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SIRI - Configuring Locations for Reminders?

B

bunger

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 1, 2007
468
6
I have been playing around with Siri and saying things like "reminder to call home when I get to the office" and "reminder me to pay $5 when I get to <contact name>" and Siri never recognizes my locations, though I literally have a contact called "OFFICE" with the address of my office and whatever contact I am talking about also has an address.

Are there "special" ways to configure addresses to get Siri to recognize them?

tia,
Bill
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

It just started working for me at all a couple of hours ago.
 
I believe that in the beta form, Siri will only do 'work' and 'home'. I expect this will change over time.
 
I put the locations as addresses under my own name in contacts, i.e. work, supermarket etc. and that seemed to do the trick
 
jebus940 said:
I put the locations as addresses under my own name in contacts, i.e. work, supermarket etc. and that seemed to do the trick
Click to expand...

Interesting - you just create custom label addresses under your own contact entry?
 
bunger said:
Interesting - you just create custom label addresses under your own contact entry?
Click to expand...

Yes. I go to 2 or 3 different grocery stores so I added the addresses and created a custom label with the store name - Whole Foods, Safeway, Trader Joe's. I asked Siri to remind me to buy milk when I arrive at Safeway.
 
AquaGreenbean said:
Yes. I go to 2 or 3 different grocery stores so I added the addresses and created a custom label with the store name - Whole Foods, Safeway, Trader Joe's. I asked Siri to remind me to buy milk when I arrive at Safeway.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I set up an address book group of stores (Safeway, Whole Foods, Costco etc.) I can chose them in reminders iO5 on 4 but haven't gotten to use Siri yet with an upgrade nightmare on my 4S. If you set up Safeway as its own entry Siri can't find it?
 
TEBnewyork said:
Interesting. I set up an address book group of stores (Safeway, Whole Foods, Costco etc.) I can chose them in reminders iO5 on 4 but haven't gotten to use Siri yet with an upgrade nightmare on my 4S. If you set up Safeway as its own entry Siri can't find it?
Click to expand...

I have a contact called Office with the address and Siri can't find it...
 
Go into your own contact entry, and add an "Office" address. Office is a standard address type - no need to create a bespoke one
 
Is it not recognizing the word "Office" or have you not enabled locations for Siri?

I had to go into Settings > Locations Services > Siri > On

Mine originally was defaulted to off.
 
When I create an address type in contacts, it only gives me the option for home, work and other.
 
jebus940 said:
I put the locations as addresses under my own name in contacts, i.e. work, supermarket etc. and that seemed to do the trick
Click to expand...

Yes if you do this for you home address and work address you can tell siri something like "remind me to check my schedule when i get to work and it will use the address you put under work and when you get there the reminder should pop up.... kudos
 
Ok, I'm still stuck with this.

When I add my gym as either a separate contact or as another address (called "Gym") in my own contact details i.e. under my home address, Siri still says that she doesn't have my gym address when I attempt to set a reminder to do with that location. I have input the address manually and using google maps.....any ideas?

Thanks
 
On the topic of reminders, I have several lists (eg. shopping list, reminders, errands list, etc). When I say 'remind me to call soso when I get home', it puts it into my shopping list. It doesn't seem to understand list names either when I say 'add a reminder to my errands list', it just puts it automatically into the shopping list.

I'm guessing Siri doesn't yet recognize lists. Anyone found a workaround?
 
found this on another site. this worked for me as far as a step-by-step for inputting the new addresses on your address card.


1. You need to go into your contact card

2. Push edit and scroll down to addresses

3. Add a new address, and push the label that appears to the left of the address (usually work/home)

4. At the bottom, you can add a custom label, it can be anything, say "Target."

5. Add the address for the Target, then push done

6. When you launch Siri, you can now tell her to remind you when you leave "My target." For example: "Remind me to buy milk when I arrive at my target" Be sure to say "my," I couldn't get it to work otherwise.

I've found that its more accurate when you split up the reminder, so it would be "remind me to buy milk" and when she asks when to remind you, say "when I arrive at my target"

good luck.
 
cerrano said:
found this on another site. this worked for me as far as a step-by-step for inputting the new addresses on your address card.


1. You need to go into your contact card

2. Push edit and scroll down to addresses

3. Add a new address, and push the label that appears to the left of the address (usually work/home)

4. At the bottom, you can add a custom label, it can be anything, say "Target."

5. Add the address for the Target, then push done

6. When you launch Siri, you can now tell her to remind you when you leave "My target." For example: "Remind me to buy milk when I arrive at my target" Be sure to say "my," I couldn't get it to work otherwise.

I've found that its more accurate when you split up the reminder, so it would be "remind me to buy milk" and when she asks when to remind you, say "when I arrive at my target"

good luck.
Click to expand...

I think I may be finding bugs with Siri. She won't recognize "gym" or "my gym" even when using the steps above. Also, although she seems to recognize "supermarket" when added in the way outlined above, she tries to use my home address for the reminder rather than the address associated with "supermarket".

I'm beginning to think this is down to Siri being a Beta version...hopefully this will be ironed out soon.
 
Finally got it to "work". I created contacts for the stores I wanted it to recognize and set the first name to "My" and last name to "Target" or whatever. Not sure if it matters, but I also set the type to "Other" instead of work or home. Now Siri knows what I'm talking about when I say "Remind me to buy milk when I go to My Target". A little kludgy, but it works reliably now. I tried adding custom addresses in my contacts and setting individual contacts with the business name of "Target" and could not get either of these to work.

Hope it helps....
 
getting Siri to understand locations

Here's another subtlety to be aware of: If you follow the instructions [in the thread linked at the bottom of this reply], and Siri says she doesn't understand the location, look at the text of her complaint. If you haven't spelled the location EXACTLY the way she spells it, you must edit the location name to agree with her.

For example, in entering two of my tennis clubs, I called one "Forest Hill", and she said, "I don't understand Foresthill". Aha! Had to make it all one word -- and then it worked fine.

Even trickier for the other one, which I called "40 West". Siri said, "I don't understand 40 W.". [and she said it as "forty doubleyou"] So I put in "40 W". Still didn't work. Aha! Notice the period INSIDE the quotation marks...she needs to have the place named as "40 W." The period is important, because when I say "west", she abbreviates it as "W." Now works fine.

The above is my addition to the following thread, where the location problems seem to have been worked out and explained. [You shouldn't need to name any location "My" anything.]:

<http://www.iphoneforums.net/forum/iphone-general-discussion-12/how-add-set-locations-reminders-siri-23287/>
 
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