Free SMS texting of calendar appointments?

motorguy

Hi

I have a friend who wants to send a text to remind people to attend an appointment. For example, to attend a doctors appointment.

Has anyone any experience of any free s/w that can allow this? I'm thinking that perhaps an extension of Microsoft Outlook may be the way forward, but not sure how that would work?

Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance

comdw

Google calendar has the option of reminding of your appointments by SMS. I use it, it works reliably.

I think you can import outlook calendar into Google easily enough...

bingo_bango

The notifications are free from Google calander, but only to one phone which you register with them. If your friend wants to send reminders out to clients, this won't work for them.

There are plenty of free sms services in the UK, but you have to manually type the message and number with most of them. Google free UK sms and you'll find loads.

theboylard

Sending many sms will cost.

What your friend is trying to do (if they want to automate it as much as possible, which I assume they would?) is not really a home pc job, rather a service provided by a third party that will hook into a web based application running on a server.

If you know any clever bods you could possibly get them to script sending email to phone permanently attached to the pc, then forward this on via text?
But this will not be happening with any basic calendaring prog like LookOut?

bingo_bango

I get where you're coming from boylard, but this still requires manual intervention by someone to forward the text.
What is actually being asked may only be available using a 3rd party operator, but the scripting idea may work if there is a hosting service which offers this for websites, but it means ensuring that any calendar entries are linked to the server also. Worth searching for hosting packages which may allow this, but I don't imagine it would be really cheap.

@ pgilc1 - IIRC you're in NI (or close to it). I know that a number of taxi firms here use txt/callback services to let you know when they have arrived to pick you up. Perhaps ask them what service they use?