How-to: Set Up Your City Schedule on Allcal

It doesn’t matter if you’re one of the largest cities in the nation, or a one-truck-stop sorta town – every municipality has a calendar. Most cities and towns have one team – or in some cases one person – who’s in charge of keeping the calendar of events up-to-date. For many city departments, that means countless emails, memos, and phone calls making sure each one of their events not only makes it on the city calendar, but stays updated with the latest information.

With allcal, cities can cut that effort by more than half. Oh really? How do you expect to do that? Allcal is an iPhone, Android, and web-based application, that lets you create different calendars for every part of your life or even set up your city schedule. On a personal level, that might mean having one calendar for your family and another for your work. For cities, this means separating each calendar by the people who are in charge of the events.

For example, the Librarian is often in charge of the events that happen at the city’s public library. By creating a “Public Library Calendar,” he or she can keep the web calendar up-to-date with all the library’s events, without having to go through an administrator or person from another department. As a plus, our innovative solution lets you link events to different calendars. So the city administrator – who’s in charge of the city’s main calendar – simply has to go to the Public Library Calendar, and link all the public events to the main calendar. This feature not only makes it easier to group together several events from different departments, but also keeps the link alive. That means if the Librarian has to make a last minute change to “Saturday’s Story Time,” the change shows up immediately – even on the city’s main calendar.
Connect with the Community

Allcal’s database supports both private and public calendars, making it easy for your residents to learn about your city schedule and events. After downloading the iPhone app, Android app, or registering at www.allcal.com, residents can simply search for their city’s public calendar. Then they have two options – add the entire calendar so they know about every event going on in their town, or just add individual events to their personal calendar. Even after putting the event on their personal calendar, the link remains alive. That means anytime there’s a change or an update, your residents will immediately know. If the event is happening soon, they’ll even get a notice sent straight to their phone – so you can feel confident that they won’t miss an important update.

Say hi with chat!

Our app also lets you chat directly on your calendars, so you can remind residents to park in a certain lot or how much tickets cost. This sort of direct communication is something that no other public calendar and event-management system has mastered. For cities, the ability to reach residents all at once not only keeps everyone informed, but also creates a database for cities to communicate quickly with the people who care most about their city schedule. The best thing is the app is free! This means residents can get access to all the latest information both on their computers and on the go at no extra cost.

Getting Started

1. Create a public calendar for your city including an awesome cover photo and color to represent your city.

Allcal Hack: In the description, add your state and any other common phrases for your city, so it’s easy for residents to search for your calendar.

2. Create a public or private calendar for each department.

3. Share each department’s calendar with whoever will be in charge of creating or editing events.

4. Give this person View, Add, Share, and Edit permissions, so he or she can maintain the calendar on his or her own.

5. Link the events you want to add to the main city calendar by tapping the link (paperclip) icon to the right of each event once each department has filled out its calendar.

Allcal Hack: You can also give each department head Add permissions on the city calendar, which lets them add his or her department’s events directly to the main calendar.

6. Embed your city’s Allcal calendar directly on your website by signing into allcal’s web app and opening the calendar details.

For more help with embedding public calendars, please contact us at team@allcal.com.

Now that your calendar is ready for the public, start promoting it! For advice on how to get started, give our marketing team a shout at danielle@allcal.com.