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Need App Recommendations: Constant communication


Guest NanakoAC

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Guest NanakoAC

Hello everyone, i was directed here by a lovely friend, i hope you'll be able to help me.

I work on an on-call basis, i can be emailed by clients anytime of the day or night, and i need to be able to respond ASAP. Ideally within 10 minutes.

 

I've set up my HTC Desire S to automatically sync my gmail account, and to give me a loud notification sound whenever i get an email.  Although this isn't quite adequate, and i'd prefer it to make a noise repeatedly every minute or two as long as there are still unread emails, as i can miss a single sound sometimes.

 

I mostly keep it on charge constantly at home, with wifi AND mobile data enabled at all times. I have a home wifi network, and unlimited 3G with giffgaff. I'm using the official Gmail app

 

Hoiwever, yesterday i went out to a friend's house for a few hours, and somehow missed emails. My phone did not make any noise, and at one point i even manually opened the gmail app to check if i had any mail and saw nothing new. This is hugely problematic and i lost money because of it. I need it to not happen again.

 

Notification of emails is my ultimate priority here, ideally within 5-10 minutes of recieving them at most. I am willing to sacrifice all other aspects to achieve this, including battery life, and paying for premium apps. If i must carry a charger around with me everywhere, i'm happy to do that.  I need my phone to constantly be in communication, and if it ever can't for some reason, i need it to raise hell until i fix or acknowledge that issue.

 

I've also noticed that the gmail app doesn't seem to automatically sync emails sometimes when i open it, instead forcing me to manually refresh it to get them. AND sometimes even refreshing manually will fail silently, the loading animation will stop moving, but it'll show no new emails even when i know there are some.

 

Am i possibly using the gmail app rwrong, or have it misconfigured?

 

In any case, I need a recommendation of an app, or a few apps working in tandem, to make sure these problems never occur again. I need complete automation that does not rely on me manually refreshing anything, or changing any settings for certain circumstances.  I just need my phone to "just work" at all times and if any manual intevention is needed, i need to be loudly and repeatedly notified about that until i do it.

 

Thoughts ?

Edited by NanakoAC
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Guest maniac_mouse

The gmail app is pretty basic, but i have always found it reliable.

I did notice that every now and then it crashes in the background and wont receive notifications until its manually restarted again, maybe that's what happened at your friends house.

A few ideas....

Have you tried k9mail? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9 . You can control the sync time down to a single minute if you need to.  Its much more flexible and configurable than the gmail app. 

 

Tasker  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm   could help you. It lets you automate app and phone functions via a ruleset.  You could set up a rule to fire a repeating notification sound on email receipt, or even read the email aloud using text to speech.  You could also set up a rule to warn you if the network goes down.  A rule to poll gmails servers every minute would also help you not miss emails due to the gmail app being forced closed by the os or crashing.

 

If you fancy spending a bit of cash on a new toy, a smartwatch is great for not missing notifications.  I have a sony smartwatch 2 and it vibrates and displays the email notification from k9 as soon as it arrives.  Of course you need to be in bluetooth range of the phone for it to work and battery life isnt great on most Android wear devices. Some non android wear devices like the sony smartwatch 2, pebble or qualcom toc have good battery life though.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited by maniac_mouse
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Guest NanakoAC

thank you for the assistance!

Do you know if K-9 mail supports gmail's Label/category system? I am quite reliant on that to filter out non-work stuff for later nonessential reading.

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Guest maniac_mouse

thank you for the assistance!

Do you know if K-9 mail supports gmail's Label/category system? I am quite reliant on that to filter out non-work stuff for later nonessential reading.

 

I honestly dont know for sure. In the gmail accounts folder view there are loads of folders listed like spam,junk-email,personal,travel, work etc., but there's nothing specifically about labels/categories anywhere in the apps settings that i could find. Searching online, I couldn't find any info that confirms or deny`s it either.

I suppose you could set up filtering through gmails web interface to direct certain labelled/catagorised emails into the different folders so k9 could then filter and prioritise them.

I really only use it as a basic email client so havnt really had to use the advanced functions, maybe someone else in this forum can help.

Also, reading the reviews on the play store, there are a lot of people having problems with the latest version. I havnt experienced any myself but its worth bearing in mind.  Im sure the devs will fix it quickly though.

Maybe tasker+gmail app would be a better solution?

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