Calendar apps have already replaced our need for marking dates in calendars. In fact many apps we use these days have their in-app calendars as well. While calendar apps and the calendars as an in-app feature almost became a commonplace thing, there is still scope for building a unique calendar app.
Do you want to build a unique calendar app? Well, here we are to guide you on this. But before that let’s begin by understanding the specific requirements of calendar apps or calendar features.
Which Industries Require In-App Calendar Most?
Thanks to an in-app calendar an app can help its users to keep track of dates, events and important landmarks in the course of day to day happenings. In some industry segments, the feature remains a mainstay of great user experience.
- Supply Chain and Logistics
Since in the supply chain and logistics segment, everything needs to be well timed and scheduled to facilitate loading, shipping, or delivery of goods, an in-app calendar can do wonders in allowing carriers and shippers to check all the shipments on various dates.
- Productivity Apps
In productivity apps, an in-app calendar helps tracking the tasks by date and making important landmarks and schedules with clear reminders set on dates.
- Education Apps
Online education platforms are integrating in-app calendars to schedule home tasks, exams and tests, lectures, Q & A sessions, etc. An in-app calendar can also send reminders to the learners from time to time.
- Car Parking and Transport
In-app calendar can be very useful in a parking app to help the car owners tracking booking of the parking spots by date and find the vacant spots. The same feature in the car booking app can also help the drivers and users to schedule future rides.
- Healthcare Apps
In the healthcare industry the in-app calendars can help in scheduling timing for medicine intake, appointment booking with physicians, etc.
- Travel and Hospitality
In the travel and hospitality industry, calendars are always useful to keep track of bookings and make users known about the availability of the dates. In the flight or train reservation apps also the same feature helps users to search for dates when bookings are available.
Apart from all the industries and segment wise apps mentioned above, calendars remain an important feature in many other segments.
Choose the Right Technology Stack
To begin with, you need to choose the right technology stack for building an app. It is important to ensure scalability, flexibility to incorporate changes and performance of the app when choosing the technology stack. An expert React Native app development companyhaving experience in similar apps can be a good choice.
Here we step by step mention the building blocks of a calendar app. Let’s start with the best calendar APIs in the market.
- Apple EventKit
Apple’s EventKit is a perfect tool to get access to calendar data. It is extremely easier to develop and edit events through a calendar app built with this toolkit. On top of that, you get a whole array of interface choices from EventKitUI for your calendar app.
- Google Calendar API
Google Calendar API is a popular choice simply because it is an easy and simple tool and offers great documentation. The API allows you to integrate calendar features with both mobile apps and the web.
The API is pretty robust and allows all in-calendar actions such as event creation, viewing and editing events. To make things further easier for the developers, it offers detailed guidance about using libraries and RESTful calls with multiple programming languages like Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, Java, and several others.
Apart from these two leading APIs, developers also have choices of other APIs such as Nylas Cloud Calendar API that comes with features such as reminders, scheduling, etc, the SuperSaaS API with similar features, FX Calendar API to help integrate future event data and Calendarific API to incorporate various dates of public holidays in the calendar app.
Top libraries for Android Calendar App
When you build an Android-based calendar app, you have the following library choices for your project.
- Event Calendar
- Cosmo Calendar
- CustomizableCalendar
- AgendaCalendarView
- SlyCalendarView
When you build an iOS-based calendar app, you have the following library choices.
- Calendar
- CalendarLib
- MBCalendarKit
- CalendarKit
- FSCalendar
- JTAppleCalendar
When you build a web based calendar app you give the following library choices.
- Webix
- jQuery UI
- iCalendar
- Calendarize
- Kendo UI
Programming Languages for a Calendar App
To develop an Android based calendar app, you need to use Java or Kotlin, while for iOS calendar apps you need to code in objective-C or Swift. Or you can take a help from Dedicated iPhone App Developers.
- Choices of Database Technologies
As for database technologies, a calendar app project has various options including MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and several others.
- UI/UX Design Tools
For the UI and UX design of the calendar app, you can use various design tools such as Sketch, Sympli, Illustrator, etc.
- App Testing
Finally, for testing the calendar apps the Quality Assurance team of the project can use several tools like Firebase, Postman, TestFlight, Crashlytics and several others.
Key Features and Capabilities You Should Consider
Mostly the user experience of a great app boils down to its elementary features. When building a calendar app, you need to consider the following features and capabilities.
- Reminders to help users set alarm for crucial deadlines, meetings and events.
- Task scheduling through calendar events to keep track of all tasks in a systematic and date-wise manner.
- Time block feature to help users set deadlines and periods for certain routines, tasks and projects.
- Slot booking to help businesses and services create limited time slots available for customer or visitor booking.
- Notifications to keep users informed about everything including reminders, pending tasks, important dates, events and many more.
- Scheduling recurring events to help users with schedules of tasks or meetings that will repeat periodically.
- Resource handling through the calendar app will help some services to delegate tasks and resources where it is suitable as per the available date slots and requirements.
Ensuring Above-Average Excellence with Your Calendar App
As of now, we have only explained all the necessary features of a good calendar app. But these features are not just enough to ensure exceptional calendar app user experience. Here are the key aspects to deliver an above-average experience through a calendar app.
- Capacity to sync the calendar app data and all events across multiple devices used by the user is really important. Capacity to sync the calendar across iCloud and Google is also necessary.
- Using latest hardware features such as Face Recognition or 3D Touch or Dark Theme will give your calendar app an edge over competition.
- Sharing features to allow others join in a calendar event from their devices is a trending feature.
- Voice search and voice interactions powered by latest speech recognition will help your calendar to recognise your commands and speak out reminders and important dates and events.
Conclusion
Building an above average calendar app requires several considerations as we mentioned above. Fortunately, you have robust technology choices to see it through.
