Reminders

What it's about

Every event can carry several reminders – each with its own lead time and its own choice of recipients. For every category (say, doctor, school, sport), you can also set household-wide defaults that automatically pre-fill new events.

Why it's here

“I forgot about the parents' evening (Elternabend)” is one of the most common slip-ups in family life. A reminder at the right moment fixes that – but it has to reach the right person. A reminder about your yoga class shouldn't startle your partner, while a wobbly-tooth appointment for your child should reach both parents. And some events need two reminders at once: plan a day ahead, leave an hour ahead.

How it works

Several reminders per event

On an event, you can add as many reminders as you like (up to 5). For each reminder, you choose:

• Offset – e.g. at the start, 30 minutes before, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week.
• Recipients – Only me, Participants (everyone on the event) or Household (all members). On private events that's always just you.
• Channel – A notification arrives with every reminder, whatever the channel: the bell in patchio, and on your lock screen too if you have the patchio app installed. You can turn that off in your profile under “Notifications”. The channel only decides what happens in addition: Notification only (nothing further, this is the default), Notification + timer (a countdown on the dashboard, with a sound), Notification + email (an email), or Notification, timer + email (both).

For series, the reminder list applies to every future occurrence. The email arrives reliably even if no one has the app open (sent within around 1 minute of the reminder time).

Private events: Only you get a reminder for a private event, even if it says Participants or Household, for example from the category default. The choice stays saved and applies again once the event is no longer private. If you make an event private later on, a reminder someone else had already set on it goes only to that person.

Events for selected people: If it says Household, the reminder only goes to the people who can see the event. If you remove someone from the selection, they stop getting the reminder too. Only a reminder they set themselves stays with them.

Who owns a reminder? The person who set it. Anyone in the household can change the setting on the event – but the alarm that's already running can only be switched off by the person who set it. If that's the case, patchio tells you directly (“… someone else set this up”) instead of pretending there's no reminder at all. Ask that person to remove the old reminder.

Default reminders per category

On the Family page (admin area), you'll find the “Default reminders per category” section. There, you set out, for every category (doctor, school, work, …), which reminders new events in that category should automatically get. As soon as you choose the category while creating an event, the reminder list gets pre-filled from the household default. You can adjust or remove it on the event at any time.

Examples

• Doctor default (household setting): 1 day before “Participants” + 2 hours before “Household” – so everyone knows in good time.
• Take the bins out (Thursdays, 18:00, repeating): reminder “1 hour before, Household” – whoever's home first remembers.
• Your yoga class: reminder “30 minutes before, Only me” – no unnecessary ping for anyone else.

Copying default reminders between categories

Under Family → Default reminders per category, you decide which reminders pre-fill new events for each category. Once you've set this up for one category, you can carry it over to another with “Copy from”: click “Copy from” on the target category and choose the source. The target category's reminders are then replaced with a copy.