
- Date Time picker fixes
- fix: inconsistent times w/ other time zone
- fix: toggle all day flag, changes date
- fix: alarm bug when collapsing date picker
Expected Schedule:
To Beta Testers:
-Beta 1: Week of Jan 9, 2017 -Done
-Beta 2: To beta Testers Feb 2, 2017 – Done
-Beta 3: To beta Testers Feb 10
-(expected) Submit to Apple: Feb 16, 2017
Informant for iOS 5.1
As soon as 5.03 is submitted to Apple, we will be working on a 5.1. Here are the main areas we’ll be focusing on for Informant 5.1
- Lots of improvements to new Date/Time Picker
- Improvements to new View Picker
- Left handed navigation
- Improvements to new Trigger feature
- A native watchOS 3 app (complete with a watch face complication)
- Fix for change Google is making to OAuth on April 20th change that would otherwise break our Google Sync.
Please note: 5.03 & 5.01 are active development projects. All dates and specific items referenced here a subject to change. We share the detail here as a convenience to the potentially affected users.
Hej Team,
and what about smart filter with tags? Waiting for such a long time for that in PI and DI…
Missing it on the todo-List…
Best
Rolf
Here is a link to the portal where we are taking votes on enhancements. Your issue is here:
http://feedback.webis.net/forums/562453-pocket-informant-5-for-ios/suggestions/17342722-smart-filter-tag
There is a documented error syncing google tasks where PI does not sync a removed due date from the task. Is this fix included?
Hi Keith,
Suggest to use a new app icon for Informant 5.1 if you want people to have a fresh impression on the app and moving forward. Thanks.
I actually laughed out loud while sitting down on the toilet, when I saw the PI5 app icon the first time. You can interpret that any way you like 🙂
So with all the changes at fanatic are we going to see informant 1 format anytime soon? I know at one point you estimated fall 2016. That’s already past.
Wayne,
We are working on Desktop Mac Informant 1.0 in between cycles on Informant iOS 5.03 & 5.1. Beta testers will see a build within 3 weeks. We are hoping for a 1.0 release 5-12 weeks from now.
P.S. Please know all of my date comments here in this blog are based on our best intentions. Discovery of bugs in beta, etc can push out dates.
Keith,
Informant 5 is getting far too many 1 star reviews on the App Store worldwide
https://sensortower.com/ios/us/fanatic-software-inc/app/informant-5-agenda-task-planner-with-email/1141040577/#review-history?reviews
Some people are saying they are locked out of informant 4. I haven’t had that problem but I assume you’re investigating this issue.
Keith,
The upcoming version 5.1 can make or break the once famous Informant product. Please handle it with extra care. If it still cannot meet the core expectation of existing loyal customers as an effective calendaring, scheduling and event management tool, it would be even more difficult for you to catch up the user community and get buy in from them. Since it is now in annual subscription model, people who already paid do not expect to wait for product improvement for half a year to get back on track. Normally, they are expecting the product worth the price they paid right the way instead of funding the bug fixing or experimenting. Besides, if the functions such as tasks, events, notes, contact got disabled/lockup remotely due to licensing issue, and people cannot access their data via the disabled functions, be aware that people may associate this phenomenon similar to ransomware. Informant 5.1 is the chance to get things right, please make it right. Thanks.
Tasks raised in Informant 5 on either an iPhone or iPad do NOT sync.
Tasks raised on my iMac do.
Using the Informant Sync tool which I have used for two years with no issues.
Did not have a problem in version 4.
Bill,
It sounds like you might have an issue that support can take care of. Please report this to support.
Thank you
I was very disappointed with I5, and remain so today. The first off is that I5 crashes randomly when putting in a new event or task on the iPhone. This happens so often now it is embarrassing. Dark mode is completely useless if you edit using the Apple editor (come on, black text on a black background should not have passed initial QA). Startup crashes, random sync errors, the list goes on. Functionally, it offers nothing that I4 had been doing without issues for years before hand. Yes it looks pretty but ETA is now hived off to another screen (why?), getting to another view is always two taps away and it almost always flips to a month or week view when it restarts.
My biggest gripe is the support. OK, Google Groups is for feedback and Alex was right to make this the case, but to report the faults is little short of Dickensian. I have reported issues on many occasions and ended up ignored (or at least that is what it felt like). My UK tech genius who put me onto this platform three years ago has said that I need to be patient – weeks is not patient, in the software world, it is an eternity.
Subscription to get what I paid for in I4 – what the *%^ … I will subscribe (reluctantly) if the product works, but right now it does not so it is like asking me for money so you can fix it on the fly.
Seriously, all the hype on the lead up and then … nothing. I learned about I5 from a casual search through news on Twitter. We were promised something big to follow the success of I4 – and this is it. Very, very disappointed and I feel very let down. Support is all-but non-existent unless “We know” or “It’s being fixed” is the new answer for all issues raised.
5.1 had better be solid or I walk – no worries for your business, but if I am in the majority, I would be looking for an exit plan right now. I5 should never have been released in its current state, it denigrates the success of I4 and ridicules those ambassadors you have outside the UK who recommend your products.
MajorIzWater,
Your criticism of app crashes is totally fair and we absolutely need to fix them. We have released 2 (5.10 & 5.02) fixes since the initial launch and have a 3rd that is in beta testing now (5.03). You may be able to get the beta build if one of your issues is part of the fix. Please contact support for that.
I must admit, I am surprised by your negative comments about our support team. I do hear a majority of positive comments, but your experience is your own. Would you mind telling me which email address you used? I don’t see any tickets associated with sir*********@icloud.com .
I do agree, 5.1 had better be solid. We are all pulling for that and are working hard every day to make that happen.
We have addressed the subscription topic numerous times in the various blog posts, so I’ll let those comments stand for themselves for now.
I have heard a few different comments on our marketing about 5.1. Some people have said we shouldn’t market it until it is fixed, and others have said they are mad they didn’t hear about it… So, we are holding back on a few things until it is all polished up better. We are in what I would call a “soft launch” right now.
We won’t let you down. We will fix this issues that the app has to make this the BEST power organizer app available.
Please change Informant 5.03 app icon back to a young and lively image, the current one looks dull and lonely. Thanks.
Can remove the Informant 5 “splash screen” as well. We know what we are launching. Thanks.
Takeaction,
The splash screen comment is fair. We have found that certain devices have a longer load time than others. Some users on iPhone 6 have reported longer wait times. We have a few things in mind, including going directly to a view rather than the splash screen.
FYI- the splash screen actually does not slow down the load time, it just makes the load time painfully apparent. We could go to another view and the screen would still take as long to load. The core issue here is speeding up the actual load time of the app.
P.S. If you keep the app open in the background the load time is virtually immediate. The “load time” issue you mentioned only seems to affect the 1st time that informant is opened.
I have been an advocate of PI for years and never understood why it has not received better acclaim for IOS calendars. PI 5 has been by far the most annoying and frustrating upgrade I have experienced since using this app. It is not intuitive, which iPhone users appreciate. The date/time picker is ridiculously worthless. I am in sales and frequently schedule appointments in front of a scheduler or in a rapid fashion. Nothing about PI 5 happens quickly with this new format. after reading the blogs and responses i am glad I never deleted PI4 as I am gong back to that until the simple things get corrected. Generally, I am one to not post or offer comments unless I feel compelled by the poor offering for the product or service. In this case, PI5 has taken a huge step backwards in making this my default calendar app. Please rectify.
Stephen,
The date picker is getting addressed in the upcoming 5.1 release. We are planning to have that ready in April. In the meantime, 5.03 addresses many other issues and went to Apple this week. We are hoping to be able to release it by Thursday this week.
Hey there,
Excited about all the new stuff! I’ve been using Informant since like 2003. I started on Windows mobile, then Android, now I’m on iOS and really liking the OSX desktop.
I love how it integrated contacts into the tasks and projects to be catagorized.
Anyway I just upgraded to 5 and noticed that all of the categories/groups were missing?
Help?
We probably need to get more info on that – PI5 does support Contact Categories/Groups. What device are you on?
Whoops.. forgot to say that Contacts appeared to be missing categorization now.
I’m really looking forward to this update! (Nice way of saying, “what the heck?!?!) 🙂
I’m also looking forward to this update. Hope to see a new app icon design as well
Was 5.03 sent to Apple?
Are you still on track for 5.1 by Halloween?
What? No kidding! Do you mean version 5.1takes 8 months from now till Halloween to deliver?! That’s way too long. By Easter is more sensible from a commercial point of view, otherwise people will go for alternatives. Keith, do you have a timetable?
It won’t take 8 months. I think tab was trying to be dramatic by saying that.
5.03 was sent to Apple on Friday. We are planning a release Tues/Wed, or Thurs this week.
5.1 should be released in April.
So as I read the “update” I cannot see any fix for Dark Mode so that’s going to be sidelined, the constant crashing when adding a task with a location – nope cannot see that either, Dark Mode and Apple editor – well according to one of your more vocal supporters here in the UK, that cannot be fixed as it is Apple’s closed code. So what are we seeing for the next release (assuming it actually happens)? I read lots about technical stuff, but as far as I am concerned, does it work with basic functionality such as creating an event or task without crashing? I am not technical – I just work for people who try to save lives every day and I4 worked. I5 does not – simple. I have paid for I5 and wished that I hadn’t. I am certainly not rolling it out as a recommendation until I get confidence from our support genius, and he is less than happy with the whole I5 package to the point that he has gone back to I4 but apparently this was a nightmare to do as well.
Ignoring the merger/takeover/whatever – the flagship Pocket Informant product has been seriously damaged as far as market perception is concerned. It was rushed out the door with basic functionality so badly flawed it is bordering on unfit for purpose. Here we are in mid-February and the app is still not working – that is a disgrace when people pay for it.
The consultant that I have employed for nearly a decade has been one of your biggest advocates here, and he is no longer telling us to ‘wait’ or ‘be patient’. He is evaluating new products for us and if they prove to be a better and more reliable fit, I’m telling my organisation (one of the largest global employers) that we no longer support this app. I’m tired of waiting and tired of reading about jam tomorrow. Get real or get out. I’m rapidly coming to the opinion that ‘out’ is going to be a safer bet. This merger/takeover has ruined what was once a world class product. Reading the feedback on the App Store merely reinforces this.