Meeting reminders that arrive early enough to matter
Meetings, interviews and classes are the third most widespread thing people set reminders for here: 14 of 92 people, behind only chasing a person and drinking water. Which is odd on the face of it, because every one of those meetings is presumably already in a calendar.
The reason is that a calendar alert and a meeting reminder are not the same object. The calendar tells you a meeting is starting. What you needed was to be told, forty minutes earlier, to read the brief, leave the house, or send the deck you promised to send beforehand.
The default alert is timed wrong
Ten minutes before is the standard, and it is almost useless. It is too late to prepare, too late to travel, and too late to do the thing you were supposed to have done before the meeting. All it can do is stop you being surprised.
It also arrives as a system notification, in the tray you have trained yourself to clear. On a busy day the alert and the dismissal happen in the same motion, and you have genuinely no memory of it thirty seconds later.
The reminder that would have helped is a different one, at a different time, saying a different thing: not “meeting at 3” but “leave now” or “send the deck before this”.
Set the prep, not the event
The calendar can keep the event. What you want on WhatsApp is the action attached to it, at the hour that action needs doing.
So instead of another alert for the 3pm, set the thing you have to do at 2:15, and word it as the action. A reminder that says what to do gets done. A reminder that says a meeting exists gets acknowledged and forgotten.
remind me to send the deck before the 3pm at 2:15leave for the Andheri meeting at 4:20read the brief before the interview tomorrow at 9:30amThe recurring ones are worth setting once
Standups, weekly reviews, a class on Tuesdays, the monthly meeting nobody remembers until it starts. These are the cheapest wins in the product because you set them a single time and they run.
Weekly and monthly reminders are a small slice of our data, which we think says something about calendars rather than about people: if a thing recurs on a fixed date, a calendar usually already has it. What ends up here is the recurring prep around it, which the calendar entry never contained.
standup every weekday at 9:25ampipeline review every Monday at 9:30ammonthly report on the 1st at 10amIf you want it in the calendar too
Pokobot connects to Google Calendar, so you can create an actual event from the chat rather than switching apps to do it. That matters when the meeting involves other people and needs to exist somewhere they can see it.
The division of labour that works: the calendar holds anything with other people attached, and the WhatsApp reminder holds the private action you need to take around it. Neither is trying to be the other.
What it will not do
It does not manage attendees, send invites, find a slot everyone is free in, or take notes. It is not a scheduling assistant and there is no meeting product hiding behind it.
It also has no idea whether the meeting happened, moved, or was cancelled. If the 3pm shifts to Thursday, the reminder does not know, and you have to tell it. One message does that: say “actually make it Thursday 3pm” and it follows.
listactually make it Thursday 3pmcancel 1Questions, answered
- Why use a WhatsApp reminder when I already have a calendar?
- Because they do different jobs. The calendar records that a meeting exists and alerts you ten minutes before, which is too late to prepare or travel. A WhatsApp reminder can be set for the moment you actually need to act, and arrives in a thread you read rather than a notification tray you clear.
- How do I set a meeting reminder on WhatsApp?
- Send one plain-English message to a reminder bot, for example “remind me to send the deck before the 3pm at 2:15”. Word it as the action rather than the event, because a reminder that tells you what to do gets done.
- Can it create the calendar event as well?
- Yes. Pokobot connects to Google Calendar, so you can add an event or book a meeting from the chat instead of switching apps. Anything involving other people belongs in the calendar; the private prep around it is what the reminder is for.
- Can I set recurring reminders for standups and weekly reviews?
- Yes, and they are the best value in the product because you set them once. Daily, weekday, weekly and monthly schedules all work, and a recurring reminder runs until you cancel it.
- What happens if the meeting moves?
- You have to tell it, because it has no view of your calendar's changes. Saying “actually make it Thursday 3pm” in the chat updates the reminder, and “cancel 1” drops it.