Of course, after publishing this morning that there are no known bugs in my app I get 2 crash reports. (Not complaining about the crash reports… thanks for those… just noting my bad timing on that announcement.)

I’m not 100% sure if the crashes are fully fixed, as I can’t seem to recreate it myself, but it should display an error message instead of crashing now. If you were experiencing crashes, you may see one of the following toast notifications:

“ – Error getting contact info”
or
“ – Error sending response”

Where will be either “Auto Respond” or “Auto Respond Free”, depending on which version you are using. If you see either of these messages, it means that your response did not send correctly.

The changes to the Credits screen were included in this update, as well as the update to the non-repeating schedules for paid users.

I just posted 1.1.2 a little bit ago, so it may not be in the Play Store for another hour or so.

I just published Auto Respond 1.1 to the Play Store. I did it earlier than I wanted to, simply because it fixes a lot of bugs (especially on Android 2.x.) There’s also a few new features. Most of them seem small, but I think they could make a big difference.

Here’s the changes:

(Common)

• Fixed bug with starting Dock Listener after app crash or update
• Fixed bug with editing message text on pre 4.0 devices
• Fixed bug with changing ringer preferneces while Auto Respond is not active
• Fixed bug with changing ringer preferneces on pre Android 4.0 devices
• Added ability to sort messages by title
• Added ability to set a specific message when device is docked – in Dock Settings
• Improved swiping between tabs
• Returned icon to green and blue (can still have purple icon for notification – in settings)

(Paid Only)

• Fixed some small bugs in the scheduler
• Fixed bug with rescheduling schedules after app crash or update
• Added ability to sort schedules by title (more sorting options to come)
• Added more descriptive text in Schedule creater/editer
• Added “Repeat” option for scheduler

When I posted about Auto Respond 1.0 I said that you could now swipe between the two tabs, but that it was very laggy. This was because I simply took the first solution that worked, and ran with it. I looked for other solutions, but at the time I couldn’t find anything else.

Well, I’ve found a new way to read in gestures, and it’s MUCH more responsive than what I was using before. It took me a bit to understand it, and implement it correctly, but it works well now. Suddenly, swiping between tabs works like a dream!

I’ve also made some other small changes to some text in the scheduler. I added some more descriptive text, to make using it a little more intuitive.

At the beginning of December, I will be posting an update which returns the icon to the former green and blue icon, instead of the purple for Epilepsy Awareness month. There will be an option to use the purple icon for your notifications, if you have decided that you enjoy the purple icon. However, there is no way that I can have an option to change the app drawer icon. (I looked into it, there is no way to do it. It has to be hard-coded into the app.)

When I release this update, it will include these minor changes (the swiping and the text changes) as well, and whatever other changes I conjure up over the next few days.

As always, if you have suggestions or find any bugs, let me know!

I’ve published Auto Respond 1.0.1 to the Play Store.

The only difference is that it now handles responses over 160 characters, and it has a character counter under the text input on the main window to show you how many characters you have left. If you go over 160, it will display something like “142/2” showing that you are on your 2nd set of 160 characters, and that you have 142 characters left before going over another 160.

For most modern phones these messages will be received as 1 piece. But for users with older phones, or non-smart phones, they will be received as multiple messages, each containing 160 characters or less.

As usual, this update has been published, but may not be live on Google’s severs for a an hour or more.

If anyone runs into another issue such as this, please let me know so that I can correct it.

Just to let you all know, I’ve been working with a user who was having problems with Auto Respond not sending his response message. I added some diagnostic code to try to figure out what the issue was.

He just got back to me, saying that he shortened his message and now it works fine. This leads me to believe that in its current state, Auto Respond may have issues sending long response messages. Usually the limit for each SMS message is 160 characters, so I’m assuming he went above this limit.

I will be looking into this issue, testing and finding the actual limit that causes the issue, and then finding a way to work around this limit. I may have to break the messages up into smaller blocks and send multiple messages, or there may be a way for me to send it that allows for a larger character limit. (I know that above 480 characters, sending as an MMS is usually recommended.)

Once I figure out what this limit is for sure, I may put a character counter under the message telling the user how many characters remain before entering unsafe territory.

Bottom line – I will be working on fixing this, and will hopefully release an update within a couple days to address this issue. I just wanted all of you to be aware that there IS a limit, and if your responses are not being sent correctly you may need to temporarily shorten your response message.

I just pushed Auto Respond 1.0 to the play store!

Change log:

(Common)

• Fixed some lingering bugs
• Updated “Help” and “Do Not Respond List Description” screens
• User can now swipe left and right to change between tabs on main screen (This is kinda laggy, so it may be improved upon later)
• removed some incomplete settings from the menu (They were deactivated so you couldn’t use them anyways)
• removed “OK” and “Cancel” buttons from main page. Back button saves and exits.

(Paid Only)

• Added scheduler
• WAKE_LOCK permission needed for scheduler

(Free Only)

• Moved ad locations

Late last night and today I’ve been doing a lot of testing of the scheduler.

As expected, there were a lot of bugs in the initial version, but I fixed a TON of them last night, and some more this morning.

As far as I can tell, everything seems to be working flawlessly on Android 4.1.2. I haven’t tested other OS versions yet, but over the next couple days I will start testing on 2.3.

As of now, I expect to release the new version on Monday or Tuesday.

It’s done!  The scheduler is done!

I spent almost all day today working on understanding how the alarms are scheduled, as well as how they are triggered, and how to deal with time zone offsets. It took me hours just to understand the flow of control with alarms. But after many hours, and a drawing of program flow, it seems to be working very well.

I’ve only tested a schedule that occurs every day, not yet testing whether the day of week selections or month selections work properly. I have built in checks for those things, but they aren’t yet verified to be working properly. I will test both of those things throughout the week across multiple OS versions.

I have already set up 1 schedule that I will be using on a weekly basis, and I will find out Monday morning if that is triggered properly.

As stated in my last post, I expect to have this fully tested and released before the end of next week. With any luck, it’ll be early to mid next week.  🙂