Your Calendar Management

hey MPU, I was wondering if anyone had a calendar workflow or proper management. If anyone has suggestions for my situation, it would be great. Here is what I am trying to sort out.

Personal Email

  1. Personal calendar - doctors, birthdays, events
  2. Shared Family Calendar - self-explanatory used for everything (default)

Personal Work Email

  1. Personal Calendar - used for non-parish specific items, scheduling appointments from other parishes, organizations, etc
  2. Parish Calendar - I duplicated the calendar from my parish email into this account

Parish Email - G Suite

  1. Personal Calendar - used for meetings with board, scheduling appointments, counselings, etc
  2. Parish Service Calendar - displays entire parish service (used to confirm services, etc)

Parish - Recreation Ministry Email - G Suite

  1. Personal Calendar - used for meetings with the board, scheduling appointments
  2. Recreation Gym Calendar - displays the entire gym schedule (used sparingly to avoid double-bookings)

I was trying to think of the best solution for calendar management, I added everything into Fantastical, and then created Calendar sets so I can toggle between the views. However, I find myself constantly reminding the various people in my life…which account to use for invites, discussions, etc depending on the topic.

Is there a better method that I am not seeing?

I can see how your “users” could become confused in this system. It seems you are expecting them to implement your management strategy for you, by forcing them to interact with you through the “correct” interface. Maybe you could reduce your external interfaces, e.g. personal vs work, and then triage the work information into categories that suit you. One advantage I can see to such a system is that you would be able to add or subtract categories without burdening your users.

As to how to implement such a system, unfortunately I haven’t a clue.

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My partner and I have just one joint iCloud calendar for things we plan to do together. Otherwise we each have our own personal calendars for work or other personal events. We don’t share those calendars.

I have a lot of other calendar feeds that I subscribe to (one way; read only) and a few Google calendars that I use to sync with different apps.

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I would consolidate things. Ideally stuff would land in the right account, but that’s not going to happen. You can move events to another calendar after it’s arrived - which does mean a little more management on your end, but considerably less confusion for others. Or you can just say “everything comes to one email” and create separate calendars within that address for each area.

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Could you give an example of this?

Sure. My Google calendars sync with:

  • Curio
  • TheBrain
  • Ayoa (although I’ve thrown Ayoa overboard, so that’s one’s gone)
  • Todoist
  • ZoomNotes

In each of these cases, different “projects” can sync with different calendars. I usually stick to one calendar for all projects, but just mentioning.

Of course, apps such as Agenda, NotePlan also have two-way access to calendars and reminders.

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