How do I set up a randomly reoccurring event in my calendar?

January 28, 2013 2:57 PM

I would like to set up a randomly reoccurring weekly event in my calendar -- either Outlook or Google -- such that it repeats every work week (M-F) between the hours of 9-5, but randomly. In other words, I want it to be at 1 pm on Monday one week, then 10 am on Friday of the following week, etc. Is there a quick and easy way to do this or must I set up a reoccurring event and then go through each week moving the appointment to what feels like a random time?
posted by lord_wolf to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

There is no way to make Google Calendar generate events for you. You could, however, generate and import a large list of random events using another method.

You could use an Excel script (or whatever you are comfortable with) that would, for each week, in one column select randomly between Mon-Fri (a random 0.0 to ≤0.2 would correspond to Mon, 0.2 to ≤0.4 to Tue etc.) and then associate that with the corresponding date, and then select a random time between 0900 and 1700 in the second column. Repeat the same date in column three and add whatever time you want your event to last to column two to generate the two columns that would specify the ending date/time. Adjust your remaining columns to correspond to a proper format (specifications), save it as a csv file, add a valid header and import it into your calendar of choice.
posted by halogen at 3:24 PM on January 28, 2013

Do you want the random event to be a surprise every week? Or do you want to be able to look ahead and see that (say) in seventeen weeks, The Event is gonna take place on Tuesday at 7:30 PM?
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 3:40 PM on January 28, 2013

A script and googles command line tools could do this
Ie google calendar add "$event at $randtime on $randday"
With appropriate variable replacement
posted by stuartmm at 3:44 PM on January 28, 2013

Google Apps Script in a Google Docs spreadsheet should be able to do this. It has access to the calendar API, and you can configure time-driven triggers, e.g. weekly code execution. It's not true that Google Calendar isn't programmable--it's just tucked away in a weird place.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 3:59 PM on January 28, 2013

This wouldn't be hard to do with some VBScript in Outlook (assuming things haven't changed much in the decade or so since I did a lot of that), if you have a little experience writing custom code inside Office apps.

I'm way past my best-buy date on being to help you specifics, though, sorry.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:40 PM on January 28, 2013

Thanks for the answers, everyone.

Some of it sounds like it's right up against the edge of my limited sphere of mad computer skillz, but I'll give it the ol' college try.

Cheers!
posted by lord_wolf at 8:13 AM on January 29, 2013