Backpack has had a great calendar for a while now. But we’re about to make it better. If you have multiple users on your Backpack account you’ll be able to use the calendar together.
Many calendars, one grid
The new Backpack Calendar’s color coding lets you plot different people’s schedules on the same grid. Plus, you can toggle calendars on and off by just checking the box in front of a calendar:
Privacy too
The new Backpack Calendar allows allows you to specify who can see which calendars. When you create a new calendar, or edit an existing calendar, you can check off the names of users on your account. If they’re unchecked they can’t see the calendar.
The new Backpack is around the corner
Stay tuned for launch. It’s coming soon!
George
on 15 Feb 08Looks great.
Q: Is there a way to sync my Mail.app (or Outlook) calendar with Backpacks calendar?
JF
on 15 Feb 08George: The Backpack Calendar allows you to subscribe to your calendars in iCalendar format. You can pull iCalendars into iCal, Google Calendar, your iPhone, etc.
George
on 15 Feb 08@JF
That’s Awesome.
Another quick question. In the screenshot, it shows that Feb 15th is “Today”, which it is. Though in the top right of the screenshot is says “Friday February 29” and is showing a short description of the event of that day.
Why does it say Feb. 29th and show a description of events on that day when it says today is Feb 15th? Did you click on Feb. 29th or something?
davidinbcn
on 15 Feb 08Hi, can you explain what happens when you add a new person to your account? Do you have to go through and add the person manually to the calendars or is it automatic… i suppose it would be if you have everyone selected.
the changes look intereting. You’ve made it into an interesting product
RS
on 15 Feb 08Yes :)
Tim
on 15 Feb 08George: if you look closely, you’ll see that the 29th is in fact selected.
Kenn Wilson
on 15 Feb 08So no CalDAV support?
I’m waiting anxiously for someone to implement it; I can’t believe none of the calendaring applications out there have yet.
Ben Mills
on 15 Feb 08So still no flexibility in setting the reminder for a calendar event? Does a 30 minute reminder always make sense for every appointment?
Scott Wintheiser
on 15 Feb 08It’s like your reading my mind. Backpack is going to rock! All of these updates are exactly what I’ve been hoping for.
Will you be able to set reminders for other users in the same account as well?
MH
on 15 Feb 08With the advent of multiuser backpacks, will there be some kind of migration plan for merging existing single-user Backpacks?
Jeff Prillaman
on 15 Feb 08Are there plans to provide this great calendar service in conjunction with Basecamp or Highrise accounts any time soon.. I think that backpack is great, but I just don’t need the additional service for my business right now.
This would seem to be a natural add on to the calendaring already inside of Basecamp, and it would be a huge benefit.
Willie Abrams
on 15 Feb 08Did you all fix the problem the subscribed calendar problem where if you have multiple events in different time zones in the same calendar, it doesn’t handle the time correctly?
If not, then that is pretty ridiculous.
Dmitry
on 15 Feb 08This update is looking better and better—great work guys.
Andrew
on 15 Feb 08This is great news. This upgrade will address one of the major issues we’re having, namely the inability to filter the calendars. Some other things we’d like you to consider are:
1) being able to remove sat and sun from multi-day projects 2) being able to organize the events by calendar – we’re trying to use the backpack cal for resource management and haven’t quite figured out the ordering logic in the calendar. 3) the calendar doesn’t print very well, so an export to a PDF would be sweet.
thanks and keep up the awesome work.
Erik Mallinson
on 15 Feb 08So many calendars, so few colors. Any chance of adding more? Google Calendars has more without being totally ridiculous about the whole thing.
Javi
on 15 Feb 08very nice. any plans and getting this on basecamp?
Roman Bercot
on 16 Feb 08Maybe it’s just me, but I think that consumer grade calendaring needs to sync both ways to Outlook to really be worth doing. When I’m at work, I’ve got to use Outlook (along with everybody I know). It’s great to sync a Backpack calendar into my Outlook, but I really need to send my work calendar out to Backpack for this to be worth doing. Otherwise, it’s just another way my data is splintered.
Stephen
on 16 Feb 08These updates are looking great. I’m a satisfied Backpack, Basecamp, and Highrise user, but the one thing that still has me using Google Calendar is the ability to paste in a bunch of notes (related URLs, phone numbers, messages) for new events I put in. Any plans for Backpack Calendar events to have a notes field to use if we need it?
Anonymous Coward
on 16 Feb 08Since only one person can carry a backpack, maybe change the name to “caravan”?
Ben
on 16 Feb 08Man, great product, but I also like to code websites without typing. Will backpack be doing this?
Also, I love flickr. Any chance in the very near future that I can edit photos in Backpack? Maybe it can even take pictures of things I think about?
And, I want to know if my coworkers think I’m HotOrNot. Are their plans to integrate this into the backpack experience by the end the month?
Maxime Brusse
on 16 Feb 08Beign able to add things into backpack by sending an email to the system would be great !
JF
on 16 Feb 08Beign able to add things into backpack by sending an email to the system would be great
You already can.
Maxime Brusse
on 17 Feb 08Sorry, i meant emailing to the backpack calendar.
Dave C.
on 17 Feb 08I’ve been having problems with backback calendar since the beginning. All my support request have been ignored, so I quit asking for help. This update doesn’t interest me at all.
An unhappy, paying customer.
Brooks Watson
on 18 Feb 08I might of missed this, but can you edit someone else’s calendar (i.e. adding a meeting or service appointment to an employee’s calendar)
This is the biggest failing of every small business service we’ve found.
JF
on 18 Feb 08Brooks: Yes, you can add an event to any calendar you have permission to see.
Serge Lescouarnec
on 18 Feb 08Maybe I can test drive these new features for the final preparations with the fellow panelists of my Just Over 50 and Not Dead Yet bit at South by Southwest.
I use Backpack more and more for my blog Serge the Concierge .
Serge ‘The French Guy from New Jersey’
Erika
on 18 Feb 08I’m really hoping it will be possible to enter start and end times for events, across hours and/or days. I haven’t been able to figure out a work-around for that, and oh, how I’ve tried. Any suggestions for that? I’ve just been putting that info into the title of the appt but that has it’s drawbacks.
A notes field would be lovely. 2-way syncing to other calendars, particularly ical, would be so fabulous.
Is there going to be a way to hook my backpack, basecamp and highrise all together? I’d love that so much I’d pay for it. Thanks!
SH
on 18 Feb 08@Erika, the single sign-on method works wonders for this right now: http://www.37signals.com/openbar
Igor
on 19 Feb 08It is interesting what will be with calendar appearance if many Events will have lengthy descriptions. How do you handle this?
This discussion is closed.