Calendar Event Reminder FAQ

Is there any trial or demo version?

Sorry, but there is currently no demo or trail version. This is, because it would be much more effort for us to manage both of these versions. If you want to try out CER longer than the Google Play default trial period (15 minutes), just send us an email and we will refund you the money if you are not satisfied.

How do I add events to my calendar?

Here is a tutorial:

I bought your app in Google Play Store, but I cannot download. What can I do?

Why is my payment not accepted?

The Google Play Store is completely run by Google and they are responsible for charges, downloads, authorization, etc.
Please contact them for all kinds of issues associated to the Play Store:

Google Play Store online support and FAQ

Get in contact with Goolge Play Support

Specifically Google Play downloading issues

Alternatively you can buy CER via AndroidPIT.

Why do I get a license warning dialog even though I bought your app?

All licenses of apps you bought are stored in your Google account. Therefore for a working license check the following prerequisite must be met:

  • The Google account that you used when buying CER must be configured on your device
  • Your device needs a working internet connection

The license check is continuously repeated until the license is successfully validated.

Please note: If you are using a backup tool like Titanium or AppMonster to transfer CER to another device, just install the app and please don’t restore the data/preferences. The desired method to transfer the preferences to a new device is by using the export / import feature of CER. You could also restore everything and afterwards go to the Android preferences / installed apps, clear the data of CER and import the settings via CER, but this is not recommended.

Why am I not getting any alarm at all?

Please mind that you have to set up a reminder for every event that you add to your calendar. If you don’t set a reminder, there won’t be any alarm. You can do this on the create screen in the calendar app. For some apps you can also set a default reminder in their preferences (i.e. Business calendar) so that you don’t have to set the reminder every time you create new appointments again.

Also you have to install the Google Calendar app if this isn’t already pre-installed on your device.

If you are using Android 2.3.x please don’t use on time reminders. There is a bug in this version of Android that prevents on time reminders from being raised. You can fix this by using i.e. 5 minute reminders or by updating your Android Version to 4.x.

If you are already running on Android 4.0 or later please also try to disable the power save mode, which can be found in the Android settings -> Power. On some devices this prevents alarms from being raised.

If this all doesn’t help, please get in contact with us via the comments.

Why does my phone forget the setting for the alarm ringtone from time to time?

There is an Android bug that reorganizes all ringtones if you add new sound files to your SD card, invalidating all existing references from third party apps. This impacts all apps, not only CER. You can only circumvent this problem by not adding sound files to your SD card / device.

Why is it that the alarm sometimes isn’t raised? I can trigger it by using the option “Check missed alarms”.

Maybe you are using an app called task killer or memory cleaner. These apps typically close apps completely after a desired time period or on request. If this happens CER won’t catch the alarm being raised by the calendar, because it is not running any longer. Some task killers allow to define an exclusion for apps not to be killed. Try to use this option.

On Marshmallow please disable battery optimization under Android power options for CER.

The alarm is not raised reliably if the display is turned off. I can trigger it by turning the device on manually. Why is that?

There is a known problem that on some devices (mainly Motorolla ones) the power save mode prevents the alarm from being raised by the system. Please try to turn the power save mode off. You can find it in the Android settings -> Power.

Why am I only getting reminders by Jorte and not your app?

After you installed Jorte you are asked about where to store your events. If you then choose “Jorte” the events will be managed solely by Jorte and this also applies to reminders. You have to change the data storage to “Google Calendar”. You can transfer your previously entered Jorte events by exporting them to the Google Calendar, afterwards un-/reinstalling Jorte and selecting “Google Calendar” for data storage.

Which calendar apps are supported by your app?

Actually, you can use any third party app that is based on the Android calendar. We don’t know all of them but here is a list of very popular apps that are supported:

  • Business Calendar
  • Jorte
  • aCalandar
  • CalenGoo
  • Calendar Pad Pro
  • iRT Calendar
  • Touch Calendar

Not supported are:

  • Lotus Traveler
  • Touchdown
  • Cozi
  • mOffice

Why am I not getting any alarm sound?

Maybe your phone has set “Silent” as default for alarm sound. Please go to the sound settings of CER (below the calendar / all calendar settings) and choose your favorite alarm ringtone. Afterwards please check the alarm volume setting down below.

Why is the alarm sound repeated even though I selected “play only once” in the preferences?

Maybe the ringtone you have chosen contains a repeating sound sample. Please try a different ringtone.

Why am I only getting a settings screen when I open your app?

For versions smaller than 5.0: CER  is not a calendar app itself. It just enhances the Android calendar (or the third party apps mentioned above). You can use a preference button within CER to add new events, but this is only a workaround. You should use your calendar app to manage (add/delete/update) your appointments.

Since 5.0 you will get a list of all upcoming and past reminders. You can find the settings by using the menu button on your device or the three-dotted button at the top right of the screen.

I’m using a Samsung device (Galaxy SI/II/III/Note etc.). Why am I not getting any vibration even though I enabled it in your app?

You probably disabled the haptic feedback in the system preferences. On some Samsung devices this leads to the vibration beeing turned off completely for third party apps, even though you turned on some other system settings for vibration (alarm, notification…). There are two options for you to get the vibration working for CER:

  1. You turn on haptic feedback.
  2. You set the haptic feedback intensity level to other than zero, disable haptic feedback in the system settings, disable the power saving option.

Why can I not alter the vibration intensity for your app?

This is a Samsung specific feature that is not in the Android standard. It is available on Samsung devices only (through vibration settings of CER!).

If I set the reminder to be on time / 0 minutes before event there is no alarm being raised. Why is this?

For Android 2.3.x devices there is a bug in the calendar app that leads to alarms not being fired if the reminder time is 0 minutes. You can prevent this only by using a minimum of 1 minute or even better 15 minute reminders. If there is an update to Android 4.0 / ICS for your device this might also fix this issue.

How can I set a default reminder, so that I don’t have to add a reminder every time i’m creating a new event?

Currently CER does not provide a feature for this. But frankly, this should be a feature of the calendar app you are using. Most third party or stock calendar apps provide this feature by default (i.e. Business Calendar). Please have a look at those apps.

How can I use my own mp3s as alarm ringtone for your app?

Please have a look at this description. After that just choose your mp3 within the settings of CER.

Why am I not getting alerts for tasks?

Currently there is no standardization for managing tasks on Android. There are only a bunch of task apps (like Astrid, GTasks, Evernote, Samsung Tasks…) that all implement a proprietary storage and alerting for tasks themselves. So it would be a great effort to support all these apps. Beyond that not all apps provide a proper interface to hook into. These are the reasons why there isn’t any task support in CER right now.

How can I get alerts for birthdays of my contacts?

You have to add the birthdays as events to your calendar. This could be done with the app called EboBirthday.

Why does your app not allow to be installed on the sd card?

Unfortunately there are some bad consequences connected to the feature app2sd. For example CER won’t be informed about a restart of the device and this prevents it from restoring missed or scheduled reminders. Furthermore scheduled reminders don’t fire if the user un-/remounts the sdcard.

Why are the alarms sometimes one hour earlier or late?

Maybe you traveled and the phone switched time zones (without recognizing DST). Please check this.

Why is my phone not waken up for an alarm when it is completely turned off / shut down?

This is a high demanded feature by users but currently the Android System doesn’t offer support for this. You can find a detailed discussion about this feature request / issue here.

I’m using Calengoo but I don’t get reminders with your app, only with Calengoo. Why is that?

You are probably using Calengoo’s “local calendars” or you have added accounts by using Calengoo (i.e. AuthSub). These are unsupported because they are managed solely by Calengoo and this also applies to the reminders. Please use a Google/Android calendar instead that came with the account of your phone. You can add more calendars by using the Google Calendar web interface. After that you have to sync it to your phone by using the Android account sync.

How can I manage reminders added via CER?

Because CER is no calendar app itself you can use all above mentioned calendar apps to modify, create or delete events (including reminders). Only snoozed reminders will not show up there. You can review snoozed reminders directly within CER or by selecting the notification. From there you can dismiss/postpone them.

Why are entries for all day events shown the day before?

The list of reminders is calculated by using event start time minus reminder minutes. So if you set up a reminder with 15 minutes for an all day event, it will show up on 11:45 pm the day before.

Why does text-to-speech / TTS not work?

Maybe you have to enable the text-to-speech engine and install your preferred language files. You can find a description on how to do this here. Please mind: Also tap on the Google text-to-speech engine even if it is greyed out and the default language check says “Checking…”! After that you should be able to install the language files and everything should be working.

You can also try out to change the automatic detection for the language to use within CER. You can find this in the CER settings / sound settings / language for text-to-speech.

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20 thoughts on “Calendar Event Reminder FAQ

  1. Joe,

    there is an option in the sound settings called “Play only once”. By activating this setting the alarm ringtone is only played one time. You can also reduce the alarm seconds to fit to the length of your alarm ringtone. Then the alarm window will close after the ringtone was played once.

    Regards,
    Frank

  2. Is there a way to have a user-selectable notification sound play, followed immediately by text to speech, or can I only choose either an alarm sound or text to speech?

  3. Craig,

    thanks for your comment. I’m sorry but until now you can only choose Text2Speech OR an alarm sound. But i will take this to my feature list.

    Regards,
    Frank

  4. Just reading the latest comments on the Apps Playstore. All of the reviews were glowing, until the latest couple who said the alarms were working right but aren’t currently. As soon as you let us know you’ve updated and corrected that, I want to buy. Thank you

    Barbara

  5. Barbara,

    thanks for your comment. From my point of view the negative comments which appeared recently had to do with license validation, which was introduced with v4.8. CER will be turned off after several days of failed license validation attempts. This is desired behavior. However, the license check needs a working internet connection and some users don’t have this available all the time. CER was aware of this and allowed for a constant retry of the validation for some consecutive days before turning itself off, but this also didn’t seem to be enough. With v4.8.2 the license check only has to succeed one time after installation. The result is cached afterwards.
    This solved all problems regarding license validation that i know of.

    Another well known problem is that Android 2.3.x contains some serious issues/bugs regarding the Android core alarming system (see FAQ). This leads to alarms not going off at all or late or with a repetition that is not wanted. These problems were addressed with later Android versions, are not related to CER and as far as i know fixed with Android 3.x and later. There is little that i can do about this but to recommend users to upgrade their devices to a newer Android version if available.

    Besides this, there is no further problem that applies to a huge amount of device configurations in general, which i know of. All issues reported by customers and which i’m currently working on are very specific and mostly a mixture of wrong usage (no reminder set, wrong CER settings choosen) and bugs related to some concrete device models / vendor modifications.

    But as mentioned in the market teaser: If you are experiencing problems while using CER, please report this via email and we will try to find a solution. If we cannot provide a solution or you are dissatisfied you will definitely get a refund. Nearly all negative comments on Android market came from users that never got in contact with us, which is frustrating, because we cannot proactively contact the user (no contact info stored within the comment) and so don’t have a chance to find a solution or provide help.

    Regards,
    Frank

  6. Thank you for this wonderful app! I’ve just bought a Motorola DROID 4 when my Palm Centro died and am working my way up the learning curve. I am not sure if the following is a question or suggestion. If I miss a notification it appears to automatically snooze for three minutes. I belive it will repeat snoozing some fixed numer of times and then give up. I think these are reasonable design decissions. Is it possible to have a different (more strident) notification tone played on the second and third notifications?

  7. Can I assign a unique ringtone to an event? Can I elect to not have a snooze option on individual events?

  8. Marshall,
    it is currently not possible to assign special setttings to a single event. This is only possible per calendar. However, you could add more personal calendars to your device via Google calendar web interface and then use special settings for the events created in them.

    Regards,
    Frank

  9. Marshall,
    thanks for your feedback. Different settings for second / third alarm is a feature that is currently on my feature list.
    “Different reminder cycles / intervals (i.e. first one after 10 minutes, then every 5 minutes after event has finished) or sound profiles (last event other ringtone)”

    You can vote for it here.

  10. Feature request:

    Auto-snooze during definable hours (most likely use case being “over night”) so that you don’t get disturbed by reminders during the defined period and all reminders are snoozed until the period ends.

    My main use case for this would be over night, but I suspect their are others. I also see this as somewhat analogous to the auto-snooze while on a call.

    In addition to deferring any notification sounds / vibes util the end of the period, it would also stop a CER reminder appearing at the top of the application stack during the period. E.g. I use Night Clock overnight (which keeps the screen on and shows a digital clock), but CER will clobber that with a reminder and then the screen will switch off and I lose my clock.

    PS: Love CER (which I use with Business Calendar Pro). This would be an “icing on the cake” feature 😉

  11. Hey guys, first of all you created a great app, thanks for that. Is there an option that allows to configurate a vibration alarm for an calendar event when my phone is muted?

    Thanks for your help

  12. Hi Nicolai,

    yes, please go to the vibration settings of CER and there please find the “active modes”. If you then check the “silent mode” the phone will vibrate also when in silent mode.

    Regards,
    Frank

  13. Hi! I love this app! Recently with the last system update on my Samsung note 4, CER has been glitchy.

    I will suddenly realize I’m not getting reminders, and then when I check missed alarms, they will all go off. I’m not missing the alarms the first time, they just aren’t firing.

    After I clear the missed alarms, it usually starts working again for awhile.

    What causes it to stop?

  14. S4 Mini. 4.4.2. When CER 5.4.5 alarm is snoozing and I press the phone power/wake button, would like to see the alarm event notification shown on the lock screen. (like froyo). Notifications in the notification bar are not clear enough.

  15. Hi. When my alarm goes off and I dismiss. It leaves a notification in the notificatin bar with snooze attached to it?

  16. Please try under CER behaviour settings the option “Stay open mode” and set it to always. This should bring up the dialog when you turn on the device.

    Cheers,
    Frank

  17. Hi,

    If it’s an update to Marshmallow / Android 6 please disable battery optimization for CER under Android power options.

    Thanks,
    Frank

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