Make events dependend on each other (connect them)
under review
M
Marian
I often have some meetings following each other directly. It would be amazing if they could somehow be connected. Which means if my lunch now doesn't start at 13:00 but at 12:50 the powernap that directly comes after it (connected) should be automatically moved as well, so it starts at 13:10 instead of 13:20 (e.g.)
Danny Hatcher
under review
Danny Hatcher
Merged in a post:
Improve behaviour of overlapping events
D
Daniel
The Problem
I am missing some flexibility and responsiveness regarding how adjacent events respond to adding or changing another event:
Imagine Event A is 30 minutes long and ends at 10am and Event B starts immediately after at 10am and lasts 2hs. What happens if I expand / move Event A so it overlaps with Event B?
- Option 1: When I expand Event A by 15 minutes, Event B shrinks proportionally, i.e. Event B now starts at 10:15am and only lasts 1h45mins.
- Option 2: When I move (or expand) Event A by 15 minutes, Event B only gets pushed behind proportionally which now is from 10:15am to 12:15pm.
- Option 3: When I place Event A in the middle of Event B (say at 11am), it splits Event B in two surrounding blocks. Both durations stay the same but Event B now pauses at 11am and resumes at 11:30am after Event A has finished.
- Option 4: Keep the current option that Event A and Event B now simply overlap.
Real life examples could be:
- if I have an appointment at 5pm and my preparation for that appointment can only start 15 minutes later as planned, it will not push the 5pm appointment back.
- Cleaning up a conference room always takes 15 minutes but begins at different times depending on when the meeting ended.
- I have a 2-hour study session from 4pm to 6pm and will add an appointment at 5pm in the middle of it, I will just continue studying after the appointment: the study session will now finish at 7pm.
Possible Solutions
1) Modifier keys: E.g. ALT + mouse drag shrinks Event B while simple dragging pushes Event B to the back
2) Default behaviour options in the app.
3) Defaults based on some connection / link between events or property of events:
Giving it some thought there could be three relevant
properties
of events: Fixed beginning, fixed end, and fixed duration
. Examples using the options from above:- Option 1: Event B has properties "fixed beginning" and "fixed duration" unchecked so Event A expanding makes it automatically shrink. "Fixed Ending" does not really matter here as checking it would lead to shrinkage, but even unchecking it would not conflict with shrinkage.
- Option 2: Event B has "fixed duration" checked and the other two unchecked, allowing it to be pushed back as its start and end times are flexible.
- Option 3: In this case, Event B has "fixed duration" AND "fixed beginning" checked, leaving "fixed ending" unchecked. Thus, moving an event inside it cannot move the start and the "excess pressure" gets released by pushing it to the end.
- Option 4: All three options are checked for Event B. Neither its start, end, nor duration can be altered so it simply stays in place no matter what happens with other events because it cannot "go anywhere".
Additionally, this assumes that an event clash always is a tension to be resolved. But this doesn't have to be. If I keep track of my favourite football teams matches, me having an appointment at that time will likely not stop them from playing whatsoever :) So maybe some calendar can have a "background" option or so, indicating that they never clash and always have all properties fixed.
This would not only enhance my workflow but also keep me from making mistakes such as only adding or changing event A but forgetting to adjust event B accordingly.
Danny Hatcher
My understanding is that you would like event lengths to be automatically adjusted when there is an overlap. Is that correct?
D
Daniel
Danny Hatcher To be precise, I want control over how events behave in case of sudden overlap/conflict: Does the "old" event shrink?, does the "old" event just move later?, does the "old" event pause and "flow around" the "new" event?
As outlined in my full post, this can be achieved as a quick win by e.g. adding modifier keys or setting default behaviour options in the app OR by defining a set of three properties that can be adjusted per event or as a calendar default. In my post I outline how three properties might be enough to model all/most scenarios.
D
Daniel
I have a related feature request here that fleshes out this idea: https://morgen.canny.io/feature-requests/p/improve-behaviour-of-overlapping-events Maybe they can be combined?
Danny Hatcher
Daniel: I was thinking the same.
Do you think it is worth merging the requests?
D
Daniel
I want to nudge this a little up, as I re-wrote my request to be more clear. Maybe more people now understand what I mean.