Sharing Calendars: What Can My Co-Parent See?

Scheduling your family’s many activities and appointments can often be an overwhelming process, which can be complicated even further when you are co-parenting. Being on the same page with your co-parent about your children’s schedule is critical to keeping your family’s life on track and as stress-free as possible, making shared calendars a huge asset for many divorced or separated parents.

OurFamilyWizard has been developing a specialised calendar for co-parents for the past 15 years. Tools on the OurFamilyWizard calendar are specifically created for situations co-parents encounter frequently,  such as parenting time modifications, and that other generic calendar tools cannot adequately address. Whether you’re currently utilising OurFamilyWizard's calendar for your family’s scheduling needs or you are simply interested in how these tools work, here are a few points to know about the tools on the OurFamilyWizard calendar.

Viewing the OurFamilyWizard Calendar

Private versus Public Entries

As a parent, you’re not only juggling your child’s many activities but your own as well. Personal doctor’s appointments, work trips, and social events need to be accounted for when you make or respond to suggested changes to your parenting schedule. Though you need to see that information side-by-side with your child’s schedule, you may not necessarily need or want your co-parent to have access to that same information.

The OurFamilyWizard calendar allows parents to keep private event entries, visible only to the parent who created the entry, displayed alongside their public parenting calendar. This eliminates the need to consult an external calendar application to make sure a business trip won’t interfere with trading weekends or flip through your planner to determine if you’re available to pick-up your child from a last-minute playdate or rain-delayed soccer match. You’ll have access to all of the necessary details in your schedule without sacrificing any level of privacy.

Exporting Events + Granting Viewing Access

As your family grows, it’s possible that more people beyond you and your co-parent will need to be kept apprised of your children's schedules. With OurFamilyWizard, parents are able to grant viewing rights to the calendar to third parties like step-parents, grandparents, nannies, and other extended family members and caregivers. Parents also have the additional sharing option of exporting a .ics file for anyone to import into their own external calendar. Creating the schedule is the sole responsibility of the co-parents, however, as third parties cannot create, edit, or remove any schedule information in the calendar.

Creating Entries

When it comes to creating new entries in the OurFamilyWizard calendar, both parent accounts are created equal. Regardless of which parent signs up for OurFamilyWizard first, both parents have the same access and abilities to post entries on the website and app. Parents are able to create new events to share details about school activities, medical appointments, and more, all while coordinating pick-up and drop-off responsibilities. They’re also able to colour-code the days of the calendar to reflect where their children will be spending each night, allowing them to verify that information with a single glance at their schedule.

Excluding journals, entries into the calendar must be made in advance. Parenting schedules, events, and trade requests cannot be backdated, preventing either parent from creating the semblance of advanced notice or communication where there actually was none. If you weren’t notified of an event via the calendar beforehand, the OurFamilyWizard calendar prevents users from attempting to show otherwise.

Updating and Removing Entries

Events, Trade Requests, and Journal Entries

When a parent creates an event, journal entry, or schedule change request, that entry can only be edited or removed by the original creator. Additionally, if events are ever updated or removed from the system, OurFamilyWizard will chronicle the history of the entry and send that information to the parents, ensuring that you will always have an accurate record of any changes or deletions. Not only will you be able to see the history of the event details, you’ll also have specific date and time stamps for every update that has been made, giving you a clear log of activity for each calendar entry.

OurFamilyWizard understands that last minute changes happen, events are canceled, and plans change, which is why the creator of an event can make edits before an event has begun. However, once an event has started or has passed, the entry remains on the calendar and can be neither changed nor removed. However, a journal entry can be created to note details about any last minute changes regarding events.

Parenting Schedules and Holidays

Both parents have the ability to create and edit the parenting and holiday schedules. Creating repeating parenting schedules within the OurFamilyWizard calendar is an easy process, developed with simplicity in mind. Parents can simply input their base schedule and have the calendar repeat it for as long as it’s needed. When scheduling holidays, parents also need not worry about incorporating singular changes into their otherwise consistent schedule. Instead, creating a holiday entry simply overrides the normal, repeating parenting schedule for the length of time denoted.

A calendar made specifically with co-parenting challenges in mind will have very different capabilities than the typical scheduling app. The calendar on OurFamilyWizard will ensure the integrity of the information parents share with each other, greatly lessening conflict that may arise from confusion around scheduling. Sign up for OurFamilyWizard today and see how our tools can begin to help your family immediately.