SMS Notifications for BatchBook To-Dos (Thanks to Google Calendar)
- Posted August 19th, 2009
- Filed under: How We Do It, Using BatchBook
While doing some testing, I was pretty happy to get that SMS notification right there. Why? Because it came from BatchBook (in a roundabout way).
A while back, a customer wrote in looking for SMS notifications for his BatchBook To-Dos. This is something we originally planned to do, but never really got to it. Finally, I figured there must be a service out there that would take an iCalendar feed and push it to SMS. Turns out, the winner was a service we rely on quite heavily around here — Google Calendar.
Step 1: Get your BatchBook To-Dos into Google Calendar
To get your BatchBook To-Dos into Google Calendar, you need to click the “subscribe” button under your To-Do List to grab the iCalendar feed. Here’s what it looks like:
After copying the feed, paste it into Google Calendar by choosing “Add by URL”. You’re now subscribed to your To-Dos!
Step 2: Set Up Notifications via Your Mobile Phone
You can then open the notifications page for the new calendar (see image). Once there, the first thing you want to do is select “Set up your mobile phone to receive notifications”. Here, you’ll enter your mobile phone number and Google will send you a confirmation code (via SMS) to enter into Google Calendar. Once that is done, you are all set to receive SMS notifications for any Google Calendar.
On that same page — in the “Event Reminders” section — you can choose how you want to be notified (in this case, “SMS”) and how soon before each event (1 day, 1 hour, etc.).
And there you have it. You’ll now get your BatchBook To-Dos delivered via SMS!
I am trying to import batchbook to dos into google calendars using batchbook ical url, and it tells me that it could not fetch url…
Thanks
Angel T
Hello Angel… are you using the feed that looks like
I just tested on a separate account and it worked. Curious if it’s still giving you a problem. Thanks!
Hi,
Sounds like a neat feature! When I go to set notifications, though, I don’t have SMS as an option…just email or pop-up. Am I missing something or has G just changed their options?
When I do this, it says “We could not parse the calendar at the URL requested.” Anyone else having this trouble?
What if we want notifications going to a alternative email address (not our Google email)?
You can set up your email notifications to go to any email address. This post talks about a work-around for getting SMS notifications for your Batchbook to-dos, which in this case does require a Google Account (for Google Calendar).
Just to note, we are planning SMS notifications for the new version of Batchbook.