With the discontinuation of Windows Live Alerts back in September last year, which was once the service used by Hotmail Calendar users to receive their alerts and calendar event reminders, users were greeted with the following message when they visit http://alerts.live.com:
Thank-you for your interest in Windows Live Alerts. After much consideration we have decided to discontinue this service as part of the Windows Live offerings. Please sign up with Windows Live Alerts partners directly to receive their newsletters or other content updates from them. Hotmail Calendar Alerts and reminders will continue to be managed by Windows Live Alerts for the time being.
It had been almost 6 months since then, and the Hotmail Calendar team had been working hard on a new and improved calendar event reminder functionality, so that Windows Live Alerts can finally retire from service. In fact, LiveSide was able to obtain a screenshot of what’s to come for Hotmail Calendar’s new reminder service, and soon users will be greeted with the following message when visiting Hotmail Calendar:
As seen above, the new calendar reminder functionality will follow an opt-in model initially, however, all users will eventually be automatically transitioned to the new reminder service. The new reminder functionality has also been much improved in terms of flexibility, and users will now be able to set multiple reminders for each individual event, as well as multiple reminders for each calendar. This is much better than the previous Alerts service which only allow one reminder for each of your Calendar events. The screenshot below shows this in action:
This is definitely a welcoming addition to the Hotmail Calender service. We’re currently unsure when everyone would be getting this functionality, but we’ll let you know as soon as the news comes. Stay tuned!