Auto respond 1.3 has been released! For those of you running the free version, this is a minor change. But for those of you running the paid version, this took me months to complete. Here’s the changelog:

1.3:

(Pro)
• 1×1 widget for quickly toggling individual messages
• More widgets will be added in the future!

(common)
• List of contacts that have already been responded to is now done by contact id, not by name

I said I wanted to keep this for a couple of days to test the widget, but I’ve tested everything I can think of with it, and I can’t break it in any way. If you have the pro version, please check out the widget. If you break it somehow, let me know what went wrong and what you did to cause it.

If you don’t have the pro version, please think about purchasing it. The extra feature are really worth the minimal cost. And as I stated in the change log: now that I know how widgets work, I’ve got some ideas for more. But none of them will be coming to the free version.

As usual, I just posted this to the Play Store so it may be a couple hours before it’s available.

I’ve think I’ve gotten all of the oddities worked out of the first available Auto Respond widget, but I’d like to test it for a day or so before releasing it.

As I said in a previous post, right now it’s just a 1×1 widget. When you create the widget it asks which message you would like to attach to it. After it’s created, it displays the title of the message you selected, and the app icon. When that specific message is enabled, the icon will show the on colors (green with blue, or purple with pink) and when the message is inactive, the icon will be the red icon.

If you click on the icon, it toggles Auto Respond and inserts the selected message. If you click on the title of the message, you can select a different message for your widget.

If Auto Respond is activated within the app (and not from a widget) but there is a widget for the message that is used, the widget icon will turn to the on colors.

If Auto Respond is currently active and you click on a widget for a different message than the current message, that widget will change to the on colors and the Auto Respond message will be changed to the message for the selected widget.

If you delete the message to which the widget was attached, the widget will display an error message. If you click this error message, you can attach the widget to a new message.

Here is a screenshot with a few widgets, including a broken widget:

In this shot, the “Test” message is enabled, and the others are obviously disabled. The “error” case was created on purpose for testing and demonstration purposes.

I had posted a question on StackOverflow about why my widget wasn’t working when clicked, and the other day someone responded asking if I was still having trouble with it. I was, so I said yes.

After seeing the response, I decided to show a friend of mine that it wasn’t working… suddenly, it WAS working, just not properly. Before, it had done nothing when I clicked the widget. Now, it did something, just not the correct something.

Fast forward to today. I decided to spend some time trying to figure out what the heck was going on. After a couple hours of sitting and coding, I got it working!… well, mostly. There are some display oddities if there’s multiple widgets on the screen, and it takes a while for the widgets to initialize… but it does what is expected when you click it!

I’m done for now (I need to get myself some lunch and give my eyes a rest from this monitor) but I’m sure that with a little more time spent on it, I can get this widget working 100% as expected.

Right now it’s just a 1×1 widget. When you create the widget, it asks you which of your saved messages you would like to use. After it’s created, if you click the widget, it toggles Auto Respond and automatically changes the message to whatever you selected when setting up the widget. When you click the widget off, it toggles Auto Respond off, and returns the message to whatever it was set to prior to enabling it.

The left shot here is when it is off, the right is after toggling it on. I have the purple icon option turned on, so the on shot has the purple icon, but if the purple icon option was off, it would be the green icon. “Default” is the name of the message that I picked when I created the widget.

Once I get this one fully figured out and working 100% as I want it to, I am going to eventually add some larger widgets. Maybe some where you can insert a message on the fly, and toggle it as well. Maybe some for schedules, where you can enable/disable schedules from your home screen.

All widgets will only be available in the Pro version, so if you’re using the free version you will need to upgrade to use this feature once I release it.

For those of you currently running the Pro version, there MAY be a small bit of code that I accidentally left in the release version. You may be able to create a widget, but it will not do anything until I release an update.

This daylight savings time thing has been a pain for WAY too long, and I think I’ve finally got it figured out for everyone.

This release is for the pro version only, as it fixes an issue with schedules. If you are still having problems after downloading this update, PLEASE let me know. (I don’t really want to deal with this issue anymore, but I will if it’s still broken.)

The issue (so you know what to look for) is that when you choose the time for your schedule, the previous screen would show a different time. For example: in the time picker (where you choose hour and minute), if I chose 8:30, the text telling me what time the schedule was for (in EDT) said 7:30 instead of 8:30. In some areas (like GMT) it would show 9:30 instead of 8:30. There was also a problem in Alaskan time (AKDT/AKST).

This should now be fixed for all time zones, and all possible DST configurations. If it is still broken in your area, let me know and I can look into it further.

Another small update, this one thanks to a user drawing my attention to an issue.

If you are using the paid app and have schedules set, open your schedule view and look at the times of the schedules. They may be an hour off in one direction or the other. Mine were showing an hour prior to the scheduled time, my user in England was showing an hour after the scheduled time.

After doing some thinking, and some looking into the issue, this seems to have been caused by daylight savings time. So, if you are using the paid version, there is now a time adjustment for daylight savings time when displaying the start and end time of the schedules.

As usual, a fix has been pushed to the Play Store, but it may not be available immediately. (This update only applies to the pro version, not the free version.)

I’ve noticed in Google Analytics that there is still a crash bug in Auto Respond.

From what I can tell, the crash seems to happen when moving from the settings menu, into the “Main Options Menu”, and it has only occurred on Android 4.0.4. I has happened in both the free and the paid version, but only a total of 3 times.

I do not have a device running 4.0.4, and my Galaxy Nexus running 4.2.2 seems to not crash when I run it. I created an emulated 4.0.4 device, and still cannot recreate the crash.

If you have a device running Android 4.0 or higher, can you please try to recreate this crash and send me a crash report? As I said, the crash seems to be happening either in the settings menu, or the Main Options Menu, or when transitioning between the two screens.

I know I’ve been asking for crash reports when Aut Respond crashes. But here’s the thing: If you send me a crash report, please make sure you’re running the latest version of the app. If you’re not sure, go into the Play Store after experiencing the crash, go to “My Apps”, and see what updates are available. (Again, you should do this with ANY app that crashes or has bugs.)

I received a crash report this morning from someone who is using 1.2.9.3. That’s 2 versions old, and it was replaced to fix the very crash that this person is reporting.

1.2.9.5 has been out for over 3 days, and (according to Google Analytics) still has not experienced a single crash. Therefore, if you aren’t using the latest version, it would be beneficial for you to update. The current version is very stable, and has all of the features of any of the previous versions. (And depending on what version you are running, it may have MORE features.)

One more bug fix. This time something that I noticed before, but I wasn’t sure what caused it. At the time I thought it may have been because I was using an emulator, not a real device. Turns out I was wrong.

Here’s how to replicate the issue: If you add a contact to the “Do Not Respond” list, or the “Custom Response” list, and that contact doesn’t have a phone number listed, the program will crash.

Just like the last crash, I saw this crash on Google Analytics and looked into it. It took me a bit to figure out what exactly was causing it, but I got it fixed up. If you try to add such a contact in the new version it will not crash, but it will display a toast notification alerting you that the contact needs to have a name and a mobile phone number listed.

The error was caused if NO phone number was listed, but I made the warning appear even if there was a number listed and that number was not a mobile number. This is because  the app checks to see if it’s a mobile number before replying. (This check is actually only done for the phone call response. If you are receiving a text message, the app assumes the number can receive a response message.)

So if you try to add a contact to either of these lists and get that error, make sure that the contact has a mobile phone number and that it is listed as a mobile phone number in the address book. If it’s listed as anything other than a mobile phone number, it will display this warning and will not add the contact to the list.

Crash Fixes

More crash fixes in Auto Respond… this time, only in the free version. (Sorry again guys! At least that’s good news for those of you who have paid for the app.)

I obviously don’t use the free version for my personal use – since the paid version has more options. I try to test everything possible in both version of the app before releasing a new version, but sometimes I miss things.

As it turns out, entering into “Notification Options” or “Other Options” on a 4.0+ device would cause the app to crash.

I only noticed this because I checked Google Analytics for crashes and exceptions, which listed a few crashes in the free app. This once again leads me to beg you guys to please send crash reports when they happen!

When the app crashes, you get a prompt that ways “Report” and “Close”. PLEASE click “Report”, even if you leave the text box empty. It would be preferred if you would put a small note in there, including what Android version you are using, and/or what device you are using (Android version is more useful) and maybe a small description of what you were doing when the crash occurred.

Without this report, I was only given a few pieces of information:

1. What app it happened in
2. What file it happened in
3. The error code