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Fantastical 3.6 Adds New Scheduling Features to Make It Easier to Find Meeting Times

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Popular calendar app Fantastical today is being updated with Fantastical Scheduling, a set of new and updated features designed to help schedule meetings.


The headline feature of Fantastical Scheduling is Openings, which lets you share your calendar availability with recipients and allows them to book available time slots. You can easily customize available time slots, while templates help you get started on setting up bookings.

fantastical-openings.jpg

The feature works automatically, pulling available slots from all or a subset of your calendar sets in Fantastical, blocking out times when you're not available. Requested bookings can be added to your calendar automatically, or you can opt to manually approve them.

fantastical-openings-2.jpg

Flexibits emphasizes that privacy is a key feature of Openings in Fantastical. While Flexibits' servers need to know something about your schedule in order for the feature to work, only the start and end times for your events and your calendar names are uploaded, and no other details about your scheduled events leave your devices. Even the actual booking of events through Openings takes place directly on your devices rather than on Flexibits' servers.

The second piece of Fantastical Scheduling is a revamped Proposals feature, which lets a meeting organizer propose multiple meeting times to a group and lets participants reply back with their availability. Through a convenient new grid view, you can easily see which meeting times work best for the participants.

fantastical-proposals.jpg
Proposal recipients (left) can set their availability, while organizers (right) can see who is available when and confirm a time​

Finally, Fantastical 3.6 includes a few other features updates such as a new Quarter view to optimize a mid-term view of your schedule between the typical Month and Year views, as well as a new Up Next toggle that lets you easily jump to either your full-day view or the next event on your calendar.

All of the new Fantastical Scheduling features are included with a Flexibits Premium subscription, which covers apps on all platforms: Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. It's priced at $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year for a single user and $7.99 per month or $64.99 per year for a family plan covering up to five family members.

The Fantastical apps are also available as free downloads with limited functionality, and there's a 14-day free trial of the full set of Premium features available. The updated apps should be rolling out now.

Article Link: Fantastical 3.6 Adds New Scheduling Features to Make It Easier to Find Meeting Times
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/08/fantastical-scheduling/
It's a great app that I've used for years, and Openings is awesome because I can stop using Calendly. I've relied on Fantastical every day for 4 or 5 years, but then I'm a contractor so it's tax-deductible anyway and overall a no-brainer for the value it offers.
 
I am still looking for a modern replacement of Agenda+, which was taken down by the developer a couple of years ago.
Maybe it's me or maybe it's limitations in Apple's new widget system, but nothing I tried so far comes close to the extended calendar view that Agenda+'s old widget could show.
 
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They've been adding incremental value throughout the year, and this Openings feature makes it a no-brainer for me – Calendly (which this feature replicates) is an $8 a month subscription.

I can totally understand how someone who doesn't really live in their calendar can't see the value, and that's cool. There are lots of options. Options are good!

For someone like myself (whose work and personal calendars look like Tetris on a bad day) Fantastical's value is pretty clear. Plus, there is definite value in not having to use Google and instead use a well-designed calendar UI across my two major calendar services.
 
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walterpaisley said:
They've been adding incremental value throughout the year, and this Openings feature makes it a no-brainer for me – Calendly (which this feature replicates) is an $8 a month subscription.

I can totally understand how someone who doesn't really live in their calendar can't see the value, and that's cool. There are lots of options. Options are good!

For someone like myself (whose work and personal calendars look like Tetris on a bad day) Fantastical's value is pretty clear. Plus, there is definite value in not having to use Google and instead use a well-designed calendar UI across my two major calendar services.
Click to expand...
Calendly offers a free tier that even sends a zoom link. What features does Openings do that Calendly charges?
 
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I bought this app a few years ago in a Christmas sale based on rave reviews. I couldn’t believe how basic the app was once installed. It is (or at least was) just a list of appointments. Not even a day view - just a never-ending “agenda” type view. There’s a row at the top that shows the corresponding calendar days (like a single row of a monthly calendar). As you scroll down the agenda list, the days scroll horizontally to keep the timeline in sync.

That’s basically it. The calender can be expanded to a pseudo month view. It uses the calendar APIs which means when you view or add appointments, it’s literally the exact same UI as the default calendar app (because it’s relying on the calendar app to actually create and save the appointments).

It’s shocking me to that anyone finds it useful. It’s the most basic way that appointment information could possibly be organized.
 
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ricosuave said:
Calendly offers a free tier that even sends a zoom link. What features does Openings do that Calendly charges?
Click to expand...
Calendly's free offering is awesome if you have straightforward meeting needs and only need a single active event. I have around a half-a-dozen different event types and all of them need to be active.

I agree that Calendly's integration with Zoom and other conference apps is awesome (because it is). I'm confident Fantastical will support auto-creating Zoom meetings as they already integrate with Zoom.
 
Still not going to pay an annual fee for a calendar app. Imagine paying rent to an app that's not 100% perfect and bug free. Because I'm paying every month/year, I expect the app to be perfect (speed, features, no bugs). I'm not unreasonable.
 
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"I expect the app to be perfect."
"I'm not unreasonable."

There is a disconnect between these two statements.

I do wonder why discussions about free vs. paid are almost always extra passionate when it comes to Fantastical. There are so many examples of other apps with free versions that charge a subscription for rolling updates and extra features (even calendar/todos/meeting organization ones!). I've never understood why Fantastical is any different.
 
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walterpaisley said:
"I expect the app to be perfect."
"I'm not unreasonable."

There is a disconnect between these two statements.

I do wonder why discussions about free vs. paid are almost always extra passionate when it comes to Fantastical. There are so many examples of other apps with free versions that charge a subscription for rolling updates and extra features (even calendar/todos/meeting organization ones!). I've never understood why Fantastical is any different.
Click to expand...
The answer is that apps that cover features generally included in the OS confound people who don't use them.

Same thing about an email client. Some people pay for them and swear by them. Others use the one their given for free and can't imagine what's so important about it.

But if you really want to throw gas on a fire, make the pricing a rental instead of one-time payment.
 
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