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A Better Calendar?

Hi all, I have had Windows Mobile phones for about 2 years now and have thoroughly enjoyed hacking them with the help of the awesome developers here, my old vogue and now my touch pro become instantly better phones when I load up somebody's well designed ROM. But with all of my messing around with my phones the one thing I have never come across is a really great calendar app.
I have tried all the standard winmo apps from developer 1 etc. But they are all just variations on the windows mobile calendar... which to be honest, considering what else is out there on other platforms is total crap.
I want to know if anyone has come across a really solid calendar app, something more like google calendar or the palm pre's calendar, for windows mobile? I realize that the winmo app was designed to sync with outlook and not necessarily be the end all calendar for it's users, but for a lot of us non-business consumers it's not enough, we (or at least I) don't use outlook and am not satisfied with simply syncing my google calendar to my phone (which has many annoying limitations btw)
Anyhow any thoughts, suggestions, or perhaps guesses as to why no such application has yet found it's way to windows mobile? Perhaps that will change?
Discuss
Sean

you must be kidding
Thumbcal!!!

nir36 said:
you must be kidding
Thumbcal!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Complete agreement, nothing else comes close to being finger friendly.

Go with Thumbcal on your poll!

Wow how did I miss this great app. Ok of all the calendar apps I've tried this is hands down the best. I think if you could drag-input appointments the way you do in google calendar perhaps within a new "day" view, that would be cool. Oddly enough I think that's about my only complaint, everything else is fantastic... if I could drag and drop so to speak my work schedule into it one day at a time instead of inputing the title/time in the create appointment screen it would be damn near perfect.
Ok no I take that back, built in 2 way sync with google calendar without the use of activesync and some other "palm pre" like features and it would be perfect. But for windows mobile this is pretty darn close!!

Just to throw in my two pennies worth. I tried Thumbcal quite extensively, and quite liked it, but it still seemed lacking. It's certainly the best actual APP for calendar purposes, in a finger friendly style.
However... having tried every WinMo interface under the sun, I have now comfortably settled on the Manila 2 TF3D Calendar Tab included in various Topaz / Rhodium ROMs, tied in with the TF3D Compact Homescreen with dated appointments and all synced to my Google Calendar via Active Sync.
The only slight issue I have with this set-up is that the calendar tab takes about 5 seconds to load appointment highlights. If anyone knows of a tweak to speed this up, that would be close to perfection.

Shift calendar app

Hi
On my desktop(Vista) i have a shift calendar widget.Works a treat.
I work 4 days on and 4 days off sort of like an 8 day week.I never start the week on the same day.So i need a shift calendar that i can show my working days. I have been scouring the web to see if i can find an app for my HD2 that can perform the same function.My widget auto does this for me so i dont have to manually input each day(i could do this in outlook if i so wished.
Cant find one so i thought i would ask you good peeps if anybody has come across one on there travels.
Many thanks Gerry

I work that same shift pattern. I just stick it into Outlook and set the recurrance. All working days are in my Cal and theres no need for an extra app to manage it.

Likewise i do 4 on and 4 off.. 2 days & 2 nights on. I have to use outlook for recurring dates, i find its just as easy to then sync. I have used a few mobiles and the only app that ever did my roster was Handy Calender (s60 Nokia).

Did your search bring you to PortablePIM?
You can use your outlook recurrence, sync with your desktop, etc.
You can switch the software to English under Options (the light blue icon)...
have a look at it...
Regards,
Obelix

Seems that there are a lot of firefighters geeking it up around here.

Time, Calendar, Agenda App for Shift Workers?

Hi all, I noticed this thread but sadly no replies... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=866933
Basically I am a shift worker and am looking for a shift workers app that will replicate a shift pattern through the whole year or between predefined dates. Also as my shifts do vary from time to time the app should allow for replicated days to be changed.
Many of my iPhone colleagues have an app that can do this but not it seems on Android.
I sync my Calendar items with Google Calendar so I could add them manually that way but it will takes ages.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Hello, after reading "iPhone colleagues......" I started to search something. I'm a shift worker too and I've not ever felt the need of, but you are right! so I've found these apps:
-Gemini calendar
-Shifty lite
-Work calendar lite
let me know which is the best, I'm start to testing!
Regards

Hi,
there is an app, called "Quick Addroid" on the market. The app adds shift patterns to the standard calendar. You can define your own pattern.
http://www.streim.de/quickaddroid/

Thanks for the suggestion... I will definitely check it out.
Cheers!!

ClickCal

I've been working on this app for some time. I'm aware of the risks in using non-public API parts eg. Android calendar, but I needed the app features myself and so did many of my friends. So I've published it as a free app on Android market and it's been well received, but every now and then I get another error message. As I don't have any information on the phone or OS in question it's really hard to figure out what could be wrong. I typically test apps on 3 phones that I have readily available (HTC Hero, LG Optimus, SE X10 Mini Pro) and with Android 2.1 & 2.2. It would be great to hear if this app works as it should on your phones and if it breaks where/how it happens.

Your app looks quite useful.
Here's a clickable market link.
Do you mind adding some screenshots to your original post so we can get a better picture (pun intended)?
Edit: In case you don't add pics yourself, I've attached three from your market entry.
Edit 2: Here's the market description (for the lazy)
Android Market Description said:
ClickCal is a perfect blog tool, personal, family and work calendar app that allows you to create events and tasks by taking photos and/or via voice recording. No typing is required to create an event. Snap a photo of a document and save - your event is ready. Use your phones built-in camera to scan your paper invitation, dentist appointment note, screen of an e-mail/web page and your event is ready. You can record a voice message to add to the event as well. Optionally you can select event type, choose the calendar, set date and time, and if you really want to type you can add a description and location.
Adds an icon that allows to quick add an event from the desktop.
Syncs with Google calendar. Note: event images and audio can not be viewed in other calendar applications as they do not support this feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

The background of creating this app is that I got really tired of trying to manage our kitchen bulletin board. Full of paper docs of kids school stuff,sports events & other activities and naturally no sync with phone or other calendars. Typing in the info sounded like a nightmare. So I was thinking how I could get those digitalized easily. ClickCal solves that problem. Later a friend asked how she could handle taking notes of customer meetings while driving back from the meeting. I proposed adding an audio recording feature to ClickCal. Next feature coming up is being able to log the GPS/Wlan -based location with the event.
But I've been having some issues with sporadic error reports coming in - and I can't reproduce the errors as the app works fully on my 3 phones.

I installed it to my epic 4g but will not open, say that i need to setup my google account (which i have) on my phone before using Clickcal???????

Oh, and as a side note, I have featured this nice app on the XDA home page.

I'm getting error messages a couple of times per week. Previously they were usually caused by Motorola having a different calendar provider address. Took me a while to figure out that they changed it back to the standard one when they moved from 2.1->2.2. That was finally solved with ClickCal version 1.6.2.
Samsung with 2.2.1 not working is news to me. The error message is probably caused by the app not finding Samsung's calendar provider. Haven't been able to test on 2.2.1 yet. So there's clearly more to the story. App testing is really the biggest issue with Android - many phones with variable screens and OS-versions.
Thanks for the testing. One step ahead.

Just got an idea: some phones like Samsungs come with the manufacturers own calendar app. They might not be 100% compatible with the Google Android calendar.
Was the test with the pre-installed Samsung calendar or the Google standard one?

Thanks - but a little bit too soon I'm still trying to figure a couple of reported issues.

HTC Thunderbolt, 2.2 Stock
downloaded, installed, opened-- "No Calendars Available. No google calendars were found on your phone. you need to setup your google account on your phone before using ClickCal". application then closes. can't get past that text box.
i have at least 8 Google Calendars & have been using this phone since launch day 3 weeks ago, so my gmail account is setup on the phone successfully & all calendars can be viewed on the phone through the stock Calendar app.
Dev, please fix--i'm pretty curious about this app & its capabilities.

Ok, thx for the feedback. Will work on this over the weekend. I was wondering that the retention rate was pretty low for an app I consider useful. Not wondering anymore if it doesn't even start up on some phones...
Anyway, I'm happy I found this site - without it I'd still be deep in the woods.
If you need note taking with the camera and/or audio recordings, but without the calendaring part I've also published ClickNote on android market. Based on the same principles, but no calendar. I haven't had any issues with ClickNote so far from any users.

The Samsung calendar
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App

I'm getting the no google calendar message then its exiting too.
On sony Ericsson x10.
Sent from my wolf 2.2 X10i using XDA App

Ugh - Sony Ericsson as well. I've actually developed this app for the SE X10 Mini Pro.
Ok, but based on the feedback on this board and a little more research I think I've discovered the problem. It's due to the manufacturers eg. built-in calendar which is not 100% compatible with the standard Android calendar. Now I can finally fix this issue. I'll develop a check for the calendars on the phone to test that they function correctly with ClickCal. On some phones it will probably mean that ClickCal will only work with the Google calendars.

Here is the logcat from my xperia x10. Hope it helps.

Finally got it! Thx for the X10 logcat output you sent. It showed that ClickCal was considering your phone as having Android 2.1.
Since the calendar provider is different (calendar vs. com.android.calendar) between 2.1 and 2.2 I'm doing a check on the OS version of the phone. Well my nice version string match was against "2.1". I think 2.2.1 might also match this

Just published version ClickCal 1.7 on Android market. Several fixes, but most importantly should work with Androdi 2.2.1 and hopefully Samsung stock calendar setup.

spfoo said:
Just published version ClickCal 1.7 on Android market. Several fixes, but most importantly should work with Androdi 2.2.1 and hopefully Samsung stock calendar setup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't have time to test it fully at the moment but i have installed the update and it recognises the google calendar and appears to work properly. I'll test it over the weekend fully hopefully.
Thanks for your quick response.

Ok i have tested it now ... i have a couple of things.
It only shows the main calendar that i have on my phone, not my holidays or birthdays calendar (these are both listed on the dropdown list at the top) it just doesn't pick up any appointments from them.
Is there a way to get it to add and appointment by long pressing at the correct time? I can't get used to having to go to the top and click new event.
Also can you get it to swipe left and right for next/previous day in the day view and not just the monthly view?
Also i know this is minor but can you move the save button to the bottom of the page? Or change its colour slightly? It is really hard to see.
Other than that i really like the app.
THanks

indesisiv said:
Ok i have tested it now ... i have a couple of things.
It only shows the main calendar that i have on my phone, not my holidays or birthdays calendar (these are both listed on the dropdown list at the top) it just doesn't pick up any appointments from them.
Is there a way to get it to add and appointment by long pressing at the correct time? I can't get used to having to go to the top and click new event.
Also can you get it to swipe left and right for next/previous day in the day view and not just the monthly view?
Also i know this is minor but can you move the save button to the bottom of the page? Or change its colour slightly? It is really hard to see.
Other than that i really like the app.
THanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are those holiday/birthday calendars internal phone calendars or google calendars? If you can do a few selections on these calendars and send me the logcat I can check what's happening.
Long-click to add event is a good idea - was thinking to enable long-click from the monthly view eg long click on a day to add event. But it's trivial to add to the day/agenda views as well. It may be hard to hit the exact right time though - the rows are narrow when there are no events on them.
Swiping to move days back/forward on day view is in the plans.
The Save button is on the bottom on some phones, but not all. Depends on screen sizes. I tried to optimize the view for the smallest screen eg the X10 Mini Pro. Perhaps a good idea would be to make the button full width and change the color?
Thx for the feedback. Will look into those items for the next release. Priority on the missing calendar data.

I have one google account with multiple calendars.
I can see the calendars etc but it only give info from one.
I tried to swap between them here. (logcat added)
Hope this helps

Problem using shared google calendar

SWBMO has recently got a One S, cracking phone! Noticed something odd last night in that i didn't see new calendar entries she's been putting in. For years we have used a shared calendar on google no problem but with the one S she can only add events to her own google calendar. Although the shared one appears in the drop down it won't select ( PC Sync will )
Quite frustrating, more so as trying to work around it I managed to delete the shared calendar!
Anyone found this?

Had a response from htc support.apparently you can only sync the primary google calendar not secondary ones,.new one on me, our shared calendar has been working fine until now!
The one s will see multiple calendars she just can't add events to others!
I await the next update!

Same issue here. Disappointing that a feature that worked and was heavily used on my 2-year-old Vibrant doesn't work on my brand new One S. I hate to have to buy a replacement app for one that should work as expected, but I can't wait for a fix.

HTC have come back and said it is an interesting issue and they are investigating.
I have done some more testing though. I created a new calendar and shared between our accounts. After sync I can see it in the multi calendar menu in the normal calendar app. When I add an event on her phone I go to the drop down at the top and see it listed.
Select the new calendar and it does go in the right place. But the issue seems to be the field at the top doesn't change from Google to reflect the calendar name so you don't actually know where you are entering it, could be any of the google calendars. They seems to have removed the variable part of that if it's a google calendar.
Don't know if it's the effect of creating the new calendar makes it kind of work or whether it just wasn't obvious before.

I reported a bug to HTC, who kept replying that "you can't add events to Google calendars other than your 'main' Google calendar". Then I did some more digging and figured out the same thing Scoop940 reported: you *can* add events to calendars other than your "main" calendar; the drop-down list just doesn't show the calendar you've selected.
One thing you still can't do, however, is "move" an existing event from one calendar to another. That ability wasn't present on my Vibrant running Froyo either.

Still ongoing with HTC this one, I have now sent endless screen shots from my sensation and wifeys One S to demonstrate the problem. It has now been passed to someone in the HTC Written team whatever that means and they now have the software info from the One S.
At the moment it feels like they are listening just hard to get through to them the problem. Change the static Google name back to a variable showing the calendar name, someone made the assumption that people only use one google calendar.
Will keep updated.

Well been recognised as a fault and escalated, although reading between the lines it says don't hold your breath!.;-)
Sent from my HTC Sensation using XDA

Thanks for the heads up on this. I am also able to create events in other calendars, the app just does not display the currently selected calendar at the top as you mentioned, so it's a pretty simple workaround.
Still, it's a bit annoying and it seems like a relatively easy fix, although I doubt it's high on the priority list.

Scoop940 said:
Well been recognised as a fault and escalated, although reading between the lines it says don't hold your breath!.
Sent from my HTC Sensation using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any movement on this problem yet?