Tasker does not recognise incoming calls

Question

I have a Galaxy S4 I9505 on KitKat. I use Tasker for various things. I am trying to set up a "caller announce" when I am in the car. So I want to create a profile which when a call comes in announces the caller name (if in the contacts) or the caller number. That part I have working.

Where I am struggling is to get Tasker to activate the profile when a call comes in. I have tried Event - phone ringing and have that linked to my task. That task does not activate on incoming calls. So I tried state - phone - call (incoming), the same result. The phone starts ringing, but the profile does not activate the task (I have tried with a test task too, which sets a variable). From what I have read either of these profiles should activate when I have an incoming call.

Answer 1

The one you want is Event->Phone Ringing. The State->Phone Call would not activate until you've answered the call. Event Profiles activate and deactivate rather quickly so you probably wouldn't see it if you were trying to watch for the green active color. However, you mentioned that it did not even set a variable through a test task. Were you using a global variable for that or a local variable? Try using the Flash action to flash the caller's name and see if that pops up.

Once you get that working and confirmed, you might need to do some more work on your announcement. I'm guessing you're using the Say action. You'll need to uncheck Respect Audio Focus in order for Say to talk over the phone ringer since the ringer takes precedence. You'll probably also want to turn the ringer off temporarily using the Ringer Volume action to allow the Say action to finish and then turn the ringer back on.