How to Create a Calendar App: Complete Guide

Time management becomes challenging due to an ever-rising number of events to visit and tasks to complete for work and leisure. A lot of applications have an in-app calendar, a modern and sought-after feature.

According to Statista, the total number of Google Calendar downloads in the Google Play Store was 6.59 million in June 2021. The fantastical calendar app is on the list of the best 2020 apps. Besides, research states, that the global appointment scheduling software market value is projected to reach $546.31 million by 2026 from $205.85 million in 2018, with an increasing CAGR of 13.1% from 2019 to 2026.

But it can be tricky and challenging to integrate or develop a calendar app from scratch. Let’s find out when the in-app calendar is a nice-to-have feature for success. Also, we’ll cover tools and technologies to create a calendar app or integrate one.

Let's now take a look at the main profit this solution brings as well as business domains where the in-app calendar is a beneficial and integral tool, and how it is used. Besides, we'll go through the basic features to implement in the calendar app or integrate to the solution of another industry.

Calendar applications are incredibly efficient for work as well as your home life. This tool allows keeping up with all your plans, staying organized, and being more productive on a daily basis.

• Accessible calendar from any device. To accomplish all the activities easily, users appreciate an opportunity to track all the tasks. Calendars can be accessed from devices the audience uses at work, at home, or via any other device.
• Scheduling appointments/ meetings. One more benefit of calendar applications is scheduling meetings and appointments from any device. This opportunity brings a high convenience in users’ lives.
• Opportunity to set reminders. To avoid missing significant appointments, events, and meetings, calendar software enables setting up notifications serving as reminders. Needless to say, that paper calendars lack this feature. Thus, customers get all the tasks done on time and can see all the plans assembled in one handy solution.
• Raised productivity. The calendar app is an excellent way to prioritize projects, track deadlines, and fulfill those tasks that are more significant.
• Recurring events planning. In this solution, users can set reminders and schedule recurring events easily. This also helps keeping up with important events.

• Calendar interface: a calendar that can be split by days/weeks/months/years to add the events
• Address book: a list of contacts with information to enable the user to keep in touch with the other users
• Appointment creation with attachments: this feature allows users to arrange meetings, notify their participants, and attach a file to an appointment
• Reminders: customized notifications for users to inform them concerning the upcoming tasks and events
• Shared scheduling: the opportunity to observe schedules of the other users, share your own, and arrange a meeting or an event on a date and time suitable for all of the participants, and track teammates’ workload
• Calendars by type: this feature allows the audience to make use of separate calendars (e.g., work calendar, school calendar, daily tasks calendar)
• Integration with the other platforms: (e.g., Slack, Hurma) the capability to integrate the calendar comprising the plans, tasks, and meetings to other systems

These features may be integrated into the app of the other domain or be the MVP (minimal viable product) ones for the calendar software solution.

A lot of travel platforms have an in-app calendar. For example, Airbnb uses a calendar to show available dates for the chosen apartment.

For any booking service, it’s significant to let users reserve the dates they pick. Additionally, there are advanced calendars. For example, WizzAir (one of the top airlines in the UK and Europe) suggests available dates after choosing the destinations.

Online education is becoming more and more popular these days. To make it comfortable and useful, educational platforms integrate calendars. There are a bunch of different ways to use the in-app calendar (scheduling courses, lectures, tests, and more). Also, apps can send users notifications informing about the beginning of the course, scheduled event, and more.

There are a lot of opportunities to use calendars in the logistics field: from scheduling shipping to delivering food.

For example, Uber Freight has a lot of cool features based on the in-app calendar. Shippers and carriers can look through their past and upcoming shipments. Also, they can choose the appropriate time and date for the delivery.

Healthcare solutions can also benefit from using calendars. A lot of medical websites and apps (Acuity Scheduling) integrate calendar features to allow scheduling appointments with doctors or tracking drugs intake.

The in-app calendar is useful for fitness apps. It can track physical activity and get statistics for a particular time.

People use social media not only for communication but for booking offline events. On Facebook, there are a bunch of cool meetings and conferences. The social network can notify the user about upcoming events.

Also, there are a lot of services that allow scheduling posts for Twitter or Instagram. All these functions cannot work without a calendar.

As you can see, there are many industries that may benefit from the in-app calendar.

However, it’s possible to create your own calendar app, following your requirements and goals.

How to build a calendar app and not to fail? You need to consider the tech stack to make a scalable solution. Also, you need to pay attention to app design and sync capabilities. Let’s discuss these points more precisely.

How to build a calendar app and succeed? The tech stack of your app is one of the most significant parts. You need to choose the technologies that’d guarantee the scalability of your product in the future.

I’ve divided the technologies into several categories.

Apple and Google offer a lot of APIs to integrate into a calendar app. Please, note, that the tech stack provided below is approximate. The final tools always depend on your project requirements and business goals. It’s better to consult with professionals to pick the right technologies.

Additionally, there are many calendar APIs that can help your app become outstanding. You can find some ideas below:

• Calendarific API lets developers add public holidays of different to their apps.
• FX Calendar API integrates data about upcoming finance events.
• SuperSaaS API adds online scheduling and allows sending reminders.
• Nylas Cloud Calendar API offers such features as scheduling, reminders, and others.

There are a lot of libraries on GitHub that can be used for calendar app development.

For the iOS-based calendar, software developers tend to use:

• JTAppleCalendar
• FSCalendar
• CalendarKit
• MBCalendarKit
• CalendarLib
• Calendar

If you want to create a calendar app for Android, developers can make use of the following libraries:

• Cosmo Calendar
• Event Calendar
• SlyCalendarView
• AgendaCalenderView
• CustomizableCalendar

As for web solution, you can integrate these libs:

• Kendo UI
• Calendarize
• iCalendar
• jQuery UI
• Webix

Of course, there are more solutions in the market. You can find them on GitHub.

To create your own calendar app, you need different technologies. As for programming languages, there can be Swift or Objective-C (iOS), Kotlin or Java (Android). There are various databases to make use of: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and others.

To create a user-friendly and intuitive design, UI/UX specialists require tools like Sketch, Illustrator, and Sympli.

To test apps properly, Quality Assurance engineers can use the following tools:

• Firebase
• Crashlytics
• TestFlight
• Postman

Having analyzed existing calendar solutions, we’ve singled out several important points.

Making your own calendar app or integrating one requires preparations. There are a lot of opportunities to expand the app functionally with the help of the in-app calendar.

If you want to develop an excellent tech solution, you’d better cooperate with the Android or iOS app development company. Qualified developers can offer various ways to integrate the calendar and add several exciting features based on it.

We’ve been developing software solutions for Logistics, Healthcare, Education, and other industries for 10+ years now. A solid background in developing scalable apps and a deep understanding of various business domains helps us build solutions that meet tech and business requirements. You'll receive the following range of benefits with Cleveroad:

• Flexible cooperation models for suitable each client
• Individual approach towards every project
• Top-notch quality guarantee
• A proven comprehensive expertise and competence of our specialists

We’ve recently helped two of our clients to integrate calendars into their apps: Nedley Lifestyle Scorecard and School App.

Nedley Lifestyle Scorecard is a mood tracking application that is based on the program developed by Dr. Nedley. This iOS solution has an implemented calendar which users fill in daily and observe how well the mental disorder treatment goes.

School App allows staying connected with your school community.

The app has a bunch of exciting features. For example, users get customized notifications. Also, we’ve integrated a calendar to allow scheduling various events and add them to the personal calendar.