Guide to Android Calendars

Business Calendar 2 - A Thousand and One Calendar Features

04.12.2017

• Android application Business Calendar 2, version: 2.25.1, price: Free

In the modern world, time management (in other words, organizing time) is an integral part of the life of a business person, be it a CEO or a fifth-grader. Meetings, tasks, projects, clubs and self-development, but when to relax? It is with successful prioritization and planning of working time that you will have more moments for respite or for completing new things that you did not have time to do before.

Of course, you can plan everything out, but storing a lot of actions in your mind is usually not a good idea, even if you have an excellent memory. Making lists is a more efficient option than the previous one, but writing a list manually with all the dates, locations and notes takes up quite a bit of precious time, and there are obvious disadvantages like the likelihood of forgetting or losing the list, the mandatory presence of a pen with you to cross out completed tasks, and the possibility of getting lost among All these pieces of paper with daily events make lists not always convenient. For such cases, there are calendars for smartphones - in most cases we carry the gadget with us, and sound reminders will not allow us to forget a single event. The features of the Business Calendar 2 application will help you make time management even more effective, and its preparation easier.

It all starts with a “humble” statement about where the application was developed, with an equally modest background indicating this. Personally, I don’t care if the calendar was made in New York or underground in China. But good Russification and correct cases are more important to me, and the inscription “Go to application” does not create a very good feeling. A tour, of course, is also more suitable in meaning to a trip in Russian everyday life, but this is a subjective quibble. The “tour” is quite long and fit into 8 screenshots. The translation is not literary, but it is quite enough to understand what is written.

After a short list of features, I was redirected to buy the Pro version. Isn't it too early?

I would like to start with what first catches your eye - the design. Minimalist - yes, universal - possible. If you follow the name, then for businessmen this design is ideal - nothing superfluous and everything is clear, but for a wider range of users, in particular for lovers of variety and simple vector images, Google Calendar or DigiCal will be more to their liking. But for those who are tired of standard icons and ordinary, strict themes, I can recommend Jorte - an extremely fancy and colorful program. In general, the style of the calendar under review is restrained, not harsh, but rather boring.

Although the application bills itself as an event planner, first of all it should be considered as a calendar. In the left side menu, you can change the view of the main window, and the screen will display a calendar for the year, week or day. The last mysterious item of the “day” is a list of ordered active tasks.

You can synchronize your calendar with others - for example, Google Calendar perfectly takes over data from Business Calendar 2 and vice versa, if you do not automatically take into account holidays built into applications.

And holidays are generally a separate point for discussion. Each calendar arranges them very differently. Business Calendar, the first installment of Appgenix Software's creations, marketed itself as a "Complete calendar app for your Google Calendar" rather than a full-fledged app. But even in this situation, the calendar did not take over all the fun days from Google, except that with my permission it was synchronized with mail and PC Sync.

Google Calendar decided that there was no need to ask me anything, and showed me a lot of events: Orthodox, national holidays, and birthdays of all sorts of “Tyans” and “Pelmeshki”, which I heard about for the first time, but with which I somehow connected via Google+. Fortunately, many of the above can be disabled in the side menu.

And today’s test subject decided not to risk it at all - he’s showing off for himself a two-day World New Year, and that’s enough. No, after synchronizing with the 1st part, the calendar still came to life, and in the “day” item (which, after inclusion, was renamed “Agenda”) various holidays began to be displayed, but the calendar itself was almost empty. On the one hand, it’s good: you don’t need to clear out unnecessary moments, you can create your calendar almost from scratch, and on the other hand, you could at least transfer my birthday and a few other world holidays to the “canvas”. Or it is necessary to make it possible to synchronize with social networks in order to take really important data from there.

In order not to torment you with screenshots of an empty organizer, I suggest you start creating the first task. Even without including the editor, I can note one of the advantages - the use of gestures. Pinch zooming, scrolling up/down to go to the desired month/year, or left/right with scrolling by weeks or days - all this is good, but at least half of the quality calendars already have it, but selecting the required number of days for viewing them or creating a task by double-clicking on the desired date is very convenient, and is not implemented everywhere. Unfortunately, the last two actions cannot be performed in the Year view, so developers still have some work to do.

The name of the event, surprisingly, has no restrictions, but it is useless to write poems with all the details and details - no more than 13 characters will be displayed in the main window (Month mode). The input field has one more feature, which should probably compensate for the calendar’s inability to put its own or any image on the event: emoticons in the title, which I’ll talk about later.

And in addition, there is also the ability to divide tasks not only into categories, but also by colors, of which there are 11 in the software.

For many events, in addition to the date, you also need to choose a time. According to the classics, it is entered under the inscription “Due Date” (if there is none, uncheck the “All day” item), but you can make the process more exciting - by swiping to the left, a special panel is activated, where the developers explain everything clearly. I won’t focus on Russification: everything is more or less normal with it, but it still remains a mystery to me how there is a comma before the last two “so that”, but there is no ☺ next to the first one.

If you are “lucky” and have several events on one day that you have designated with the same color, for convenience they will differ in shade: from light to dark. With the date and choice of duration of action, everything is standard, but the location is more interesting.

We can not only write down the venue, but also then find it on one of the maps installed on the phone.

First of all, the presence of reminders is pleasing. “This is in every calendar,” you say. And you'll be right, nothing surprising. But just a few years ago this function was not available in at least half of such applications, and the first part, Business Calendar, was no exception. And progress between two applications from the same creator is always encouraging.

But, returning to the reminder system, I note that it is normal, except that entering the time may seem atypical. If the first two digits are highlighted in black, you select the hour for the reminder using the dial or the +1/-1 buttons. The same mechanism works with minutes, and then they will be marked in black, and hours - gray.

Unfortunately, at the end of editing, the first limitations of the free version will appear - you will not be able to create a link to a personal contact or save a task as a template. The second function is not so critical: if it is a holiday, you can enable its annual repetition, and if the circle is weekly, and even if something happens, it will not be difficult to write a couple of lines again. But this, alas, is not all the oppression of the free version, which will be revealed as the review progresses.

After creating a task, it will look like this in the list:

The square on the left displays the color of the task and the number of days until it is completed, and an icon that looks like a tricolor shows the selected location on the map. If you completed an order prematurely, mark it with a tick, and in the future it will be displayed with this tick, and after the specified period it will disappear.

If urgent plans arise, you can always reschedule the task. But the “Swap” button, as I first thought, will not swap one task with another.

The purpose of the button is to send an event in ics format to any of the suggested locations. Importing and exporting data is very practical as you can back up or move events between different calendar apps.

Compared to the first Appgenix Software application, the transfer of information has become even faster and more advantageous, and this is another positive shift between the two parts. Another thing is that there were some pitfalls. They decided to remove infographics from Business Calendar 2, even though the same diagram remains one of the most popular and visual types of drawings.

You might think that these few features do not justify the name, but the association with “A Thousand and One Nights” arose not at this stage of use, but while viewing the settings. They are really huge! Describing each item in even one sentence will take not only many Word pages, but also your reader’s time, so I will only go through the most interesting and unique details.

The choice of the beginning of the week may seem strange to some, but in Canada, Sunday, as the “day of the sun,” according to the Jewish and Christian calendars, is considered the first day of the week (interesting details about the days of the week can be found here and here). It is advisable to choose the beginning and end of the day according to your biorhythms, so that an alert does not suddenly sing in your ear at 8 am on a long-awaited day off (unless, of course, you are not a morning person), or, even better, somewhere late at night.

It’s better to change the time zone in the system settings, in my opinion, but you can also set it inside the application. Travelers should also like the option to use their home time zone to make it easier to control the difference between home and foreign time zones, and therefore avoid desynchronization as much as possible.

The default view will help if, for example, you don’t want to change the display mode from “Month” to “Year” every time you log in.

Once enabled, the floating Action button will be located in the lower right corner and contain as many actions as you specified in the button settings. I think it's quite convenient, but the selection of options for moving through the menu of this button is meager - only 4 functions.

In case you don't like light pastel colors and want more contrast, you can always darken the colors in the settings. Unfortunately, developers continue to compare themselves to the Google app, even while being proud of this fact. Are both software programs somehow connected, and do their developers somehow collaborate with each other? It’s just very surprising when a product is compared with the “reference”, according to Appgenix Software, as if they want their brainchild to always be in the background, like some kind of addition (and I thought everything would be different in the second part ...).

There's not even anything to say about the fonts. Everywhere there is this red ominous inscription “Pro function”.

And here are the emoticons: the same ones that are used in the title of the tasks. A not very good translation makes itself felt again, but in fact everything is simple. The views referred to in the “Show emoji before title” option are actually side menu items: monthly, weekly, daily calendar views, as well as agenda and tasks. The variety of stickers most likely depends on the version of Android, but in the list it looks something like this:

All recently used emoticons are stored in a column with a timer image. If desired, the history can be cleared.

If you enable the “Show emoticons instead of color box” function (color box in normal language - selected color, single-color image), the day will not be highlighted in any color, but the inscription with the icon will remain in place.

Next in our hands will be changing the topic with the ability to return to the starting position. Everything would be fine, but again the user is surrounded by restrictions.

But, as they say, we have what we have. Another thing is that “Come to the Dark Side” is more associated with some kind of epic Marvel competition, and not with a serious business application, as the developer calls it.

There are quite a lot of available themes, and the user can even choose a personalized color from the palette.

Reminders are not only highlighted as a separate item, but also divided into several sub-items with many settings. Perhaps the most important of them are the reminder mode, the choice of sound with ringtone and vibration settings, and the interesting LED notification blinking function, the color of which, alas, is unchanged and is set automatically.

In the next section, the developers continue the topic of gestures, but at the same time quickly close it with one single sentence: selecting a fly-out option after pressing the screen with three fingers. Don’t forget that the gesture will only work with the device’s multi-touch for 5 or more touches (you can check it in the simple MultiTouch Tester program).

To simplify editing tasks, birthdays and events, their own automatically entered data is set.

For myself, I personally titled the “Create & Edit” setting “Conveniences and Habits.” The first option may sound more correct, but the second is more suggestive. If, for example, you don’t like the mechanism of the watch already described in the review, feel free to change it to a digital panel, and the process of creating and editing an event can be customized as much as possible to suit your intentions and tastes. Autofill is again unavailable to us. I didn’t really want to.

Is this the end of the settings? Of course, many little things, such as full or partial display of the description and permission to send anonymous user data, “remained behind the scenes,” and the most important details that are not included in the settings, but exist in the side menu, were the sending of invitations. This feature existed in the first part of the calendar, and with its help you can receive invitations to events from friends, but only after purchasing the full version. You can send invitations for free, but receive...

If you have any questions, the “Help” section will be in English (and perhaps not unfortunately: sometimes a thorough translation with a dictionary in hand will be more useful than trying to parse a clumsily translated word), and write to the support service for Canadians in Russian, it would seem to be a little strange. Despite this, developers actively respond to Russian-language reviews on the Play Market, so feel free to write and don’t be shy, and in extreme cases, attract them with one star ☺.

This is where I will finish my short review of this interesting calendar. It is different from similar products that I have seen before, and writing about its functionality was a pleasure. I will not focus on the many times mentioned Russification, but I will point out a mention that did not work once and hope that such glitches will not happen again. Based on the reviews on Google Play, it is noticeable that some users had problems with synchronization, and I advise people with a similar problem to read the responses of commentators on the 4PDA thread, as they give very practical advice, one of which, surprisingly, was written by one of the Helpix writers ☺ .

The overall rating of the application is 9.5 out of 10, because I have not yet found any analogues to it, and the use of gestures once again captivated me. If the built-in weather forecast, customizable font sizes, import and export of calendar data in .ical format are not enough for you, you will have to either look for another calendar or buy the full version, which, by the way, is not the most expensive - 37.50 UAH or 82 rubles.

Organize your time wisely, and let rest be a reward for your work! And in your spare time, read Helpix: there are rumors that there are many interesting reviews of software and various exciting gadgets ☺.

Lera Demyankova

Device used by the author: Nomi Corsa Pro

Business Calendar 2 Pro 2.40.5

The completely redesigned Business Calendar 2 app has been designed and optimized for better functionality, better performance and massive synchronization. The beautiful new interface will give you a better view of information, allowing you to add events faster and stay on top of your busy schedule. The Business Calendar 2 application will allow you to personalize whatever you want in the calendar provided by the application, thus creating a completely “your” calendar.

Features of Business Calendar 2 app:

• New interface optimized for better application performance.
• Smooth transition from months to days.
• Create tasks and to-do lists using the app's wide variety of options.
• Events, tasks and weather - everything that may be important to you will be in front of you on one page, thanks to the Business Calendar 2 application.

Application features:

• You can choose whether to show or hide calendars in the favorites bar.
• Simple gesture control: zoom or select multiple days to review.
• Remove unnecessary events in one set using quick selection.
• Plan your day: add events and tasks.
• Add events wherever you are in the application, with lots of different details if you need them.
• Integrated task tools (task management) for your to-do lists.
• Import and export of your calendar data (files with the extension .ical, .ics).
• Use custom templates.
• Event history and local shutdown.
• Ability to attach contacts to events.
• Lots of settings to optimize the appearance and functionality of your widgets, events, tasks and reminders.
• Adapt different viewing modes (day, week, month, year, organizer) to your needs.

Additional Pro Features:

• built-in weather forecast in daytime view;
• Easily move and copy events by dragging and dropping in multi-day viewing;
• history of event recordings, auto-completion of names and locations of events;
• link your contacts and appointments;
• easy creation of templates for new events;
• delete, move or copy multiple events at once using multiple selection;
• advanced features for meeting notifications (eg repeating alarms and custom ringtones for different calendars);
• advanced functions for tasks (eg recurring tasks, subtasks and their order);
• automatic creation of a to-do list for missed calls;
• light and dark themes;
• import and export of calendar data (.ics, .ical);
• more widget themes/expanded custom features for calendar widgets;
• individually configurable font sizes.

What's new in this version of the program:

• Set the number of weeks displayed in month view.
• Option to filter duplicate events.
• Support for lunar calendars.
• Join button in detail view if conference call info is found.
• Bug fixes and minor improvements.

Platform: android 4.1+ Interface languages: Russian and others

Download Business Calendar 2 Pro 2.40.5 (14 MB):