Core Features

DeskCal is built around five core ideas: events, columns, categories, priorities, and recurrence. Once you understand these, you understand the whole product.

Events

An event is anything you want to track on your timetable — a meeting, a deadline, a birthday, a chore, a flight. Every event has:

• A title (required)
• A date (required)
• An optional category, priority, and notes
• Any custom columns you've added (see below)

To create, edit, or delete events, use the Add Event button at the top of the timetable, or click an existing row to edit it.

Edit vs. delete

• Click an event row to open the edit dialog.
• Inside the dialog, the Delete button (bottom-left, destructive variant) removes the event. You'll be asked to confirm.
• For recurring events, deleting from a single occurrence offers two choices: this occurrence only or the whole series — see Recurring events below.

Custom columns

The default columns (Date, Days, Day, Status, Category, Priority) cover the basics. But maybe your week needs a Project column, or Location, or Status: Drafting / Sent / Reviewed. That's what custom columns are for.

To add a column:

1. Click Manage Columns in the top toolbar.
2. Click Add Column.
3. Choose a column type:
   • Text — free-form short text
   • Long text — multi-line notes
   • Number — numeric value
   • Date — second date (e.g., reminder date, follow-up date)
   • Choice — a fixed list of options (e.g., Drafting / Sent / Reviewed)
   • Checkbox — boolean (done / not done)
4. Name the column and click Save.

The column appears on every existing event and on the Add/Edit form, ready for input.

Reordering and removing columns

In Manage Columns, drag the column row to reorder. Click the trash icon to delete a column — values on existing events are removed too, so be careful with destructive deletes.

Categories

A category is a tag — a way to group events by kind. Out of the box you get a starter set (Work, Personal, Birthday, Holiday, etc.). You can edit, recolor, or delete them, and add your own.

To manage categories:

1. Click Manage Categories in the top toolbar.
2. Click Add Category to create one. Give it a name and pick a color.
3. Click a category to edit it; the trash icon deletes.

Deleting a category does not delete events tagged with it — those events simply lose the category tag.

Picking a category on an event

In the Add/Edit Event dialog, the Category field is a single-select dropdown of your categories. Leaving it blank is fine — many events don't need one.

Priorities

Every event can be tagged Low, Medium, High, or Critical. Priorities are fixed (you can't add new ones — yet) and show up as colored badges in the table.

Priority is independent of category and from due date. A Birthday event can be Critical (you forgot last year). A Work event can be Low (it's months away). Filter by priority when you want to see just the things on fire.

Recurring events

Many events repeat: standups, birthdays, monthly reports, anniversaries. DeskCal supports recurrence so you set them up once.

In the Add/Edit Event dialog:

1. Toggle Recurring.
2. Pick a pattern:
   • Daily — every N days
   • Weekly — every N weeks on specific weekdays
   • Monthly — every N months on a specific day-of-month
   • Yearly — every N years on a specific date (birthdays, anniversaries)
3. Optionally set an end date or an occurrence count.

The timetable expands the rule into individual upcoming occurrences. Each occurrence behaves like an event for display, filter, and sort.

Editing a recurring event

Clicking an occurrence opens the edit dialog. When you save, you'll be asked:

• This occurrence only — fork this occurrence as a one-off override (the rest of the series is unchanged).
• All occurrences — modify the rule itself; the change applies to past and future occurrences in the series.

Deleting a recurring event

Same pattern as editing — the dialog asks whether you want to remove just this occurrence or the entire series.

Putting it together

Most timetables grow gradually. Start with events. Add categories when you start needing to filter. Add a custom column when the Notes field stops being enough. Set things up to recur once you notice you're typing the same event twice.

The product gets out of your way once it's shaped to how you actually plan.

Where to go next

• Search & Filters — once you have more than a handful of events, this is how you find things.
• Views & FAQ — Table vs Agenda, and answers to common questions.