Family

Alexa connection

With the Alexa connection, you just say things instead of typing them – patchio adds them to your shopping list or puts them in your calendar. Handy when you notice you're out of milk while cooking, or you get asked about an appointment on the phone.

Before you start

An admin in your family has to turn Alexa on first: Family → Alexa connection → “Turn on Alexa for the household”. The feature is off by default. Only after that can members link their own Alexa account.

Linking

Open the Alexa app on your phone.
Go to Skills → patchio → Link account.
Sign in with your patchio account and confirm the link.

You'll then see under Family → Alexa connection in patchio that you're connected.

Shopping list

“Alexa, open our household and add water to the shopping list.”
“Alexa, open our household and add milk and butter to the shopping list.”

Several items in one sentence are split up: “milk and butter” becomes two items. This works with “and”, “as well as”, and comma-separated lists.

Calendar

“Alexa, open our household and add a haircut appointment tomorrow at 14:00.”
“… add parents' evening on Thursday.” (no time → all-day)
“… add dentist.” (no date → Alexa asks “For when?”)

Understood: “today”, “tomorrow”, “the day after tomorrow”, days of the week (“on Thursday”), dates (“on 14 July”, “on 20/8”) and times (“at 14:00”, “at half past two”, “at quarter to six”).

A note on time: “at six” is entered as 6:00, not 18:00 – patchio doesn't guess. Say “at six in the evening” if you mean 18:00.

The event lands as a family event in the calendar: all-day, or with an hour's duration if you name a time. You can assign it to a person afterwards in the app.

Where do entries land?

The shopping list and calendar are shared areas of your household. What you add by voice, every family member sees – just like an entry you type yourself. Items land in the “Other” category.

Disconnecting

You can undo the connection at any time – in patchio under Family → Alexa connection, via “Disconnect”, or directly in the Alexa app. This immediately invalidates the stored access tokens; after that, patchio processes no further Alexa requests from you. If an admin turns the Alexa connection off for the household again, that applies to every member.

Privacy

When you connect, Amazon (Alexa) processes your spoken commands. Only the recognised text reaches patchio – we don't store audio recordings and use the data only for the shopping list and the calendar. Details are in the Alexa privacy addendum, which you explicitly agree to when linking.