I'm a little obsessed with my computer and internet based calendars. And for good reason.  I can't remember when to do anything unless I have it “written down” somewhere. Ironically, in the age of the DayTimer calendaring system, I never maintained a written schedule. But the practice of law involves a host of dates and appointments such that the process is much more complicated – and that's where I look to technology to help me solve the problem. So armed with my iPhone, iPad, iMacs (plural), I should be able to keep track of my schedule and have it available to me at all times.

My calendaring requirements are fairly modest. It must be available on my iPhone since that is the tool I have on my person most often. And it must sync with my DayLite 4 database that I use to manage my practice. Everything else is extra. But as long as we are at it, if it can sync with my iPad as well as my iMac at home so much the better. And if my wife can have visibility and access to some portion of the calendar that we share then we are really cooking with gas.

So my calendaring system is a combination of the features provided by DayLite 4 and iCal. Basically, I maintain my office schedule in DayLite. This includes all court dates and work related appointments. The most recent version of DayLite allowed for syncing of calendar data using the calDAV account. Daylite provides you with the server address of the calDAV  and together with your login credentials you can add the account to your iCal preferences. The items entered into your DayLite 4 database are synced with your iCal calendar and reflected as your DayLite calendar in iCal which you can toggle on or off. Similarly, you can enter appointments or events in iCal using the DayLite calendar type and they will be reflected on your DayLite calendar. The only tweek I have had to do is that when I add an event in DayLite that is associated with a project or case, I put that case name in the title of the event so that it shows up in the event name in iCal. This system then has my work calendar displayed on each of the platforms I use the most – my iPhone, iPad, and work iMac.

But there is a problem. I can not at the moment sync my laptop nor my iMac at home to the same calDAV accounts. This is because they are running separate instances of DayLite 4 rather than the DayLite Touch that is running on my iOS devices. The laptop and my home iMac could sync with my DayLite server running in the office if they could remotely connect through my router. But because the router is shared with other offices in my suite who do not share the same systems, we are reluctant to reconfigure it to open the port to permit such connectivity. I'll work around it at some point, but for now, having my work calendar synced between the three major platforms I use is sufficient.

The iCal stuff then syncs everywhere with all my devices via iCloud. So my iPhone and iPad have all my calendaring information and that works for me. This includes the shared calendar my wife and I use to keep each other up to date on family and personal commitments. Together with Reminders and other alerts, I have a pretty good idea of where I am supposed to be and at what time.