[srotman]

I'm sorry if I sound ridiculous but I'm posting this message because I've literally been searching for a way to deal with what I consider to be a major flaw in BlackBerries for almost two years now.

I come from the world of Nokias where I was very happy, but decided to make the jump to BlackBerry with the hopes that it would help me stay organized (read: I'm VERY disorganized!). What I have come to find is that a simple feature doesn't exist for BlackBerries that I came to rely on in my Nokias. I have used 8700's, Pearls and Curves, and it seems that no one at RIM cares about this feature. The incredibly complex feature I speak of is as follows:

... CUSTOM REMINDERS!!!

Is this a major project, something so difficult for a company like RIM to implement into their device and it's software?

For example, on my Nokia phones I had a "Reminder" application that served the same purpose as the BlackBerry Tasks application. I would set a reminder, which by the way was ingeniously designed to ask me if the reminder was an appointment, a scheduled call to be made, a birthday, an anniversary or other. Why don't we have these options? Do business people, the people RIM designed BlackBerries for, not have birthdays or anniversaries? Better yet, when I chose anniversary or birthday it asked me the year the person was born/couple was married, and would tell me how they were or what anniversary it was when it reminded me. Why don't we have this?

I'm getting side tracked. Back to the problem...

So I would setup a reminder to go off on a certain day at a certain time. I could choose if it was recurring (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.). And the best feature of all was that when the reminder went off on my phone, I was presented with two options: "Dismiss" or "Remind Again"!!! What? Remind again? What's that? Simple. You choose remind again, and then you're given a LIST OF OPTIONS to choose from to indicate when you'd like to be reminded again.

But BlackBerries already have a snooze option you say? That's crap. I don't want a static option set so that I tell it I want that task or calendar appointment to snooze for a precise time frame (e.g. 1 day) every time I tell it to snooze! Perhaps I have a task that I set to remind today. When it goes off I want to tell it to remind again in an hour. I'll do the same thing the next hour if I still can't get to it. And if I decide today's not a good day, I want to say remind again in 1 day, or 2 days, etc.

With my Nokia I could CHOOSE when to remind me again. I need reminders, and it seems as though BlackBerries were not designed to be dynamic and customizable devices. It seems as though you do things one way or no way at all.

Can anyone else share this frustration with me or am I really being that picky here? This problem seems to be relevant to tasks and calendar entries, and it drives me crazy! I know you can go back into an appointment's details or a tasks details and change the snooze, but that's ridiculous! That's way too many steps. And when you're in a hurry and you forget to go back in and reschedule the reminder or snooze, you'll end up not doing the task or missing an appointment, and then what?

[Dubdub]

Maybe you need to go back to the Nokia?

[BallHawk3]

your picky

[option94]

Wirelessly posted (At&t curve)

There may be others that feel this way, but your definitely the minority.

[ikasen]

I think you need to talk to someone about this problem.

[JSanders]

Have you looked for a third party application to fulfill your needs, or will you only be happy if the BB does it in the native OS applications?

[kjjb0204]

1. Maybe try BBAlerts
2. Maybe PocketDay?
3. Maybe realize that hitting snooze so many times is what's causing you to be so disorganized - not trying to insult you, but maybe you need to take a hard look at why you are so disorganized. When your tasks from one day start running into the next, disorganization is unavoidable. Learn to prioritize and how to manage your time more effectively. There really are some great online and printed courses out there on how to improve your time management and organization skills. Try to fix the root cause instead of using a band-aid approach all the time. Start with something like www.franklincovey.com and look around for other courses. Good luck!

[option94]

Wirelessly posted (At&t curve)

Originally Posted by kjjb0204

1. Maybe try BBAlerts
2. Maybe PocketDay?
3. Maybe realize that hitting snooze so many times is what's causing you to be so disorganized - not trying to insult you, but maybe you need to take a hard look at why you are so disorganized. When your tasks from one day start running into the next, disorganization is unavoidable. Learn to prioritize and how to manage your time more effectively. There really are some great online and printed courses out there on how to improve your time management and organization skills. Try to fix the root cause instead of using a band-aid approach all the time. Start with something like www.franklincovey.com and look around for other courses. Good luck!

I was thinking along similar lines.

[takeshi]

Meh -- never been an issue for me. The calendar entries are more than sufficient. I guess it's a YMMV thing though I haven't seen very many complaints over the years.

You won't get an instant response (or any response) this way but have you even tried emailing ?

[FF2]

I agree to some extent with the original post. I merely want the ability to COPY an appt. On my HP200lx I was able to schedule a doc's appt two or 3 days in advance - an early warning so to speak but then copy it to the day of the ACTUAL appt with an hour warning.

The BB does NOT allow such copying. I have to re-enter all of the information for the second warning. (I know I can copy each separate data aspect separately - I just want to select the entire appt from (say) Monday and go to Wed and copypaste it.)

[Phranc]

Just open the event and change the start date. No need to copy anything.

[gp20018]

Originally Posted by kjjb0204

1. Maybe try BBAlerts
2. Maybe PocketDay?
3. Maybe realize that hitting snooze so many times is what's causing you to be so disorganized - not trying to insult you, but maybe you need to take a hard look at why you are so disorganized. When your tasks from one day start running into the next, disorganization is unavoidable. Learn to prioritize and how to manage your time more effectively. There really are some great online and printed courses out there on how to improve your time management and organization skills. Try to fix the root cause instead of using a band-aid approach all the time. Good luck!

Hi

I work with clients on organizational efficiency.

Srotman is far from unusual - few people organize their time for maximum productivity - it is not a personal 'fault' it is the nature of the way business runs today & in particular the speed at which business is carried out now that there are few situations where people can't be reached due to the numerous methods of communication now open to us (phone, email, text, fax etc.) - even outside 'normal' working hours. Mainly thanks to the growing range of technology & telephony from Microsoft, HP, IBM, Nokia, RIM et al. Speed of business has its great points but it also has its drawbacks. Most of us try & cram far more in to an average day than we can realistically process.

To Srotman's point about the ability to select multiple reminder options, it is in fact far more efficient to be able to do this. Microsoft carried out time & motion studies before they released Outlook & implemented the facility from the earliest versions & they did so for a good reason. If you receive a reminder which you can't process at that specific time it may be that you won't actually be able to process it for the next hour, the next day or the next week - it will depend on the nature of the reminder & what you are actually doing at the time. Having to go into the calendar entry to select a reminder other than the default to avoid a reminder going off every (say) 15 minutes whilst you are on a call or in a meeting, is actually highly 'inefficient' & distracting.

Its my personal opinion, but I am with Srotman on this one & would love to see a BB option to quickly/easily select the length of time by which to delay a given reminder. If you don't agree with 'me' then perhaps consider taking a leaf out of Microsoft's book - you may not like everything they do (& they certainly cause frustration at times) but they have spent millions on researching how we all work & how to help us become more efficient.

..... GP

[gp20018]

Originally Posted by option94

Wirelessly posted (At&t curve)

There may be others that feel this way, but your definitely the minority.

Hi

Per my other post, I don't actually think Srotman 'is' in the minority. I have come across this same complaint/request several times with my corporate BB clients....

Unfortunately it is one of those issues that people tend to put up with rather than take time to formally raise as its momentarily aggravating - albeit a frequent occurrence.

.... GP

[gp20018]

Originally Posted by srotman

I'm sorry if I sound ridiculous but I'm posting this message because I've literally been searching for a way to deal with what I consider to be a major flaw in BlackBerries for almost two years now.

I come from the world of Nokias where I was very happy, but decided to make the jump to BlackBerry with the hopes that it would help me stay organized (read: I'm VERY disorganized!). What I have come to find is that a simple feature doesn't exist for BlackBerries that I came to rely on in my Nokias. I have used 8700's, Pearls and Curves, and it seems that no one at RIM cares about this feature. The incredibly complex feature I speak of is as follows:

... CUSTOM REMINDERS!!!

Is this a major project, something so difficult for a company like RIM to implement into their device and it's software?

For example, on my Nokia phones I had a "Reminder" application that served the same purpose as the BlackBerry Tasks application. I would set a reminder, which by the way was ingeniously designed to ask me if the reminder was an appointment, a scheduled call to be made, a birthday, an anniversary or other. Why don't we have these options? Do business people, the people RIM designed BlackBerries for, not have birthdays or anniversaries? Better yet, when I chose anniversary or birthday it asked me the year the person was born/couple was married, and would tell me how they were or what anniversary it was when it reminded me. Why don't we have this?

I'm getting side tracked. Back to the problem...

So I would setup a reminder to go off on a certain day at a certain time. I could choose if it was recurring (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.). And the best feature of all was that when the reminder went off on my phone, I was presented with two options: "Dismiss" or "Remind Again"!!! What? Remind again? What's that? Simple. You choose remind again, and then you're given a LIST OF OPTIONS to choose from to indicate when you'd like to be reminded again.

But BlackBerries already have a snooze option you say? That's crap. I don't want a static option set so that I tell it I want that task or calendar appointment to snooze for a precise time frame (e.g. 1 day) every time I tell it to snooze! Perhaps I have a task that I set to remind today. When it goes off I want to tell it to remind again in an hour. I'll do the same thing the next hour if I still can't get to it. And if I decide today's not a good day, I want to say remind again in 1 day, or 2 days, etc.

With my Nokia I could CHOOSE when to remind me again. I need reminders, and it seems as though BlackBerries were not designed to be dynamic and customizable devices. It seems as though you do things one way or no way at all.

Can anyone else share this frustration with me or am I really being that picky here? This problem seems to be relevant to tasks and calendar entries, and it drives me crazy! I know you can go back into an appointment's details or a tasks details and change the snooze, but that's ridiculous! That's way too many steps. And when you're in a hurry and you forget to go back in and reschedule the reminder or snooze, you'll end up not doing the task or missing an appointment, and then what?

You are not alone on this one - see: blackberryforums.com/general-8800-series-discussion/117514-why-no-multiple-snooze-options-calander-alerts.html?highlight=Snooze+reminders or blackberryforums.com/general-8300-series-discussion-curve/128126-outlook-reminder-snooze.html?highlight=Snooze+reminders

... GP

[spbbp]

I agree with the OP. Adjustable snooze time is highly desirable and should be simple enough for a company like RIM. Hope they will add this feature soon...

[JSanders]

Don't count on it.

Get BB Alarms Pro instead, much more configurable and customizable.

[customshopkv1]

I have been using Pocket Informant to organize all my stuff and have been happy. I used PI8 on my XV6800 (WM) and this one for Blackberry is just as good.

[andy_k]

I don't see a huge issue here - just move the calendar event to a new time/day. surely that's the same as a custom snooze?

[Johnny909]

Originally Posted by customshopkv1

I have been using Pocket Informant to organize all my stuff and have been happy. I used PI8 on my XV6800 (WM) and this one for Blackberry is just as good.

Thanks for the tip. Been to WebIS site and this looks like something that I could use, everyday.

[aapierre]

I'm with the OP on this one.

But having read the rest of the thread I'll add this.

You guys telling the OP to get on with it were pretty helpful there.

The suggestion about buying an additional after market bit of software is going to be the solution.

The Nokia task management software which comes as standard with their phones has shown a company like RIM up, of that there is no doubt. What it shows is that they may be pretty good on a lot of things but not at all of them.