With the rush back to school, it is important to make sure that your favorite online school calendar is up-to-date. Here is a quick list of items to check before school starts:

1. TandemCal URL: Be sure that you are using the new UI for your calendar. To find the new version, just replace  ___________.intand.com with _____________.tandemcal.com.

2. Import Events: Be sure to use the mass import feature of Tandem when adding school events and you will save your self some precious time.

3. Add new users: Do you have new staff and parents that need to use the calendar? Again, use the mass import function to save yourself time or have individuals add themselves.

4. Sync w/Athletic Scheduler: Does your athletic director use a separate program to manage athletics? Contact our support team to have those events automatically added to your school calendar.

5. Approval System: The beginning of the school year is a great time to review your approval system and to make sure it still is meeting your needs.

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Many schools that switch to Tandem have been trying to use a personal calendar like Google Calendar to manage school events. When doing this, it quickly becomes evident why personal calendars are not well suited as an online school calendar. Here are just a few reasons to use a event calendar instead of a personal calendar.

Groups – An event calendar is designed to be used by many people at once instead of a single person. Thus, it has predefined groups that make it easy to schedule events and activities.

One Calendar – While a school may have multiple personal calendars, they should only have one group calendar. I say should because that don’t always but that is a matter of best practice. By doing this, a school is able prevent double-booking of facilities and groups.

Filter Function – An actual event calendar will give you the ability to filter the events on the calendar to just the relevant events. This is a feature the a personal calendar would lack.

It is important to consider these differences when selecting an online calendaring system. These few differences can make a huge difference with how happy your staff, parents, and communities are with your selection of an online calendaring system.

A Facebook app is now available for EVERYONE to use on their Facebook page. It is a free app that displays your page’s events in a more user friendly way. To add the Tandem Calendar, log into Facebook and visit http://apps.facebook.com/tandemcal/. Here you will have the ability to add it to any Facebook page that you manage. It will then display like this on your Facbook page’s calendar tab:

Thank you to everyone who attended the Tandem Social Hour and made it such a great success! We had about 20 people join us for appetizers and drinks at Daniel’s Broiler on the 21st floor of the Hyatt in Bellevue, WA. The meeting started with a introduction by Bryan Otis, CEO, where he discussed our recent additions of Twitter, Facebook, and QR Codes. He ended his presentation by introducing our new UI that is still in development. His presentation was followed by  a presentation from Darin Hanson, Customer Support Representative, where he highlighted the success that schools across the nation are having with Tandem.

Tandem for Schools Social Hour

The event ended with attendees discussing their favorite online school calendar!

Intand will be hosting a very special event for current customers following the WASWUG conference on March 7^th. Learn about recent updates and hear success stories from other Tandem users while enjoying drinks and appetizers at Daniel’s Broiler. This event is free to Tandem users and you are encouraged to invite other guests who may be interested in Tandem for Schools. Contact us today to reserve your spot!

When viewing your event details within Tandem, you can now see how many people have liked that event in Facebook. A small Facebook “Like” button will now appear next to the event title. If you are interested in incorporating Tandem with your Facebook fan page, feel free to contact us and we will help you set that up.  It is a relatively quick process and does not require much of your time.

Another big day at Intand! One of our more recognizable customers has had success integrating their Tandem calendar with their Facebook page.  The integration between Tandem and Facebook is one of our newer features and we are extremely excited to see the University of Washington using this feature.

The new integration allows for a “Calendar” tab to be displayed at the top of their Facebook page.  When displayed, it shows a list of events for the upcoming week that is pulled from their Tandem calendar.  This integration also allows specific Facebook groups to be linked to a specific schedule of events within Tandem.  For example, the Men’s Basket Ball group on Facebook will be able to sync with the Men’s Basket Ball schedule within Tandem (This feature will be displayed soon).

View the integration:

UW Athletics Facebook Page

UW Tandem Calendar

Twas the time before Tandem, when all through the schools,

Conflicts were happening , and no one had the right tools.

There were tedious Excel sheets for every facility,

And hopes that someday there’d be peace and harmony.

Gyms and cafeterias were a mess people said,

While visions of optimization danced in their heads.

Facility Managers were ready and the community too,

For a solution that didn’t involve paper and voodoo.

When out on the internet there arose such a buzz,

Schools and districts everywhere sprang to see all the fuss.

When, what to their wondering eyes should appear,

But Tandem For Schools that would become oh so dear.

Happy Communication to all, and to all a headache-free Night

We are proud to announce that the University of Washington Athletic Department has selected Tandem for Schools to manage and communicate school athletic events.  The University of Washington is one of the first schools to adopt Tandem for Schools at the university level.  This announcement comes shortly after our announcement that Tandem for Schools is now available for higher education.

Tandem for Schools will serve as the online calendar for school athletic events at the University of Washington.

For more information, read the full press release.