Alexa: Lists and Reminders

Hello, my name is Ricky Enger, and today we’re going to learn how our Alexa Amazon Echo digital assistant can help us with lists and reminders. If you’re not yet familiar with how to use your Echo device, check out the first couple of workshops in this series to get up to speed.

You know, it’s pretty much impossible to remember every single thing we need to keep track of, right? Is it time to buy more veggies? Gotta remember to pay the electric bill. One of these meds should be taken 30 minutes before the other, but which one? It would be so nice just to have someone who could keep up with all these details. And actually, our Amazon Echo can do a really great job with this. Let’s check out how we can make things a little easier for ourselves, with lists and reminders.

So, let’s start with lists. There are a couple, like a shopping list and a to-do list that our assistant already has, and it’s just waiting for us to start adding things. First, let’s see if there’s already something on one of these lists. Now some of this may already be a little familiar if you checked out our workshop where we use our Amazon Echo in the kitchen, because we actually added and removed things from our shopping list. Let’s see about the to-do list then.

So, Alexa, what’s on my to-do list?

Alexa: Your to-do list is empty.

Ricky: Ha, I wish! This list is only empty because nothing has been added to it yet. So, let’s do that. Oh, you know, it would be really annoying to hear the responses from my assistant, and the responses from any assistants you have set up as well. For that reason, I’m not going to say our assistant’s name anymore throughout the workshop. I don’t want to wake up your assistant unnecessarily. Just remember that when you’re ready to try each command yourself, be sure and speak the assistant’s name or wake word first.

Okay, so, our wake word:

Add “change water filter” to the to-do list.

Alexa: I've put “change water filter” on your to-do list.

Ricky: Nice, and since I actually took care of that this morning, it can get checked off the to-do list. We’ll do it like this:

We’ll say our name:

Remove “change water filter” from my to-do list.

Alexa: I’ve checked off “change water filter” from to-do.

Ricky: Yay, accomplishment! Now, our shopping list will work in exactly the same way, where we add items to it by saying “add item to my shopping list”, and when we’ve bought that item, we’ll just ask to remove the item from our shopping list.

Okay great, but life isn’t all shopping and to-dos. There are other lists of things we may wanna create, so how do we do that? Well, it’s always about speaking to our assistant and just asking naturally for things. So, if we wanna create a new list, let’s just say our assistant’s name, and then:

Create a new list.

Alexa: What should I name the list?

Ricky: Reading.

Alexa: That was Reading, right?

Ricky: Yes!

Alexa: I’ve created Reading list. What would you like to add to it?

Ricky: Cancel.

Alexa: Canceling.

Ricky: Okay wow, that was quite the conversation. So, we asked our assistant to create the list, gave it a name, and then we were prompted to add stuff to the list. That’s really awesome! And since we weren’t quite ready to add anything yet, the word Cancel got us out of the conversation. When we do wanna add something to that reading list we’ve created, we’ll do it just the same way as our shopping and to-do lists. We’ll just say Add, and then the title, to my Reading list.

Okay, that’s really cool. Are we done? Hmm, no, it seems like there was one more thing we were gonna do. I wish I had set up a reminder for whatever … oh, right, reminders. Yeah. Okay, so here’s how we’ll do that. We’re just basically going to think about what we want to be reminded of and when. And then we’ll ask, just like that. So, that electric bill, gotta remember to pay that at the first of the month. So, we’ve got our name:

Remind me to pay the electric bill at the first of every month.

Alexa: At what time should I remind you?

Ricky: 10 AM.

Alexa: Okay, I’ll remind you on the first of every month at 10 AM.

Ricky: Wow, nice! And it'll work the same way for meds, or anything else for that matter. And we can say as much or as little as we want, and our assistant will prompt us for the rest. Let’s check out how that works by not really saying a lot during this initial request to our assistant. So, our wake word,

Set a reminder.

Alexa: What’s the reminder for?

Ricky: Take vitamin.

Alexa: When should I remind you?

Ricky: Every day.

Alexa: What time every day should I remind you?

Ricky: 9 AM.

Alexa: Okay, I’ll remind you every day at 9 AM.

Ricky: And there we go. It’s all set up.

Just one last thing. What if we don’t need a reminder for a particular item anymore? How can we get rid of it? Well, all we need to do is say to our assistant: “delete reminder” or “remove reminder”. At that point, our assistant is going to list every reminder we have, and we can tell it which one should go away. It'll take a while for our assistant to list everything if we’ve set up several reminders, so, if we remember what the specific reminder is, we can just ask to remove that one. Like this.

We’ve got our name, or wake word:

Delete reminder to pay the electric bill.

Alexa: You have one reminder: pay the electric bill on the first of every month at 10 AM. Do you want me to cancel all instances of this reminder?

Ricky: Yes.

Alexa: Pay the electric bill on the first of every month at 10 AM, canceled.

Ricky: And that’s it. This is a really easy and powerful way to keep track of so many useful things that we’d otherwise have to remember ourselves, right? I’m Ricky Enger, and I’m glad you could spend a little time with me, checking out lists and reminders on the Amazon Echo. Contact a learning expert if you have questions about anything in this workshop, or if you have your own tips to share. We’d love to hear from you! See you next time.