Category: Productivity
Price: $.99
Release Date: July 14, 2012
Version: 3.0.2
Seller: Ken Yarmosh
Rated: 4+
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
Link to app
TiP Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
App Store Description:
When you’re mobile, your calendar app’s main focus is to show you what’s happening now.
Enter Agenda.
Agenda is a beautifully designed calendar for your iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad that gives you various “at a glance” views. We’ve stripped away all the stuff you don’t need, so you can more quickly manage your day.
Summary:
A beautiful and user-friendly calendar app for your iPhone or iPad. Add reminders, schedule events, and even keep attendees updated on your arrival.
Review:
Despite trying several different iOS apps and web-based calendars, I still find myself plastering my desk with Post-It notes and scribbling in my paper (what’s what?) planner. As a chronic-scheduler, I jot down the oddest reminders, from grocery lists and meetings to reminders about which purse I wanted to bring to dinner next week.
I’ve tried all sorts of solutions, but in the end I always end up buying more Post-Its. I don’t want to jinx anything by saying that this app will stick, but I might have found a keeper.
Agenda Calendar (Kind of redundant, isn’t it?) is a beautiful, simple, and clean productivity app that works well with your iPhone or iPad — I must admit that I love how it looks on the iPad’s larger screen. Before I dive in too deep, yes, it does sync with iCal and Google Calendar.
Opening the app is a real treat as you’re met with a gorgeous at a glance layout. You can switch between day, week, month, and year views by swiping left to right, or by tapping on the menu icon in the bottom left corner. Depending on your preference, you can change the default view so you always open up the app to what you want.
Event creation is pretty simple as well; just tap on the plus icon in the bottom right corner. While I love that the Add Event box opens on the right side of the screen, I do wish I had a little bit more room to work with. Maybe I’m just being claustrophobic, but it seems cluttered compared to the openness the rest of the app boasts.
Fortunately, you can change this so the Event box more closely resembles that of Apple’s standard Calendar app. To do so, go to Settings > Extras and turn on iOS Event Creation. However, it appears that you can’t add contacts through this view.
Once you’ve entered your event title or reminder, you can change which calendar it appears on. This didn’t feel very intuitive to me — I actually made a few events before I realized I had the option of switching.
To change which calendar to use, tap the small calendar icon toward the top right corner of the Add Event box. I also wish I could choose the colors of the event dots, but that’s not a deal breaker.
Just like with most calendar apps you can schedule alerts, add a location, invite contacts, or include a note to add more context. You can also schedule reoccurring events. And don’t worry if you forget something. You can tap the event on the calendar and edit it.
Let’s say you have a meeting today at 1pm. You can tap that item on your calendar and a smaller box will pop up. Here, you can choose to edit details, confirm that you’ll be there, tell the organizer that you have arrived, or let them know you’re running late. By tapping “Late,” you’ll be able to choose from a couple different options ranging from five to 20 minutes.
If you’re planning for the future, you can easily fast forward to a date by tapping the small calendar icon in the bottom left corner of the app. Here you can quickly jump to another day, month, or year.
Under settings > extras, you can tweak the app so it’s a bit more customized to your preferences. For example, you can change the theme if you’re not digging the simple white background. You can also enable Goal View, which helps you track more long-term projects.
Looking past my aesthetic issues, I really love the simplicity of Agenda Calendar. In a way it’s quite deceptive. It doesn’t look like anything more than a simple to-do app, but it actually packs a lot of punch beneath its muted design.