Community Roundtable Recap

What happened

Last week we held our first community roundtable. Thirty-two users joined a live video call to talk about how they use manyCalendars, what they wish it did better, and where they want the product to go next. The conversation ran 90 minutes and could have gone longer. Here is what came out of it.

Most-wanted features

Three feature requests came up repeatedly, unprompted, from different participants.

1. Calendar sharing between manyCalendars users. Several participants work with other multi-client professionals. They want a way to share a masked version of their unified calendar with a collaborator, so two fractional executives at the same company can coordinate without revealing their full schedules. We hear you. This is on the roadmap.

2. Mobile companion view. The extension lives in a desktop browser. But people check their schedules from their phones constantly. A read-only mobile view, even just today's events and upcoming conflicts, would fill a real gap. No full mobile app needed. Just a lightweight way to glance at the unified view on the go.

3. Smarter recurring event handling. When a recurring event gets rescheduled for one occurrence, the conflict detection sometimes flags the original time slot instead of the updated one. This is a known issue with how some calendar providers expose recurring event exceptions, and it is actively being worked on.

Workflow tips from power users

The roundtable surfaced several workflow patterns we had not seen before.

The "phantom block" technique. One user creates invisible events (no title, matching the background color) on client calendars as buffer zones. These show as busy to colleagues but are invisible in the manyCalendars view because they match the day's background. Clever, if a bit hacky. We are considering a native buffer-time feature that would make this unnecessary.

Color-coded by urgency, not client. Most users color-code by client. One participant colors by urgency instead: red for immovable, yellow for flexible, green for tentative. This gives an instant visual read on how packed a day really is versus how packed it looks.

Morning export ritual. Three participants independently described the same workflow: every morning, export today's availability, paste it into their Slack status. This way colleagues across all clients can see at a glance whether today is a good day to reach out. Simple, effective, no integration required.

Common pain points

We also heard what is not working well.

ICS feed delays. Several users rely on ICS feeds that update slowly (some only every 12 hours). By the time manyCalendars sees a new event, the conflict has already happened. We are exploring faster polling options and a manual "refresh now" button for urgent situations.

Outlook Web sync engine fragility. Microsoft updates the Outlook Web UI frequently, and each update risks breaking the sync engine. Users reported needing to wait for manyCalendars updates after Outlook changes. We are investing in more resilient syncing patterns and faster patch releases when breakages occur.

Onboarding for new calendars. Adding the first calendar is easy. Adding the fifth requires remembering which method (ICS or tab sync) works for each provider. Users want clearer guidance during the "Add Calendar" flow about which method to use for their specific provider.

What is next

We are taking every piece of feedback from this roundtable seriously. Some items are already in development. Others need more design work before we commit. We plan to hold these roundtables quarterly, at minimum, and more frequently if the community wants them.

If you missed this one, watch for the next announcement. And if you are not a manyCalendars user yet but want to be part of a community that actually shapes the product, that starts with installing the extension. We build for the people who show up.