Starting tomorrow I’m back in the lecture hall, and that means I need to make sure to put my phone in silent mode at the right times. Traditionally that’s something you do – or forget to do – manually, but with Tasker already using my phone more than I do, I thought I’d have it handle it.
Most of the Tasker profiles I have are complicated enough that it turns people off of Tasker, and things like chopping up XML files into pieces to get at weather data is not exactly as simple as installing a weather widget. When it comes to calendar data, however, it’s so simple to set up profiles that it almost doesn’t feel like Tasker. That’s because Calendar Entry is available as a state context, which ties directly into the calendar that your device is set up to sync with. You can specify things like calendar name, title, location, and description, and Tasker will then activate the profile when those criteria are met. You can then assign actions you want run when the profile becomes active.
As an example, my profile is set up to be active when there’s an active calendar entry from the calendar School. Only one action (task) is tied to it: Silent mode. All I then have to do is make sure that the calendar has all my classes in it, and the phone will automatically go into (and out of) silent mode based on whether or not one of those entries are active.
Putting the phone in silent mode based on calendar events is however not something you specifically need Tasker to do. I plan on expanding the task tied to the calendar event to also do other things, like putting the event location (room number) in a widget on my lock screen.
What’s great about this is how easy it is to set up. Someone with no former Tasker experience shouldn’t have too many issues setting up fairly advanced profiles, which is definitely a breath of fresh air compared to the types of Tasker profiles I normally write about.
Hi Andreas,
I just found your posts on Tasker on this website and i’m very impressed by your work. I just wanted to thank you for this !!!
I’m a great fan of Tasker program and now, with your excellents posts, i’ll trying new stuff.
Thanks a lot for your job.
Np, great to hear they’re benefitting people!
can u please upload the profile that speacks weather evri morning? with respect gabi!
Fantastic resource website for a Tasker noob like me, thank you!
Question: Can I have a specific text (like “zzz”) as a criteria in the Title field to be the option that will make Tasker turn on the Silent mode? Do I have to inbedd that text with for example ” ” or is it enough by just being present in the title field in my calendar?
(I would like to tie the “zzz” with what ever text I put in the title field)
You can use text in the title field that will filter the calendar entries. If you want to use some text that can be present anywhere in the title, put it in stars (*). E.g. *zzz* in the title field would match calendar entries like: zzz, hello zzz world, I’m going to zzz, zzz is what I’ll do now. Ommitting the stars would only make the first of those work.
Works as a charm, as you already know of course!
A big thank you for the quick respons, have a nice day Andreas.
Np, let me know if you run into any other problems
I am trying to match an oncall entry in my calendar. Do I need to specify a time context in addition to the Calendar context?
On Monday I went on call and tasker enabled my alerts. On Tuesday it disabled my alerts even though I have an on call entry in my calendar.
No, the calendar context is for when a calendar event is active on the device, so it’s not dependant on anythingother than the calendar. The event has to enabled for the entire duration though, as it will revert the settings when the event is over unless you disable that. The system has been working flawlessly for me, so eier it’s a sw/device specific bug or something else is wrong
Ok I have been trying to figure out how to get tasker to make a popup when any changes or new entries are made to the calendar. My assistant is always making changes or adding things to my calendar and i dont find out about then till they are due unless i constantly check the calendar myself. I want tasker to create a popup telling what she did or added (the event).
I have the task figured out (I think), but it is the profile that’s killing it for me. How do i set up the profile to look for NEW entries only to the calendar for any day not just the current day and trigger the task. The profile I have now only makes the popup at the time of the event.
Thank you for all the help.
Unfortunately that cannot be done with this part of Tasker. It can be done by reading the XML file if your calendar is stored in google calendar, but we’re talking a massively complicated setup here. You’d basically have to read a version of the XML file that contains all entries, split it, use a For loop to process it and match it up against an internal database the system itself uses, and then act accordingly. As far as difficulty goes, this ranks up there with setups I haven’t mentioned on the site in fear of people asking me how to do it.
I’m using the built-in calender in android that is synced to my exchange mail server, not sure if that uncomplicates things or makes it worse.
I’m starting to think it would be easier to get a new assistant. LOL
Basically makes it worse, afaik. I wouldn’t recommend wasting time trying.
If it helps, this is the kind of nugget you’ll know how to make once you’ve wasted many, many, many hours on Tasker
Ok, thank you for the input. I will set aside this “nugget” till i am more familiar with tasker.
thanks again for the help, keep them coming.
P.S. what would it take for you to “mention” the setups you just hinted at?!?!?!?
I occasionally put teasers or videos on my twitter or youtube accounts. This has showed up there too. It’s an upgrade to my todo list system, rebuilt from the group to use arrays and whatnot. It might show up on the site at some point, but only after a guide part explaining some of the things used, like For loops and arrays.
One thought I had that may help in your situation is to have your assistant add a certain keyword to any entry that she modifies. That way you can set your tasker profile to only look for that keyword and it’ll only notify you of the entries that are changed. Once you viewed the modified calendar entry you’d have to remove that keyword in order to keep Tasker from finding it all over again, but it may be a relatively simple solution. If you’re using Tasker, you’re on an Android device, and if you’re on an Android device, Gmail calendar is the best option (IMHO.) Hope this helps.
Hey,
I am trying to link tasked with minimalistic text widget so that it show the calendar events. But what I really wanna do is that, the widget should start to show the event “one hour before” the event is starting. The text should change back to something else, may be random quotes as the event ends.
The method in this article is only for triggering actions when calendar events actually begin. For what you want, you need a much more complicated system that gathers calendar data on its own. Some instructions for that are here, but it has to be adapter for your needs: http://www.pocketables.com/2012/09/beginners-guide-to-tasker-part-4-variable-data-processing.html
I’ve been trying to set up a profile similar to this with a context that will read when I have events on any of my calendars except one. Is there any short way to do that?
I want my phone to go silent when I have a ‘busy’ event, but I’ve imported a calendar that has all-day events that default to ‘busy’ and I want to get around that.
Have you tried all the different options you have available in the calendar entry context? I see several options there that are potential solutions
Ha. After looking at another of your posts, I saw that I could use multiple tags under the same option heading. I didn’t realize that. So I can just list out the calendars I want it to apply to. Thanks!
Yep, that will do it