ToDos and Reminders in Alice

Daniel Kornev
3 min readApr 26, 2018

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It’s a pleasure for me to share news about a new product I’ve started working on at Yandex a few months ago, in addition to the intelligent mail processing platform. We call its ToDos and Reminders, and it’s one of the key productivity scenarios for Yandex’s AI Assistant called Alice!

Even though on the surface this is a pretty simple product, given the complexity of the Yandex organization, it is a rather complex one. ~20 teams were involved in making this happen, including but not limited to engineers, designers, and product managers working in Mail, Calendar, Alice, and Yandex app teams.

Today I’m proud to say that you can try out the Beta of ToDos and in beta version of Yandex app for Android!

Support Scenarios

Simply say “Алиса, напомни купить хлеб сегодня в 9 вечера” (“Alice, remind me to buy bread today at 9pm”), and it will send you a push notification at 9pm today:

Setting up reminder in Yandex’s Alice

If you want to add a new task to your ToDo List simply say “Алиса, добавь задачу купить хлеб “ (“Alice add task to buy bread”), and Yandex Alice will add it to your To-Dos list.

To-Dos list in Yandex Alice

To-Dos created via Alice will be also available through the web interface of our Yandex Calendar (button with a checkbox in the top right corner) as well as in the old To-Dos list in Yandex Mail:

To-Dos Lists in Yandex Calendar

All To-Dos you’ve made in Yandex Alice will be added to a new list called “Мои дела” (My To-Dos”).

You can add To-Dos with Due date or without it.

IMPORTANT: You can use a rich variety of natural phrases to set up reminders. Try to talk to Alice in the natural way. Alice will do its best to properly recognize your task and get it done.

What Do I Need To Begin Using To-Dos and Reminders in Alice?

  1. Android-based phone with installed beta version of Yandex Alice (v7.40 and higher)
  2. Yandex Account (To-Dos are stored in Yandex Calendar).

Known Limitations

  1. To-Dos and Reminders are currently available only to users of Yandex Beta app for Android.
  2. Reminders will be delivered to your phone only if it connected to the network.
  3. You need to have Yandex Account to create To-Dos and Reminders.
  4. You can’t currently see, create, and remove Reminders within the Yandex Calendar interface.
  5. You can’t see a list of past reminders.
  6. Reminders are not available for sync via CalDAV.

Call To Action

Try out To-Dos and Reminders in Yandex Alice and let us know how comfortable or uncomfortable your experience was. We are looking forward to your feedback!!!.

Originally published at http://contextresearcher.wordpress.com and in my Facebook note on April 26, 2018.

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Daniel Kornev
Daniel Kornev

Written by Daniel Kornev

CEO at Stealth Startup. ex-CPO @ DeepPavlov. Shipped part of Yandex AI Assistant Alice in 2018. Previously worked at Microsoft, Google, and Microsoft Research.

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