Online Calendars

[Theodore Kufahl]

I am wondering if anyone has any good suggestions for how to manage online calendars. I was just listening to the episode about website development, and I felt that this concept could be an episode all on its own. I subscribe to Google calendars for two local congregations; one where I am a member, and the other is two blocks from my house. The problem I have is that subscribing to these calendars has left my digital calendar totally flooded, to the point where many of my personal events can get lost in the shuffle. I would like to talk to both congregations about making this more manageable, but I'd like to be able to take them some realistic suggestions to resolve it. I don't imagine a lot of people use the calendars the I am trying to use them, so there may not be a lot of interest in facilitating my edge case, but I won't know unless I ask.

I thought maybe there would be some way to filter Google calendars using tags, categories, or something like that, but I have not found any documentation that suggests this is possible. I guess the next best option would be to create a number of calendars based on specific event types. The problem becomes selecting how to group the events. Personally, I only want to see worship services and specific Bible study groups. Other people may wish to subscribe to choir schedules, children's activities, church administration groups, and other categories which haven't occurred to me. 

When I look at the idea of creating a bunch of different calendars, this looks like the barrier to initial implementation would be beyond what smaller congregations would be interested in undertaking. Again, I think that having tagging options would be ideal, so if anyone is aware of a way to do that, please let me know. Any other suggestions anyone has for how they use online calendar subscriptions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help.

TK

[JackDeth]

In my experience, Google offers one of the best calendaring options out there.

Once you subscribe to one or more calendars, other than your own, your calendar may begin to look a little cluttered. When you are in Google Calendar, look in the left side column and you should see the names of those calendars listed under MY CALENDARS (if you have editing privileges to that calendar) or under OTHER CALENDARS (if you have read only privileges to that calendar).

All you need to do is clear the checkbox to the left of that particular calendar to hide that calendars entries when you don't wish to see that content. Then just check it again when you want to see that information. That should essentially be the "filter" you are looking for.

You can further sort out different calendars from each other by assigning a color to that calendar or go into each event within that calendar and assign a color to that event.

If you have different types of events within a given calendar (ie. worship services, bible study groups, etc.) and you want to turn those on or off specifically, then the creator of those events would have to create a separate calendar for each type of event and you would have to subscribe to EACH calendar. However, that could get unwieldy and inefficient.

Troy