As promised, I looked into the issue with the notifications. It took me some time to figure out how to make notifications work properly on JB and pre-JB, but I did it.

Notifications pre-JB should be working again. And for users who are actually using JB, you should have a little extra info in your notifications. (Your current response message and the number of responses sent. I’ll build on it later.)

For those of you pre-JB (or at least pre-ICS) ads are still not working in the free version. Lucky you. I have been in constant contact with Tap for Tap trying to get numerous issues worked out in the past 24-hours, so hopefully (for me, not hopefully for you) you will be seeing ads soon.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I think that the scheduler may end up becoming a paid only feature. It’s a lot of work, and I need to give people incentive to buy the paid app, especially since ads aren’t even working right now.

New versions have been posted for both the free AND paid versions. It may take a while for the updates to get through Google’s servers though.

Oh, and one last thing… the new options I mention in a previous post… they’re in there 😉
(Vibrate as well as silent, and the *still untested* option to ignore calls – use at your own risk!)

Found another FC in Auto Respond, thanks to a crash report someone sent in. I just released an update that fixed it.

Unfortunately, I did some work on notifications today too (working toward getting Jelly Bean style notifications working) and that work has made notifications stop working in some Android versions (possibly all versions prior to 4.1)

I was in a rush to fix the FC, and pushed the update, not realizing that it broke notifications. (I tested it later on my Droid 2, and that’s how I realized it broke notifications.) I am extremely tired, after dealing with Tap for Tap developer support most of the day, and some craziness happening at work, so I need to go to sleep. Sorry for the issues, I will try to fix notifications tomorrow and push an update ASAP.

BTW – Only the free version is affected by this FC and notification issue. The FC wasn’t present in the paid version, therefore I did not push an update for it and I did not break notifications for it.

I’ve been working on some stuff for Auto Respond.

BUG FIXES:
I noticed that other day that between 12am and 1am, the hour shows as -12, and it shows as pm instead of am. That has been fixed.
I also noticed, on my phone, that my ringer kept getting set to “ring”, instead of “ring and vibrate” and I finally figured out that it’s my own app that’s causing it. If you have the “Silence Ringer” option selected, it wasn’t always properly returning the ringer to it’s previous value when disabling Auto Respond. I figured out why, and fixed that as well.

NEW SETTING:
Another thing that bothered me was that when I selected the “Silence Ringer” option, it turned off vibrate as well. So I kept the silence ringer option (for those of you who want it truly silenced when active) and added a sub-option to set it to “Vibrate” instead of fully silent. This has been tested, and seems to be working fully, so it will be in my next release.

IN PROGRESS:
I’m also working on an option to “Ignore Calls”. This will be enabled when “Auto Respond to voice calls” is active. If “Ignore Calls” is active, it will ignore any call that is sent a text response. If the call does not come from a mobile phone, comes from a number that’s not in your contacts, or comes from someone on the “Do Not Respond” list, it will not be sent a response and therefore will not be ignored. For this reason, the ringer options are still available even when ignoring calls is enabled. (This function is not tested yet, so if it doesn’t work properly, it may not make it into the final product.)

As I was thinking about the “Do Not Respond” list, I also thought about creating a number based list. Any phone number in this list would not be responded to. I haven’t even begun to implement it, I just got the idea while working on other things.

I haven’t forgotten about the scheduler. I have spent a lot of time working on it, and have been thinking about the best way to implement some of the necessary aspects of it. It is by far one of the most complex features I have worked on thus far for this app, so it may take more time than expected.

This is how the “Phone Settings” menu looks now (Assuming the “Ignore Calls” function works properly)

tl;dr – some small bug fixes, new vibrate setting, testing ignore calls setting, possible DNR number list in future, still working on scheduler.

I made a new banner for my Auto Respond apps, which is displayed at the top of the page when viewing the app listing in the web app store. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespond and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespondfree)

Update: I’ve got a new one that includes a screen shot. Any preferences?

Sorry guys, 0.9 causes a FC every time you receive a text message. (BIG OOPS!)

It has been fixed, and a new version has been published. It is NOT live in the Play Store as of this update, but it should be in an hour or so. (about 4:30 Eastern time, 1:30 Pacific)

Sorry again!!

I was doing some thinking yesterday about the fact that I had a lot of duplicated code. So I did some looking around as to how I could get rid of it, and have 1 instance of all of the duplicate code that I had.

I’ve said before that this is my first Android project, and it is also my first major Java project. I took a class in Java in college, but it was my first ever programming class so a lot of the information presented to me in the class didn’t really sink in.

I read up yesterday on static variables and static methods, and I used that to get rid of A LOT of duplicate code in my app. Streamlining this code seems to have made navigation a little smoother from one screen to the next.

While doing this, I also changed a few things. My settings menu was starting to get cluttered, and is just going to get even more cluttered as time goes on, so I separated it into multiple menus. There is now “Do Not Respond List”, “Dock Options”, and “Phone Options”, and a couple loose end options that remain on the main settings screen.

I also implemented an option in my SMS to GPlus app to have the permanent notification be optional. I added this into Auto Respond as an option in the settings menu. (Which is actually what led to all of the code re-arranging and consolidation.) This option is on by default, but can easily be turned off.

As I was doing this, I also realized that if Auto Respond is enabled and you reboot or turn your phone off, it may not be re-enabled on boot. That is no longer the case. Also, the dock listener may not have been active on boot in previous versions. Which means that when you dock your phone, Auto Respond wouldn’t automatically turn on unless you had opened the Auto Respond app after the phone turned on. That service is now started on boot, if the dock options are enabled.

And lastly, TapForTap (the new ad network that I am using in the free version) just updated their SDK and changed the way their service works. I included the new SDK in the new version of Auto Respond Free. Part of this change is that the ads from TapForTap are now single ads, instead of putting 2 apps in 1 banner sized ad. You should, however, see a mix of ads from TapForTap and ads from admob.

I noticed when I initially implemented TapForTap that the ads didn’t display on devices running anything prior to Android 4.0. I’m hoping that this is fixed with the new SDK but I haven’t tested it on my Droid 2, which is the only device I own which has anything prior to 4.0. (and unfortunately, the ads don’t seem to show AT ALL on emulated devices. Even with 4.0 or 4.1) If it’s not working properly, I guess those of you running 2.2 or 2.3.x can enjoy ad free Auto Respond for a while until I get the ads fixed.

Full change log for version 0.9:

• Start services and show notification (if enabled) on reboot
• Re-arranged settings menu
• Made permanent notification optional
• Cleaned up A LOT of unnecessary code (Seems to have improved performance as well)
(Free Version Only)
• integrated updated TapForTap SDK

Both the free and paid versions 0.9 are live in the Google Play Store right now.

Free:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespondfree

Paid:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespond

I had a few small errors in the free version of Auto Respond. Not sure what even made them come to mind, but they did.

1. The menu is supposed to have a “Buy” link (which takes you to the market to purchase the full version) in the free version, and a “Donate” link (which takes you to paypal to donate to me) in the full version. In my last update, I accidentally made them both “Donate”. This has been returned to normal.
2. In both versions of the app the “Feedback” page, which shows with each update, linked to the market page for the full version of the app. This now correctly links to the free version if you are running the free version, and the paid version if you are running the paid version.

I just released a new version of Auto Respond. The scheduler is NOT working yet, but I figured that I had done enough work on other things to make it worth releasing a new version.

Change Log:

• Default message is now editable
• “About” screen is now “Help”
• Added feedback page
• Auto Respond toggle is now color coded
• Initial setup for scheduler (doesn’t work yet)
• Made layouts look more consistent

Free Version Only:

• Moved ads