o2 Family Calendar - finding alternatives?

[glossta1]

We LOVE our o2 Family Calendar, and I use it to send text alerts to whichever of the 5 of us needs it for dentist appointments, haircuts and the like. We can each, separately, have a Google Calendar, but it isn't the same. Who else uses it and will miss it? Does anyone know of an equivalent Family Calendar service 'out there'?

[monkums]

Google calendar it a good replacement as should be able to do what you need but it might take a bit of work. I know that it does SMS reminders so some tinkering with either shared or group calendars should do what you need.

[glossta1]

Yes. I've been thinking about ways to make it work for us.

(1) I could set up a 'club calendar' for my other half and I, and another for the pair of us with each teenager, and another for the whole family. But it's a bit of a faff. And I think it'd only email reminders, not text, because there seemed to be a facility to link only one number (mine) with the calendar. Text alerts work much better. So I'm not sure this method would be workable in reality. Am I missing a trick?

(2) I could use the standard Google Calendar with a different-coloured display option for family members, make the person obvious in the name of each 'event', and manually forward the text reminder to whoever needs it when the reminder text hits my phone. This seems a more straightforward way, really, but dumps forwarding responsibility on me.

All thoughts/ideas welcome.

[monkums]

I think to get what you need your best bet would be to set up google calendars for each family member and a 'family' calendar to display on the Joggler. You then add the appointments etc to the family calendar and invite the relevant people to the event. This should then put it in their calendar and send them a email/pop up/SMS.

I think the work at the start would be worth while and get you where you want.

[glossta1]

Oh, that's a good idea. But if they each have a GC of their own, registered to their email a/c, would they have to put the entries on themselves? Teenagers aren't all that reliable at that.

[monkums]

You can set Gcal to auto accept invites I think. So a bit of setting up to get the accounts ready (auto invites, SMS notifications, etc.) would be needed.

[glossta1]

I'm on Step 1 at the moment, ie I've re-established my own Google Calendar and have started inputting the year's-worth of stuff that I'd already got on o2's Family Calendar, but without the stuff relating to the rest of the family. 've also paid for and started to download Googasync so that my Nokia N8 can be persuaded to sync with it. I'm having some trouble with the download (I always seem to have trouble with downloads to my N8), so I will hold off from extending to the rest of the family until the download situation is sorted. I feel a Guru visit coming on.

[monkums]

Is there any way to access your o2 family calendar via the o2 website? Maybe you can export all the data to save you having to re-enter it.

[BuZz]

it can be reached from the website, but will be discontinued from 31st may. No idea if they can export the data etc.

[glossta1]

I'm ok to do it manually. Trouble is, a lot of it isn't written down anywhere. I did not see the change coming, and thought once entries were made they were safe.

In fact even now if you do 'View Calendar' it allows you to post/amend entries and there is no warning that the calendar will cease. Nor was there a text message to any of our phones. Because I don't go to the Joggler itself very often, I didn't see the warning messages that were apparently posted there. It was the o2 Guru who mentioned it, and only because I'd said it was the Guru service and the Joggler Calendar that was keeping us all with o2!