Hope me, everyone ELSE has too many calendars
December 2, 2016 10:19 AM Subscribe
My work life involves contact with three autonomous groups, each of whom uses a series of Google calendars (small mercies, everyone is on the same platform) to keep track of meetings, meeting slots, rooms and/or equipment booking, project deadlines. And so on.
There are literally 29 calendars on my sidebar, it's madness. At any given point, around 10 are probably relevant to me, but which 10 it is can change every few months. I need some kind of next-level calendaring solution
Assume I have no ability to change how these calendars are used or get people to help me out with extra non-calendar reminders. I float between these groups, and am responsible for staying on top of the parts of their workflow that involve me, which changes on a month-to-month basis. All are labs that work with people who volunteer to come in for appointments anywhere from 30min to 2 hours, on top of within-group meetings. Ideally, I am available for appointments as much as possible to accommodate volunteer schedules, but I also need to balance my own sanity and work time.
This is surprisingly less insane than it sounds - during busy times I usually have: 2-3 large group meetings (fixed), 4ish 1-on-1 meetings (pretty fixed), and up to around 8 volunteer appointments (usually just in 1 lab at a time), more usually around 3-4. So it's not a matter of fitting in the meetings in so much as not losing track of them, and grouping them up as much as I can. If I can keep track of what's going on in the calendars, I can stay pretty sane and maintain control over my schedule, but that's the rub.
As an example of my issues, I might need to sign up on someone else's calendar, and then I have my choice of either seeing everyone's meetings, or remembering to copy it onto my own calendar. Or, I might get scheduled onto a big group calendar for an appointment, and I am responsible for knowing that it was put onto the calendar. Or, I might need to know when I have declared myself to be free at different sites so I don't double-book myself during that window. Or, I might need to know when students I supervise are in one place or another so that I can find times to meet with them.
Here's what I want my magic calendar program to do:
- Tell me exactly where I need to be when, and schedule meetings for me in the most optimal way
But really:
- Let me group calendars into categories and set different notification/view rules for them (e.g.: Meeting Slots, Group appointment calendars, Equipment schedules, actual meetings).
- Know the difference between times being held open for meetings, and meetings.
- Let me hide some events from a calendar but not others, rather than just show/hiding a particular calendar, or otherwise distinguish between my schedules and other people's schedules.
- Make it easy to switch between sets of calendars I specify, e.g. "All the rooms at Site A"
- Let me write rules like 'show events from this calendar only if they are named THING'
- Give me some kind of sensible overview of everything, because my gcal is just a series of beautiful rainbow ribbons running down the screen next to each other.
Does any of this exist? At the moment, I export the subset calendars that either directly reflect my schedule, or which have especially bad consequences for me missing something, to iCal, and then use the in-browser gcalendar to look at everything, relying on color coding to mentally categorize calendars that serve similar functions. A solution to this could be app, browser, or computer based (I'm on a mac), so long as it can push notifications to my phone.
As for non-tech based solutions, I would love to hear from people who deal with similar setups (assume that 'get other people to be different about scheduling' is not on the table, but 'become more draconian about my own availability' is to a degree.)
Assume I have no ability to change how these calendars are used or get people to help me out with extra non-calendar reminders. I float between these groups, and am responsible for staying on top of the parts of their workflow that involve me, which changes on a month-to-month basis. All are labs that work with people who volunteer to come in for appointments anywhere from 30min to 2 hours, on top of within-group meetings. Ideally, I am available for appointments as much as possible to accommodate volunteer schedules, but I also need to balance my own sanity and work time.
This is surprisingly less insane than it sounds - during busy times I usually have: 2-3 large group meetings (fixed), 4ish 1-on-1 meetings (pretty fixed), and up to around 8 volunteer appointments (usually just in 1 lab at a time), more usually around 3-4. So it's not a matter of fitting in the meetings in so much as not losing track of them, and grouping them up as much as I can. If I can keep track of what's going on in the calendars, I can stay pretty sane and maintain control over my schedule, but that's the rub.
As an example of my issues, I might need to sign up on someone else's calendar, and then I have my choice of either seeing everyone's meetings, or remembering to copy it onto my own calendar. Or, I might get scheduled onto a big group calendar for an appointment, and I am responsible for knowing that it was put onto the calendar. Or, I might need to know when I have declared myself to be free at different sites so I don't double-book myself during that window. Or, I might need to know when students I supervise are in one place or another so that I can find times to meet with them.
Here's what I want my magic calendar program to do:
- Tell me exactly where I need to be when, and schedule meetings for me in the most optimal way
But really:
- Let me group calendars into categories and set different notification/view rules for them (e.g.: Meeting Slots, Group appointment calendars, Equipment schedules, actual meetings).
- Know the difference between times being held open for meetings, and meetings.
- Let me hide some events from a calendar but not others, rather than just show/hiding a particular calendar, or otherwise distinguish between my schedules and other people's schedules.
- Make it easy to switch between sets of calendars I specify, e.g. "All the rooms at Site A"
- Let me write rules like 'show events from this calendar only if they are named THING'
- Give me some kind of sensible overview of everything, because my gcal is just a series of beautiful rainbow ribbons running down the screen next to each other.
Does any of this exist? At the moment, I export the subset calendars that either directly reflect my schedule, or which have especially bad consequences for me missing something, to iCal, and then use the in-browser gcalendar to look at everything, relying on color coding to mentally categorize calendars that serve similar functions. A solution to this could be app, browser, or computer based (I'm on a mac), so long as it can push notifications to my phone.
As for non-tech based solutions, I would love to hear from people who deal with similar setups (assume that 'get other people to be different about scheduling' is not on the table, but 'become more draconian about my own availability' is to a degree.)
I haven't used it but maybe Fantastical? It allows you to group calendars for easy toggling, at least.
posted by purple_bird at 1:39 PM on December 2, 2016
posted by purple_bird at 1:39 PM on December 2, 2016
Some of the apps listed here might also help you out: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/meeting-scheduler-tools-more-productive#sm.0010897f094hcne10v31r35kmreek
posted by purple_bird at 1:45 PM on December 2, 2016
posted by purple_bird at 1:45 PM on December 2, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
Seriously, I think your best solution is non-technical. Have you thought about a virtual assistant that can check your calendars once or twice a day and maybe update one private calendar that just you and the VA see, which contains that stuff you actually need to do?
posted by COD at 12:38 PM on December 2, 2016