A hard look at Google Calendar Integration

[Grant]

I was quite excited when this feature was introduced.  It is not even anti-GTD, given GTD does include the use of a calendar for fixed appointments.

Over time I have become less of a fan.  Below are a few of my comments on this topic.  Maybe others want to chime in, so that the MLO team can re-assess the importance and usefulness of this feature. 

Qualifier: Is it possible all these issues are Google Calendar restrictions - I would like to know if that is the case)

1. The lack of automatic synchronization.  This causes a wealth of confusion when looking for an appointment entered in Google Calendar and not finding it, until you realize you forgot to manually sync from MLO.

2. The lack of Sync via Mobile.  If you are on the road for a time, or mainly a mobile device user, the value of the integration is less, as MLO and Google Calendar will be at times our of sync.

3. The 250 event limit.  When you have more, past events are removed from the Google Calendar.  

• I miss not being able to visually browse back in my Events calendar to see what meetings I had and when. 
• Repeating events count for the 250 limit!  This means one repeating event with no end forces all past events to be removed from the Google Calendar

4. Possibly not a MLO problem, but it seems I can not link my Google Calendar to MLO and to Evernote at the same time.  Does anyone else do this?

[Daniel Clark]

100% agree with all the points, IMHO would make most sense to focus on #2, Sync via Mobile, as it wouldn't be so bad to have it be manual if you could do it via your smartphone.

This stuff made the decision to buy MLO much harder than it otherwise would have been for me.

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[M. Leigh Bender]

I agree wholeheartedly. I made the switch to TickTick in December because of this even with a being a long time MLO user. I've found the integration with calendars to be a game changer. I had slowly moved to time blocking for planning and really tried to make it work with MLO and had challenges due to the reasons you mentioned. I still have MLO and access it periodically but am not actively up keeping it.

If it got better calendar 2-way sync like todoist I would switch back as I really love the filtering and customization of MLO 

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Respectfully,

Leigh

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[Patricio Carranza]

hi! I agree with the points but from my perspective the main solution should be a calendar functionality built in MLO. As I mentioned on some prior thread...all the filters and info you can track in MLO task would be really helpful in a calendar view. not to mention the real time update MLO task <--> MLO Calendar.

once that's in place within MLO..then it comes implementing the ability to evaluate how (according to your calendar) you are distributing your time...e.g a report/dashboard where you see allocated time by flag, context, etc, etc.

Patricio.

[imajeff]

I can think of reasons why not to have MLO use only it's own calendar. First, I did think this was the best way to make it well integrated, but as I learned how the team is spread thin, they had to get another team for the Android part (the main focus is Microsoft Windows)... So I don't think there's enough resource right now to make all the features of a calendar that people will want.

Further more, I want a special One Page Calendar format that nobody else will make commercially. It is meant to show the entire year but not having to write every month (just looks like one month).

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/one-page-calendar/

What I'm getting at: I'd like to see focus on open standards for syncronizing calendar data, then we can have the one we like and not have quality of the calendar views dilluted by not being able to keep improving them. Let someone else focus on Calendar application so that both can be really impressive, then master the art of making both work together without some giant company controlling what we can do and harvesting our data for their own gain.

[Patricio Carranza]

I took a look at the article, really nice idea, congrats.

Regarding having a calendar within MLO..think about it as an investment that will bring more and many more satisfied users to MLO. I keep thinking that not having a quick way to understand how you are planning to distribute your time reduces a lot the value you get out of so much sophistication to keep track of tasks, priorities, projects, etc, etc.

Patricio.