This is how the same natural language entry differs via native Todoist and Drafts REST API. Notice the alarm clock is missing on the Drafts entry.
That’s what’s happening for me as well.
I’m pretty sure this is a bug Todoist has to fix. The quick task add API does not create the reminders like you would expect. The /task API can be used and has an auto_reminder property that makes Todoist create the reminders - but it does not do natural language parsing like the quick add API, so would not really be a good substitute.
They seem to have acknowledged it as being an issue on their side, once they grasped it not working as you could reasonably expect. As per the above, hope it gets fixed, but not overly-confident it will happen any time soon.
I’ll keep using Dave’s QuickAdd V3 action if I need a reminder
I’m convinced that something changed in the last few months on Todoist’s end. I’m almost sure that tasks with date/time didn’t used to show the little alarm clock, even when created natively. However, they would still ping a notification if you had the appropriate configuration in settings.
It was the case that alarm clocks would only appear against tasks which you had manually set an extra reminder for i.e., as a prompt some time ahead of the due date.
Incidentally, around November time, Todoist added another criteria for setting a reminder. It used to be either ‘at x date, y time’ or location. You can now also opt for ‘x timeframe before task due date’ if there is a date/time already set for the task. This was just a stealth change; no real mention of it anywhere.
Final point on this, the reason I became aware of the issue was because, suddenly, I wasn’t getting notifications coming through, even for some long-standing repeating date/time tasks. They had obviously been pinging notifications before. An example was a weekly task that had been created back in 2016; the task didn’t have an alarm clock next to it upon checking.
To ensure that I didn’t get caught again, I created a filter to list all repeating, and then re-keyed the task and ‘repeat cycle/time’ to ensure they all had an auto-generated alarm clock next to them, thus ensuring they conformed to the ‘new’ methodology going forward.
So whether those tasks that fell through the cracks were originally created via the API and hadn’t been ‘upgraded,’ I’m not sure. Whichever way you skin it, something screwy has been happening on Todoist’s side.
This is bringing back some memories. As @agiletortoise said earlier in the thread, I created this action before Drafts had built in support but I carried on using it because of reminders. The Quick Add API call requires you to separate the reminder part (and the notes part). In the action it works for specific times, but I haven’t been able to find a syntax for times relative to the due time.
This seems to be the same for the Todoist app and website. It does recognise things line “10 minutes before” but it seems to apply it to the due time rather than adding a separate reminder
I’ve followed up several times this month with Todoist, but only today got any kind of a response. Here’s the timeline I’ve been given:
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12/17/2019 - Our devs have confirmed that this is a bug and has decided to add it back
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1/23/2020 - Support followed up with the devs again. On the same day, our dev confirmed they’ll discuss this with the next backend developer meeting.
I’ve been advised that I should get an update on Fri (31 Jan) from Todoist Support in terms of next steps to save me chasing. I’ll obviously pursue if I don’t hear back.
So in summary, 8 weeks after first reporting, fingers crossed, we’ll get some tangibles on when this will likely be resolved.
Thanks for following up. Sounds like they are working on it.
I got this back:
UPDATE: The issue has now been been fully resolved and the reminder will be created as expected.
But, if you try it with Drafts, it hasn’t.
I got that same response. I’ve tried it with Drafts and Fantastical 3 and no reminder is created.
Can you give me an example that works in Todoist, but not in Drafts using the action?
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do anything, because it might still be an API issue, but I’ll have a look
Dave
It’s not an issue with the action but the API. Todoist was supposed to make a change that would create a reminder when adding a task via the QuickAdd API but so far it isn’t working.
The weird thing is, this Alfred Workflow, IS now adding the reminder (alarm clock icon) whereas it wasn’t before being advised that everything was now OK.
I’m pretty confused by all of this.
Here you go…
Are you explicitly setting a reminder in the action? i.e. “Do something tomorrow at 10:00 --reminder 9:45”
Or are you relying on the default Todoist reminder settings (e.g. 30 mins before for everything)
No. In all cases it’s typing the same thing at the end, i.e., wed 9pm. I have my account set up so that for any task with a due date and time set, a reminder gets set with 0 mins offset. So it works via Alfred workflow but not via this Drafts action.
That’s the same thing I’m experiencing. I do not get a reminder created when using the QuickAdd V3 action or the built-in Todoist action. I created a task via Slack’s Todoist integration and it did create a reminder.