Key Things You Should Know When Making a Calendar App

In this “mad” world, there is no time, even for a cup of coffee. The accumulated cases and tasks do not allow you to focus on more important matters. Therefore, users are resorting to modern calendar applications with several features to make it easier to plan time for work and leisure. According to Statista, Google Calendar was downloaded over 6 million times in 2021 through Google Play. Other studies show that the global meeting scheduling software market will increase by 13% by 2026, which is more than $500 million.

How to create a custom calendar app from scratch? It is no easy task for a developer. You should consider the design of an interface and the type of industry, as it affects the choice of the necessary technologies and tools during development. Let’s see how to create a beautiful smartphone planner to help users manage their time.

Industries For Which It Is Relevant to Build a Calendar App

Schedulers enhance the functionality of an application and can increase customer loyalty. You can improve customer engagement rates through exciting user interfaces and designs.

Logistics

It’s hard to imagine a logistics app without a calendar these days. But this is one of the industries in which everything must be planned in advance: the cargo must be shipped and delivered on time. The developers are also implementing useful features for cargo transportation in which users can check the completed deliveries, track the current movement, or select the date and time of shipment.

Education

The period of self-isolation forced school and college students to switch to online education. Learning platforms are another niche where application calendars are being integrated. They are necessary for writing down homework, planning a test task, or preparing for a lecture. You can set a deadline for scheduling a task so that the push notifications remind you of this.

Transportation

Popular taxi applications provide for ordering a trip in advance. You can specify the car’s delivery time to the address and receive a reminder of its arrival. Also, such an opportunity is present in the search services for car companions, with the ability to find a driver heading in the direction you need on a suitable date.

Health

The calendar in the health app is used to remind you to take your medications, schedule a doctor’s appointment, or have tests ready. Also, the calendar is used to maintain statistics for tracking heart rate, blood pressure, or physical activity on different days.

Tourism

For travel booking and lodging applications, built-in calendars help you determine your travel dates and find the right option. You can plan your trip six months in advance or “for tomorrow” and be sure that your trip will be scheduled as needed.

Social networking

Facebook allows you to create events that can be scheduled. The user receives an alert about an upcoming concert, conference, or video meeting. Another equally popular messenger, like Telegram, makes it possible to independently set the time for sending a message. 

Features of a Calendar App: Mandatory & Additional

What features should a successful plan calendar have? For some people, organizing their time is important. Someone is looking for a business planner to collect online meetings and conferences. If a person is looking for a platform to perform many tasks, then one can only  do with such functions: synchronization, embedding, team use, mobile access, import, and export. Let’s look at the top six features of a calendar app.

Event Scheduling

For professionals working remotely, the function of the event schedule is vital. This is useful for a multi-party meeting that can be accessed online no matter where they are. The topic of a “smart calendar” is also relevant, where you can track each participant’s employment. Imagine how convenient it is. You do not have to arrange a personal meeting, plunging yourself into a nightmare. You assign it with one click, adjusting to the free time of your colleagues. Therefore, the event scheduling feature is the backbone of every business calendar when it is developed. 

Sharing

Personalize your plans and tell only certain people when you’re busy with embed and sharing. This feature is similar to the personal secretary you have on your smartphone. You create a personal schedule in the app and use filters to assign who can see it. They can also create their own calendars and enter completed, current, and future plans in their work. Build a calendar app with team calendars to help track progress and leave comments for each event.

Synchronization with other platforms

It is possible to update your schedules from several applications, such as Google Calendar or Outlook, in one place with the synchronization function. Making a calendar app with such a feature improves efficiency for those who manage multiple organizations, and it is essential to control critical events. Centralized management reduces the time to switch from platform to platform.

Teamwork Calendar

For small business owners with subordinate staff, it is important to control the team’s activities  and assign tasks. The team calendar is the appointment of actions in one place through a single interface. Such management helps to coordinate employees and increase the productivity of the company. You can group each department this way. For example, the content department can negotiate and suggest the best time to post on social media.

Import and Export

Let’s say you travel to work by public transport, which follows a certain schedule. There are mobile applications that inform users about the movement of routes and publish actual bus arrival hours. You can import the suggested schedule into your personal calendar. 

The import and export function allows you to save everything that interests you to your calendar from the Internet. You can also upload individual audio, video, or image files with the ability to share them with other users.

Technology Stack to Create a Calendar App

Let’s talk a little about APIs that help to create a calendar app. Which API to choose depends on the specifics of the business, and you cannot do without expert advice. For reference, we present popular technology stacks:

• Google API. Google Calendar is a popular tool for many people. So Google provides the tools to make a calendar app for Android. The documentation gives instructions for connecting libraries with programming languages: Java, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, etc.
• Apple API. The Apple API allows you to create a fantastic app for the iOS calendar. The Apple platforms make it easy to manage events that users can easily create and modify.
• API SuperSaaS is interesting for those looking for online scheduling and reminder functionality.
• The Nylas Cloud Calendar API is a tool to help you synchronize your calendar with web applications.
• The FX Calendar API helps keep track of financial events within a calendar.

10 Steps to Create Your Own Calendar App

If you already have the concept, it’s time to create your own calendar app with a few steps toward the goal.

Step 1: Plan the Project 

When you start the project, it should be led by an experienced project manager, software architect, and business analyst. At this stage, it is important to set goals and priorities.

Step 2: Define Project Scope and Requirements 

Scoping and specifying requirements will enable project managers to allocate tasks and estimate the budget. Also, you must know for which platform the application will be created (Android, iOS, or both). According to the project specification, the manager will monitor the stages of work and make changes.

Step 3: Develop an MVP

An MVP is developed to determine that your application meets all the requirements. This method consists of the basic functions of your future product. In essence, this prototype satisfies certain users’ needs in the initial stages.

Step 4: Choose a Mobile App Type

Why is choosing a mobile app type important? It is necessary to determine the programming language and select a programmer with experience writing clean code. For cross-platform iOS apps, use Objective-C or Swift. Java or Kotlin languages ​​are used in native development for Android.

Step 5: Define a Cloud Computing Platform 

Cloud computing is essential for your application to be delivered to mobile devices. Cloud servers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure help you deploy and increase the speed and flexibility of a viewable application. 

Step 6: Evaluate Third-Party APIs

Evaluate which third-party APIs can be applied to the project. Explore access via Facebook or Google, which offer basic functionality with the ability to customize via JavaScript.

Step 7: Choose a Technology Stack 

The secure Java programming language is used to develop an Android application. Node.js is a language for back-end development. Performant and scalable applications are built with Apache Cassandra and MongoDB. To compile and manage open source databases, MySQL or PostgreSQL comes in handy.

Step 8: Hire a Team

Your team, in addition to project managers, should consist of UI/UX designers, iOS and Android native developers, testers, and DevOps engineers.

Step 9: Develop User Interface

UI design of the future calendar application is necessary so that the user can intuitively understand what actions he needs to perform to get the desired results. The interface should include simple interaction elements, information architecture, and visual appeal.

Step 10: Monitor the Process

Track each development step as it progresses, and determine in advance what needs to be changed by making edits to your project.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Calendar Application?

Before we start preparing a business plan and budgeting to build a calendar app, let’s look at the average cost. We divided it into three types of development complexity and task deadlines.

Simple application (2-3 months). You will pay $40,000 for MVP functionality, user interface, and one operating platform.

Medium difficulty (3-6 months). You’ll spend $120,000 or more for complex features, a customizable interface, and a single platform.

Complex application (from 6 months). You invest $200,000 in your project and get advanced features, a user interface created personally for you, from 2 display platforms.

Develop a Calendar Application with Weelorum

Weelorum offers comprehensive mobile application development services with custom precision. By ordering a calendar application, you will receive a personal approach to your project. The company’s success story includes the Swim-Wise app, which provides pool workout analytics and can also be synced to a swim schedule. 

Weelorum is not just developers but real creators who build masterpiece applications with clean code.

Final Thoughts

Now you know how to create a personal calendar application and why it is a hot topic today. It is a promising idea to invest in such a project. In this article, we also determined which functions are relevant for this type of application and which industries and types of businesses will only  become successful with an integrated calendar. However, you should still remember that developing a calendar application can be a difficult task if doing it on your own. Even with step-by-step planning, consider getting the services of an expert team who will guide you through the whole process.

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