Platform: iOS Cost: Free
In my productivity series, I am pushing my own boundaries – which is definitely the purpose of testing apps. When I first got an iPad, I used the standard apps for everything. After three years, I finally made the transition to third party applications. My first calendar was on Calendars 5 by Readdle, and that has been remarkably hard to beat – and remains as my go to Calendar.
Tempo gives Calendars a run for its money with some integrations and features that I am greatly impressed with – enough so to make the switch.
The App
As you probably could guess, Tempo is a Calendar Application for iOS. It was designed by Tempo Al as a calendar that would sync with Exchange/Microsoft and Google Calendars. These are two of the most common calendar applications in use, and it makes sense that they are the supported account types.
When the app fires up, you will of course have to grant access to one or more of your calendars. Once you have given it access, and it syncs, you will be presented with the traditional three views:
Month View
Very standard view of the month with items color coded by the calendar that they come from.
Week View:
This is always one of my favorite views since it provides enough detail to give you a picture of how the week is going to shape up.
Agenda View:
My favorite view of all! The ability to quickly and easily get all of the information about my day in one place. In Tempo, you can set custom images for your days, it provides build in GPS weather, and there are tons of related options.
Other Options:
When you configure the settings from within the App, you are asked to provide additional information about Email providers, social network profiles, location settings, and address book access. I use them all, and I feel like Tempo would not be as useful without them.
Lets look at a single event as an example. This is one of my active calendar invites. If I have integrated my email accounts, I can ask Tempo to find related information about the meeting
Which then gives us the emails that are referencing the same time or participants.
As a team leader, I always seem to be running late. Built into the display is the ability to – with a single click – message your team to let them know you are running late.
Now if you also follow your team on social media, when they are added to the invite in the calendar, it will pull LinkedIn and Twitter information about your contacts and the people you are meeting with.
Overall
This app is my new favorite Calendar on the iPad. I am sure that will change… (there are some things that Tempo does not do that I would like to see). All in all, it is an easy to use, and nicer looking calendar. The price is great and the functionality built into the app for pulling related meeting information is fantastic. Check it out and I am sure you will be surprised by the power of this free tool.
