Agenda doesn’t track reminders it can’t see

Support
#1

What I did:

  1. Create two Reminders lists - in Agenda’s Calendar preference, show only one of the lists
  2. Add a reminder from within Agenda - it will go on to the list it can see
  3. In Reminders, move it to the other list that Agenda can’t see
  4. In Reminders, mark the task as complete

What happened: Agenda shows the “reminder deleted” icon, checklist item in Agenda remains unchecked

What I expected: Agenda marks the checklist item as checked, and shows “reminder completed” icon

Things that might be helpful to know (Agenda version, OS and model, etc):

The same thing happens when removing a date from a reminder that was created by Agenda. Basically it seems that if Agenda doesn’t show the reminder in the related panel, it won’t track its state - even if the reminder was created from within Agenda, and there’s a reference to the reminder in an Agenda note.

I should add that I do this because I have many items that I want to track in Agenda, that I create reminders for, but I don’t want to appear in the related panel. Related panel only shows my appointments and key objectives for the day. I keep less important reminders visible only in Goodtask.

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Importance of Reminders with no date or time
#2

I’m afraid you have found the limits of the current system. When you switch off a reminder list it indeed means Agenda stops tracking it, mainly for performance reasons; for those lists you switch off in the preferences it will no longer receive update notifications. I don’t think it would make sense to change this behaviour.

#3

I generally understand not looking at switched off lists, but I do think it makes sense for Agenda to track the state of reminders it already knows about. It created them, it has an icon in the note - and it’s even possible to click that icon and edit the reminder.

#4

I would agree from an ideal point of view, however there are significant performance costs in terms of the kind of admin that would be needed to administrate all this, which unfortunately doesn’t make it practical I’m afraid.

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#5

There is a second scenario, which is that if a reminder is on a list that Agenda syncs, but the date has been removed, then Agenda changes the reminder icon to deleted image. That should not be happening, given that the reminder is still on a list that Agenda syncs with.

Would you consider adding an option to sync certain lists but not display them? I have reminders attached to Agenda checklist items that I want Agenda to keep tracking, but not have clutter up the side bar.

#6

For now Agenda only tracks reminders with a date. I understand the rationale, but you kind of also take the Agenda <-> Reminders integration a few level deeper than it was designed for. We’ll do our best to see what’s possible and see if we can support more of these scenarios, but we would have to do so without adding more complexity and UI (so no “sync yes, visible no” buttons etc), nor negative impact on performance (significant slow down because we have to track many more reminders). All to say that I want to be honest and not set unrealistic expectations.

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#7

For anyone else who may be interested, I came up with a solution:

Create a Reminders list called “Anytime”, and move reminders on that list into the future. I prefix reminders with emoji to specify context, and sort by title so that tasks are grouped by context.

Result: Completing reminders in the “Anytime” list checks the associated checklist item in Agenda, without cluttering up the side bar.

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