New User - Calendar Advice

General Discussion
1

My first Tidbyt (gen 2) arrived yesterday. I bought this specifically to show weather and our family calendar. Honestly, those are the only two things I want.

Unless I’m missing something, the calendar support is really rough around the edges. I’ve tried to setup our family calendar (outlook) with no luck. The app simply defaults to the primary calendar of the account. I’ve tried the same with my wife’s google calendar. Same effect.

Am I missing something here? I just want to display our family’s calendar without jumping through a bunch of hoops. I’m working hard not to feel disappointed here. If I could have tried out or investigated the apps before purchasing the device, I could have saved myself a lot of money (unless I’m missing something).

Thanks in advance for any tips that might get me past this.

2

Does your family calendar consist of individual accounts then? If so, I would just have multiple instances of the calendar app with each connected to a different person’s calendar.

3

It does not. We have a shared calendar owned by one of our accounts.

Putting events on individual calendars defeats the point of a family calendar, unfortunately.

4

This definitely seems like an overly simplified feature. I have two Google calendars i use frequently - one for work, one for personal (each tied to a different email, but shared with each other). Defaulting to show only the primary calendar for each type of calendar you connect is simpler, yes, and obviously a lighter lift for developers. But it’s also just plain lazy.
If you won’t allow us to select more than one calendar with the app, at least allow us to run multiple instances of it. Not ideal, as I’d like to see my upcoming events in order regardless of which calendar they are, but at least I could see all the events.
Honestly I’m kind of surprised in a bad way; disappointed at that paucity of available apps and how lacking in functionality they are.
I thought for sure I’d be able to see email notifications, or notifications from my phone. I played around with it for 10 minutes and ran out of things to try.
Oh well.

5

@Matt is the author of the Outlook app, tagging him here so he can look into these feature requests.

Meanwhile, do you know if Outlook shares a calendar URL compatible with iCal (ics) format? If it does, then you could try using the “Universal iCal” app.

6

That’s a great question, and a great suggestion.

I’ve posted the question to Microsoft. The calendar that I’m trying to share, “Your Family” was automatically created by MS. I can’t find a way to share/publish and ICS. We’ll see what they say.

7

Judging by this MS article it seems promising, in the section “Publish a calendar” they talk about sharing an ICS link.

8

I thought so too. Unfortunately, the “Your Family” calendar isn’t in the list of available calendars to share.

I’m beginning to think this is more of a MS issue than a Outlook calendar app issue.

9

Thanks for looping me in. When I install the Outlook app, there is a Calendar Auth security screen that pops up and I have a choice of which account/Calendar I want to authorize which I can select. It does appear however there is no way to “log out” and select a new calendar without reinstalling the device. Please note that for security reasons, the applet itself is prevented from tiggering the user authorization sequence (it’s handled by the Tidbyt mobile app). I will ping the Tidbyt guys to see if there is a way to “log out” from the Mobile app.