Appointment Calendar Software: 4 Critical Features Part 4

Effective appointment calendar software should have the ability to create multiple categories, display a monthly view, create reminders and provide recurrence capability. In this article series I will go in-depth into the above features and show the valuable benefits of each one. In this last and final article of this appointment calendar software series, the focus is the recurrence capability.

When looking at the recurrence capability of appointment calendar software, you should require at least three (3) recurrence patterns: monthly, weekly and daily. You should also be able to choose the duration.

The appointment calendar software’s monthly recurrence pattern should give you the option to tell the appointment calendar software how often (frequency in months) to recur and on which date to start the recurrence pattern.

The appointment calendar software’s weekly recurrence pattern should give you the option to tell the appointment calendar software how often (frequency in weeks) to recur and on which date to start the recurrence pattern. The weekly recurrence should also give you the ability to decide which days of the week you want a recurrence entry to be applied. In other words, when you select the weekly recurrence, you should be able to pick Sunday, Monday and Wednesday of each week to apply the recurrence data for example.

The appointment calendar software’s daily recurrence pattern should give you the option to tell the appointment calendar software how often (frequency in days) to recur and on which date to start the recurrence pattern.

Finally, a solid appointment calendar software program should provide duration. By duration I mean the existence of an end date of the recurrence or a definite date to stop recurring. If you want every day from now on to have a recurring entry, you would just select “no end date”. You should also have the option to “end on 11/12/2009”. Lastly, you should be able to select “end after 3” recurrence entries have been created -- where the number 3 is variable and can be whatever number you choose.

As you can see, to have a solid recurrence capability for your appointment calendar software, you should have monthly, weekly and daily recurrence along with the ability to control the duration by number of occurrences and end date. I hope the advice in this series provides a framework by which you can evaluate appointment calendar software. Good luck in your quest to find the appointment calendar software that fits your needs and helps you reach your productivity success!