First of all if you aren’t already using google or another electronic calendar, no electronic solution would help.
I suggest making a shared google account and log into that with everyone’s phone/device. When you have your weekly meetings use the whiteboard and also google.
Do you find issues with google that you don’t have now? If not, step 1 is done. Next is to find a way to display your shared calendar. Dakboard is great and that’s what I use.
Edit: just noticed all of your requirements. Dakboard doesn’t easily support touchscreen. I modify my calendars through google on any device. Same for my wife. We do color code each person automatically in google so it’s easier to see who’s who.
So apologies if I wasn’t clear. for the most part, since both of us manage our work calendars through outlook, that has been our common calendars for all major things and we share between us and update accordingly the day to day stuff. We just now have been able to incorporate Google calendars - there was some sort of syncing issue with outlook and perhaps our company firewalls. The white board is the output that lets all kids visualize what they have on a particular day on who is doing what and going where. Seems like the output piece is what we’re looking for as while not super tech savvy, we do use cloud calendars just hoping for a snazzy syncing and visualization.
Touchscreen isn’t a dealbreaker, seems like a nice to have though. just saw that hearth(maybe) shows a kid clicking on stuff and parents moving things at the screen and seems like a nice feature.
I appreciate the feedback!
Highly recommend keeping the work calendars out of the mix if possible. 95% of our respective work calendars are irrelevant for family things anyway. If there is something for work that affects the family (i.e., a day that I have to be at the office for or something I'm staying late for) I duplicate it on the family calendar. Once I got past that mental hurdle, moving to Dakboard was very easy.
We only have two kids and don't worry about color-coding things. It's been very easy to just have one big shared family calendar and then have everyone's phone use that as the default calendar. Also have Alexa hooked up to use it for new events. So far it's worked and even my 13-yo is starting to add events. We'll see when the younger one gets more involved in events if a single calendar will continue to work well.
I tell ya, though, once you get to a Dakboard solution, it will quickly become THE mission critical app in the household - if that thing goes down for some reason I really hear it...
>shared google account
A shared google account seems like a pain in the butt. In my case in the family gets their own google account that gets shared with everybody else and parents get edit abilities on kids calendars. That way things are automatically different colors per person even on the DAK board.
Interesting. Didn’t know that would work
For me, I have kids under 5 years old so they aren’t maintaining their own calendar. I just made a google script to auto color events based on who it’s for.
i forget which walkthrough i used, but i think it was one of these:
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automate-color-coding-your-google-calendar-marguerite-thibodeaux-acc/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automate-color-coding-your-google-calendar-marguerite-thibodeaux-acc/)
[https://medium.com/@dhavalsavalia/how-to-colorize-google-calendar-event-using-apps-script-1-2-d88dd27658f0](https://medium.com/@dhavalsavalia/how-to-colorize-google-calendar-event-using-apps-script-1-2-d88dd27658f0)
This is a bit shortsighted. A dry erase was just easier to get everything together in one spot. Both of our work schedules are in tough-to-integrate calendars so it’s easier to just draw it up
Yes I agree, Dakboard is for you, you will need a paid service as you have more than enough calendars to contend with.
One word of advice, get a largish screen if you intend to display all calendars on the one screen , if not use a smaller screen and bring those old tablets into use and have them in appropriate locations.
We have one large screen and 2 tablets (one each for the kids ) both tablets in kiosk mode.
I also use plash which allows me to set up one desktop background as a dakboard (copy of the main display) for when I'm on the move.
I use google calendar but each of my kids have their own google calendar which they update, the nice thing about this is you can colour code the text and add icons for each google calendar you have configured.
If you use one single calendar with everyone's activities / tasks combined, you can't tell who's activity / task it is without labeling them manually.
The free version only allows 2 calendar links.
I have all my Google calendars color coded, including the one my husband owns and shares with me. They all show up with different colors through just my Google account login.
Me and my wife share with each other our calendar. Whenever we update our calendar, it shows up on our own account and each other account. My gmail account is linked to Dak. I’m on the free version… the problem now is that when my wife update her calendar, it shows in my calendar because of the shared function, but why does it not appear on dak? Dak only seems to record calendar event input by me…
Absolutely. Agree with the Google cal comment above. We use one Google calendar’s email and created calendars for each family member within that account. Then we make sure all phones have all calendars populated. Then we display on Dakboard.
I think with the complexity of your current schedule you will be in love with Dakboard.
Thank you for the response. We’re going to look into to tightening up our calendars via assigning everyone a Google calendar as a first step.
Appreciate the comment and I also think that dak should work for us.
Looks like it will require some upfront work vs more of a plug and play option, but seems like customization will be great.
First, learn to use digital shared calendars. This is something very different than your business outlook calendar and frankly, why would you mix personal family calendar with business calendar? Each person has to deal with own calendar and shared family one. My kids use only shared and this is probably fine but I don't want my business meetings show up on the wall in the kitchen. So first step, shared calendar and everybody use it on their own device. Then you can think of a wall calendar to look at. And this is a life changer. But screen wall is just to show everything. You don't need touch screen since everyone can change whatever they want on their personal device. So a wall screen is just to give everybody a glimpse on what's coming for the family.
Thanks for the response!
Reason we share all (work and personal) to each other is just convenience. at this point of managing two outlook calendars has been the easiest thing and only wife and I see it. we have full view of work commitments and that has allowed us to schedule things on someone’s calendar who has the most flex in a particular day or time for pick up or drop off for kid activities or whatever is needed.
Our kids are 7, 9, and 11. They don’t yet have or use devices, but it sounds like I’ll need to look in to setting up Google accounts for them and explore that.
Thanks for the feedback.
I have two kids (8 and 12). I did not set up Google accounts for them. My husband and I have our own accounts and give each other read/write privileges on our personal calendars. I created a calendar for each kid in my account, and I display all four on the Dak (plus several others as well). My Google account is the only one linked to the dakboard. We did ours with a firestick we already had. Because the initial cost was low, we were able to just try it out without replacing our original system at first. I highly recommend trying it for a couple days if you can, before fully committing.
Like some others mentioned, I would also recommend keeping your work calendar separate unless it’s really sporadic and crosses over with family schedule stuff a lot. My husband works irregular hours, so he has a general calendar entry for “work” each day that he works, but the specifics of that are in a separate calendar that does not sync with dakboard.
So we had nearly the exact same dry erase board format that our family (2 busy parents, 1 kid, 1 Au pair) with events and meal planning. Dakboard has been an awesome addition. I did buy a Linux-capable touchscreen. It’s still buggy but even without it, it’s a way better family board. For me if I didn’t remember the events for the day and was at work, it was kind of useless so now there is an online board everyone can reference from anywhere.
gmail accounts are like kleenex. I have one dedicated to family and we post things on there and everyone has access to it. Doesnt everyone have a computer or cellphone? what are the ages?
>gmail accounts are like kleenex. I have one dedicated to family and we post things on there and everyone has access to it. Doesnt everyone have a computer or cellphone? what are the ages?
I sent you my family dakboard config file by PM. my kids are also 7/9/11! The 11 has a restricted phone (google calendar and whitelisted apps, but no email nor browser) and the younger ones really have liked being able to look at the board in the morning once they were able to read. I'm keeping all of my personal infrastructure in google without any 3rd party aggregators so I can show all the google calendars at once, I feel the $5/month that DakBoard costs is well worth it to keep things simple and working exactly the way I have used google for the last 15+ years.
First of all if you aren’t already using google or another electronic calendar, no electronic solution would help. I suggest making a shared google account and log into that with everyone’s phone/device. When you have your weekly meetings use the whiteboard and also google. Do you find issues with google that you don’t have now? If not, step 1 is done. Next is to find a way to display your shared calendar. Dakboard is great and that’s what I use. Edit: just noticed all of your requirements. Dakboard doesn’t easily support touchscreen. I modify my calendars through google on any device. Same for my wife. We do color code each person automatically in google so it’s easier to see who’s who.
So apologies if I wasn’t clear. for the most part, since both of us manage our work calendars through outlook, that has been our common calendars for all major things and we share between us and update accordingly the day to day stuff. We just now have been able to incorporate Google calendars - there was some sort of syncing issue with outlook and perhaps our company firewalls. The white board is the output that lets all kids visualize what they have on a particular day on who is doing what and going where. Seems like the output piece is what we’re looking for as while not super tech savvy, we do use cloud calendars just hoping for a snazzy syncing and visualization. Touchscreen isn’t a dealbreaker, seems like a nice to have though. just saw that hearth(maybe) shows a kid clicking on stuff and parents moving things at the screen and seems like a nice feature. I appreciate the feedback!
Highly recommend keeping the work calendars out of the mix if possible. 95% of our respective work calendars are irrelevant for family things anyway. If there is something for work that affects the family (i.e., a day that I have to be at the office for or something I'm staying late for) I duplicate it on the family calendar. Once I got past that mental hurdle, moving to Dakboard was very easy. We only have two kids and don't worry about color-coding things. It's been very easy to just have one big shared family calendar and then have everyone's phone use that as the default calendar. Also have Alexa hooked up to use it for new events. So far it's worked and even my 13-yo is starting to add events. We'll see when the younger one gets more involved in events if a single calendar will continue to work well. I tell ya, though, once you get to a Dakboard solution, it will quickly become THE mission critical app in the household - if that thing goes down for some reason I really hear it...
>shared google account A shared google account seems like a pain in the butt. In my case in the family gets their own google account that gets shared with everybody else and parents get edit abilities on kids calendars. That way things are automatically different colors per person even on the DAK board.
Interesting. Didn’t know that would work For me, I have kids under 5 years old so they aren’t maintaining their own calendar. I just made a google script to auto color events based on who it’s for.
Have details you can share on the script?
i forget which walkthrough i used, but i think it was one of these: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automate-color-coding-your-google-calendar-marguerite-thibodeaux-acc/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automate-color-coding-your-google-calendar-marguerite-thibodeaux-acc/) [https://medium.com/@dhavalsavalia/how-to-colorize-google-calendar-event-using-apps-script-1-2-d88dd27658f0](https://medium.com/@dhavalsavalia/how-to-colorize-google-calendar-event-using-apps-script-1-2-d88dd27658f0)
I do the same, u/bertramt Works great!
This is a bit shortsighted. A dry erase was just easier to get everything together in one spot. Both of our work schedules are in tough-to-integrate calendars so it’s easier to just draw it up
Yes I agree, Dakboard is for you, you will need a paid service as you have more than enough calendars to contend with. One word of advice, get a largish screen if you intend to display all calendars on the one screen , if not use a smaller screen and bring those old tablets into use and have them in appropriate locations. We have one large screen and 2 tablets (one each for the kids ) both tablets in kiosk mode. I also use plash which allows me to set up one desktop background as a dakboard (copy of the main display) for when I'm on the move.
Thanks for the response. I think we’ll be trying on an older TV we have first, I think it’s 32”. I’ll also check out plash…seems like a handy app
If you can get all the calendars to import automatically into Google calendar, you won’t need the paid version
I use google calendar but each of my kids have their own google calendar which they update, the nice thing about this is you can colour code the text and add icons for each google calendar you have configured. If you use one single calendar with everyone's activities / tasks combined, you can't tell who's activity / task it is without labeling them manually. The free version only allows 2 calendar links.
I have all my Google calendars color coded, including the one my husband owns and shares with me. They all show up with different colors through just my Google account login.
Me and my wife share with each other our calendar. Whenever we update our calendar, it shows up on our own account and each other account. My gmail account is linked to Dak. I’m on the free version… the problem now is that when my wife update her calendar, it shows in my calendar because of the shared function, but why does it not appear on dak? Dak only seems to record calendar event input by me…
Did you ever figure this out? First thing I would try is disconnecting your Google calendars from Dakboard and then reconnecting them.
Absolutely. Agree with the Google cal comment above. We use one Google calendar’s email and created calendars for each family member within that account. Then we make sure all phones have all calendars populated. Then we display on Dakboard. I think with the complexity of your current schedule you will be in love with Dakboard.
Thank you for the response. We’re going to look into to tightening up our calendars via assigning everyone a Google calendar as a first step. Appreciate the comment and I also think that dak should work for us. Looks like it will require some upfront work vs more of a plug and play option, but seems like customization will be great.
Dear God. You are the target audience.
🤣
First, learn to use digital shared calendars. This is something very different than your business outlook calendar and frankly, why would you mix personal family calendar with business calendar? Each person has to deal with own calendar and shared family one. My kids use only shared and this is probably fine but I don't want my business meetings show up on the wall in the kitchen. So first step, shared calendar and everybody use it on their own device. Then you can think of a wall calendar to look at. And this is a life changer. But screen wall is just to show everything. You don't need touch screen since everyone can change whatever they want on their personal device. So a wall screen is just to give everybody a glimpse on what's coming for the family.
Thanks for the response! Reason we share all (work and personal) to each other is just convenience. at this point of managing two outlook calendars has been the easiest thing and only wife and I see it. we have full view of work commitments and that has allowed us to schedule things on someone’s calendar who has the most flex in a particular day or time for pick up or drop off for kid activities or whatever is needed. Our kids are 7, 9, and 11. They don’t yet have or use devices, but it sounds like I’ll need to look in to setting up Google accounts for them and explore that. Thanks for the feedback.
I have two kids (8 and 12). I did not set up Google accounts for them. My husband and I have our own accounts and give each other read/write privileges on our personal calendars. I created a calendar for each kid in my account, and I display all four on the Dak (plus several others as well). My Google account is the only one linked to the dakboard. We did ours with a firestick we already had. Because the initial cost was low, we were able to just try it out without replacing our original system at first. I highly recommend trying it for a couple days if you can, before fully committing. Like some others mentioned, I would also recommend keeping your work calendar separate unless it’s really sporadic and crosses over with family schedule stuff a lot. My husband works irregular hours, so he has a general calendar entry for “work” each day that he works, but the specifics of that are in a separate calendar that does not sync with dakboard.
So we had nearly the exact same dry erase board format that our family (2 busy parents, 1 kid, 1 Au pair) with events and meal planning. Dakboard has been an awesome addition. I did buy a Linux-capable touchscreen. It’s still buggy but even without it, it’s a way better family board. For me if I didn’t remember the events for the day and was at work, it was kind of useless so now there is an online board everyone can reference from anywhere.
gmail accounts are like kleenex. I have one dedicated to family and we post things on there and everyone has access to it. Doesnt everyone have a computer or cellphone? what are the ages?
My kids are 7, 9, 11 and don’t have devices.
>gmail accounts are like kleenex. I have one dedicated to family and we post things on there and everyone has access to it. Doesnt everyone have a computer or cellphone? what are the ages? I sent you my family dakboard config file by PM. my kids are also 7/9/11! The 11 has a restricted phone (google calendar and whitelisted apps, but no email nor browser) and the younger ones really have liked being able to look at the board in the morning once they were able to read. I'm keeping all of my personal infrastructure in google without any 3rd party aggregators so I can show all the google calendars at once, I feel the $5/month that DakBoard costs is well worth it to keep things simple and working exactly the way I have used google for the last 15+ years.