Are you finding it difficult to organize and coordinate your schedule? Trying to manage your work calendar and balance it with your personal commitments can be a challenging task. Therefore, you require a dependable tool that allows you to share calendars and accurately determine your availability.
In order to regain control of your schedule, let’s examine the most widely used calendar apps in 2023.
What’s a calendar sharing app?
A shared calendar app is a digital tool that enables users to generate, handle, and distribute calendars with others. It enables busy professionals to effortlessly schedule meetings among teams, safeguard time for effective tasks, and allocate time for various events on all of their calendars.
In a busy workweek like today, a traditional calendar is inadequate for managing our complex availability, hence the need for a calendar sharing app.
- The average pro juggles 25.6 meetings/week
- 42.4% of 1:1 meetings are rescheduled
- The average pro works 45.8 hours/week
- 78.7% of people are stressed about getting enough stuff done
- 39.4% of employees are burned out from workdays running long
- 52.2% of employees are burned out from work-life balance issues
In light of the busy nature of our calendars, it is evident that the imbalance between our personal and professional lives is negatively affecting our mental well-being. Rather than enduring the turmoil caused by scheduling conflicts and the subsequent consequences of excessive work hours and personal compromises, let us explore the top solutions to regain control over our calendars. Presented below are the 9 most effective shared calendar apps for 2023, designed to assist in maintaining an organized and synchronized schedule with colleagues, friends, family, and others.
9 best calendar sharing apps in 2023
1. Reclaim.ai – best for team calendar sharing
Reclaim is an AI calendar app designed for Google Calendar that assists in synchronizing all of your schedules. Unlike other calendar sharing apps that only permit you to view your synced events, Reclaim goes a step further by obstructing your availability on both calendars. This enables your colleagues (and family) to determine when you are occupied. Additionally, Reclaim provides privacy controls that allow you to dictate the appearance of shared events on your calendar. You have the option to display them as simply “busy” events for everyone, as anonymous “personal commitments,” or to show all event details.
This tool is ideal for companies aiming to enhance work-life balance for employees, contractors managing multiple calendars, or individuals seeking to safeguard personal events on work calendars.
In addition to being a calendar sharing app, Reclaim offers advanced features that assist you in efficiently managing your time. This tool utilizes smart AI scheduling to identify the optimal time for your meetings, tasks, habits, and breaks within your current schedule. It automatically prioritizes and reschedules important events based on your preferences and priorities.
2. Cozi – best for family sharing
If you need a shared calendar app made specifically for families, then Cozi is the perfect choice. Cozi is an all-in-one family organizer that makes managing the entire family’s schedules and activities simple. It enables you to view and make changes to calendars together, ensuring that everyone is aware and informed about family events, school activities, and other important happenings. You can assign different colors to each member’s calendar, making it effortless to keep track of everyone.
In addition to that, Cozi also comprises extra functionalities, including a shared to-do list, shopping list, and recipe box.
3. TimeTree – best for scheduling group activities
TimeTree is an excellent app for sharing calendars and coordinating events and schedules across multiple individuals, making it perfect for families, friends, teams, and organizations. Its shared calendar feature is particularly renowned as it enables multiple users to collectively contribute, edit, and access events conveniently in a single location.
Users can communicate directly within the calendar using the app’s chat feature, making it easy and convenient to discuss event details, share important updates, coordinate schedules, and even vote on potential dates.
4. Asana – best for project visualization scheduling
Asana is a popular project management app that offers task tracking, event organization, and calendar-sharing functionality for teams. The calendar view in Asana allows users to visually see tasks and deadlines, providing a clear and intuitive format for viewing project timelines and milestones. In addition, users can assign due dates, set priorities, and establish task dependencies.
While Asana is capable of adding events to the calendar, its functionality is limited once the event is added. If priority levels or deadlines change, the task will not automatically reschedule. Additionally, if you are managing a large to-do list, Asana can create a tightly packed schedule, making it challenging to find time for new meetings. Asana’s integration with Google Calendar is also one-way, meaning it does not mark tasks as completed in both directions. However, by integrating Asana with Reclaim.ai, you can schedule tasks as smart events in Google Calendar, maintaining flexibility for changes, and establish a two-way sync between platforms.
5. Fantastical – best for natural language input (Apple users)
On our list, Fantastical is considered one of the most user-friendly calendar-sharing apps. Its main strength lies in its effortless conversion of plain English phrases into scheduled events. By using Fantastical, you can easily input your event details by typing or speaking in plain language, and the app will smartly transform it into a scheduled event with the correct date, time, and location.
In addition to its natural language input, Fantastical provides a range of powerful capabilities including event and task management, event invitations, and support for multiple time zones.
6. Taskworld – best for combining task management and calendar sharing
Taskworld is a platform that brings together task management, project tracking, and calendar integration into a single app. It enables seamless collaboration, timeline setting, file sharing, visual analysis, and simultaneous task completion across various departments. The calendar view offers users a well-structured and comprehensive display of their tasks, deadlines, and project milestones while also permitting the creation of events directly from tasks.
Although Taskworld’s shared calendar simplifies project planning, it lacks automated rescheduling functionality. Consequently, if unforeseen circumstances arise, manual rescheduling of team tasks is necessary.
7. Outlook – best for Microsoft users
With its shared calendar, Microsoft Outlook is highly regarded in the business world and is considered one of the best calendar apps. It seamlessly synchronizes with your email, contacts, and other Microsoft services, providing a cohesive platform to effectively manage your schedule and communication. A notable feature of Outlook is the ease of creating appointments and events directly from emails with just a click.
Microsoft Outlook, like other major traditional calendar platforms, has significant limitations when it comes to sharing calendars. In the default settings, sharing your personal calendar with your work calendar does not enable your coworkers to view your availability during personal events. Nevertheless, if you set all events to be visible, your coworkers will be able to see private details such as doctor’s appointments or job interviews.
8. Apple Calendar – best for Apple users
If you heavily use Apple products and want your calendar to easily sync across different devices, then Apple Calendar, previously called iCal, is the ideal calendar app for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS devices.
Despite this, Apple Calendar faces similar restrictions as Outlook and Google Calendar in terms of sharing personal events. By default, coworkers cannot view your availability during personal occasions, and sharing such events can potentially expose private details to others. However, the impact of this limitation is relatively less significant for Apple Calendar since it is not commonly used as a company service. As a result, the issue of colleagues being unable to see your availability for other events is less problematic compared to shared calendars like Google Calendar or Outlook.
9. Google Calendar – best for view only (not merging) for Google users
Google Calendar, widely recognized as a popular shared calendar app, surprisingly falls towards the bottom of our list. Despite its ability to enable calendar sharing through its primary feature, it has notable drawbacks. When sharing a Google Calendar, preserving the separation between work and personal events becomes challenging since sharing personal events with your work calendar makes them visible to everyone. Additionally, it restricts the ability to share calendar events with coworkers, as you can only share them with yourself.
BONUS: Microsoft Teams Calendar: Top 5 Apps in 2023
The Microsoft Teams calendar allows employees from different teams to efficiently organize and plan their interactions. Along with an individual calendar, Microsoft Teams enables the use of a shared calendar in each channel, enabling members to view and edit events. Microsoft Teams’ team calendars are widely used for effective teamwork.
To enhance collaboration and maximize the potential of the Microsoft Teams Calendar, you can connect third-party calendar apps. This integration allows for additional features such as connectivity with web calendars and productivity tools, multiple calendar overlays, rich color coding, accurate time zone detection, and more. Continue reading to explore how these apps can enhance your team’s collaboration and optimize the functionality of the Microsoft Teams Calendar.
The Top 5 Microsoft Teams Shared Calendar Apps
In this section, we will examine five of the most popular third-party apps that enhance the Microsoft Teams calendar and boost productivity. We will begin with the Teams channel calendar, which was introduced a couple of years ago and is integrated within the system.
Channel calendar
As you are aware, in Microsoft Teams, we utilized shared calendars that could be accessed from various locations, such as Outlook.
With the introduction of Microsoft Teams channel calendars, our meetings can now be scheduled in the channels. The channels are automatically updated in the team’s shared calendar. Previously, there was no option to view our appointments organized by channel.
Since January 2021, it is now possible to include a Microsoft Teams channel calendar as a tab in any Teams channel. This allows us to easily see all the events associated with that channel.
Microsoft Teams channel calendars enhance team organization for various projects. The viewing of scheduled channel meetings is now simpler and more structured. The team leader has the ability to generate a team calendar within Microsoft Teams, encompassing all relevant events and work meeting dates, which can be directly shared in the channel. Any modifications made to the shared calendar generate an automatic post in the channel, ensuring that all members are notified and able to stay up-to-date.
Both Microsoft Teams calendar tab and Outlook calendar are updated seamlessly with events from the Teams channel calendar as needed.
Meetings cannot be created using Outlook; they can only be scheduled using the Microsoft Teams app. If a meeting is scheduled using the Microsoft Teams channel calendar, it will automatically synchronize with the calendar of the Outlook client.
You have the option to synchronize your Microsoft Teams channel calendar with external calendars including Outlook, Google Calendar, and other web calendars.
Limitations of the Microsoft Teams channel calendar
To begin with, it is essential to specify all the participants when creating a meeting in a Microsoft Teams channel calendar. It can be a little confusing as creating an event within a channel does not automatically include all channel members as participants.
When utilizing a Microsoft Teams channel calendar, it is important to consider other restrictions that may apply.
- There’s a limit of one calendar per channel.
- You can’t add guests to a Microsoft Teams channel calendar.
- Integration with Outlook or SharePoint is not possible without third-party apps.
- If team members have disabled notifications for the channel, they won’t receive alerts about the scheduling of events.
- For every scheduled event in the Microsoft Teams channel calendar, a post will be automatically created in the channel. For some, this will be convenient, but for others, it may seem unnecessary.
- You can’t overlay multiple calendars in a Microsoft Teams channel calendar. This can be inconvenient if you are working on several projects.
Virto Calendar Overlay
Virto Calendar Overlay offers the convenience of accessing multiple calendars in a single location. It enables the management of an unlimited number of Office 365 calendars (currently known as Microsoft 365) in SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Additionally, it allows the inclusion of external calendars by utilizing iCal data sources. The Virto Calendar Overlay also encompasses various other functionalities.
- combining and overlaying multiple calendars
- fast and flexible color-coding
- easily creating recurring events
- adding a calendar as a separate tab in Microsoft Teams for both personal use and as a shared calendar
- using it on your smartphone
Stay tuned for the integration of Virto Calendar Overlay with Microsoft Teams channel calendars, as currently it is being developed. This integration will allow you to add events from Outlook and SharePoint to your Microsoft Teams calendar.
Virto Calendar Overlay offers a trial period lasting one month, and after the trial concludes, it remains completely free for use with up to five users.
Witivio Calendar Pro
– Collaborate on a calendar for Microsoft Teams. – Integrate it into your Microsoft Teams calendar. – Establish a shared calendar with your teammates using Witivio.
- create single or recurring events
- color-code events
- print out calendars
Many of Witivio’s clients, such as medical organizations and schools, find this last feature particularly noteworthy.
The Witivio shared calendar has a free version that allows an unlimited number of events, but only allows for a maximum of 3 calendar sources. The premium version, which costs $0.49 to $0.69 per user per month depending on team size, includes additional features such as recurring events, geopositioning, personalized tags, unlimited resources and tabs, and printing. The price for more than 250 licenses is determined based on an individual calculation.
CalendarHero
CalendarHero is a meeting scheduling platform that has more than 60 integrations, one of them being Microsoft Teams. Using CalendarHero, you can effectively manage both internal and external team meetings, reserve meeting rooms, synchronize meeting information, and perform other related tasks. The platform stands out due to its utilization of AI technology, providing an intelligent meeting assistant that enhances the speed of booking meetings. As a result, users are relieved from the hassle of constantly switching between applications when trying to find an appropriate time slot in their shared calendar.
Any CalendarHero plan comes with a two-week free trial. Following that, the basic plan remains free, while the professional plan incurs a monthly fee of $8, and the team plan costs $12 per user every month. The team plan differs from individual plans as it includes a meeting room booking feature, customizable meeting invite emails, and team-wide settings and usage monitoring.
Cronofy Calendar Connector
One major benefit of this tool is that your calendar administrator only needs to set up integration with one calendar API. This allows you to connect to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and all Microsoft services, including the team calendar in Microsoft Teams. It saves both time and money effectively.
With Cronofy’s unified calendar API, you have the ability to manage users’ calendars, including Microsoft Teams calendars, all in one secure location. Additionally, Cronofy provides a range of user-friendly UI elements to facilitate quick and effortless event scheduling.
Their pricing system is intricate, beginning at $599 per month for fifty active users if paid on a yearly basis, and $1899 for a maximum of 200 users.
How can a shared calendar enhance your productivity?
In today’s world, numerous organizations rely on team members working together efficiently. When it comes to enhancing productivity and fostering business growth, it becomes imperative to equip them with appropriate resources such as shared calendars. This enables seamless coordination among colleagues, allowing them to effortlessly self-organize.
The Microsoft Teams calendar is perfect for efficient self-management. Regardless of your business type, utilizing a shared calendar will enhance your business performance.
Let’s examine how the productivity of an entire team can be enhanced through the use of a shared calendar in Microsoft Teams.
1. With a shared calendar, you’re always aware of what your colleagues are doing
Enhancing productivity and simplifying task distribution, event scheduling, and meeting planning becomes easier with an outline of each employee’s schedule.
By using a shared calendar, there is no need to inquire about everyone’s availability to organize a team event at a specific time. All you have to do is locate a suitable slot in the team calendar on Microsoft Teams that fits the criteria and input the desired details. Once done, all participants will be notified about their new task for the specified date and time.
2. A shared calendar saves you time
By accessing the schedule of each colleague, you can save time as there is no need to inquire about their availability when planning an event or meeting in the shared calendar of Microsoft Teams.
With a Microsoft Teams shared calendar, the need to chase after busy colleagues or be chased after when unavailable is eliminated, as it eliminates the time needed to schedule meetings with multiple colleagues.
3. A shared calendar helps you to remember events
If we don’t have a shared calendar, it becomes simple to overlook things. Each day, we have many responsibilities, and even if we are informed about a future event we need to be present for, it is still possible to completely forget about it.
If you list all your work commitments in a Microsoft Teams shared calendar, you will receive timely alerts to ensure you never forget anything.
4. Your clients can assign you a meeting in a shared calendar without disturbing you
You do not need to talk to every client you wish to schedule a meeting with. Instead, you can allow them access to your availability calendar (which can be a team calendar in Microsoft Teams) and they can then choose and arrange a meeting during one of your available time slots.
By simplifying the process of finding an ideal time for everyone, this enhances productivity as it allows you to allocate time for other tasks.
Sharing information from an internally used tool like the Microsoft Teams channel calendar may not always be acceptable. However, you can still derive advantages by sharing just your availability and being informed about the availability of others.
Utilizing shared calendars, such as the Microsoft Teams calendar, is a convenient method for teams to effectively plan and coordinate their daily tasks. These applications are uncomplicated, reliable, user-friendly, and genuinely save time.
