Backbuild Calendar: Scheduling in the Backbuild Workspace

Backbuild Calendar is the calendar and scheduling app built into the Backbuild workspace. You plan your day in the view you prefer, invite guests and track their replies, set recurring events and reminders, keep separate calendars for separate parts of your life, and, when you already live in Google Calendar or an Apple or CalDAV calendar, keep those calendars in two-way sync so nothing is stranded. This page covers what Backbuild Calendar does today, how your events are stored and protected, and what it does not do yet.

Calendar, on Every Plan

Calendar is included on every Backbuild plan, including Free, the same way Mail, Docs, Sheets, and Contacts are. There is no separate calendar subscription and no add-on. Current plan allowances are listed on the pricing page. Because it lives inside the workspace, an event, a document, and a message all share one identity and one set of roles, and the people you schedule with are the same contacts you email.

Views for the Way You Plan

Backbuild Calendar renders your schedule in the view that fits the task. Day and Week give you a time grid with events laid out by hour, Month gives you the familiar wall-calendar grid, Year gives you the whole span at a glance, Schedule gives you an agenda list of what is coming, and a custom multi-day view lets you set the number of days you want to see at once. You move forward and back through time, jump to today, and click any slot to start a new event.

Day, Week, Month, Year, and Schedule views, plus a custom multi-day view.
A mini-month navigator for jumping to any date quickly.
Drag to move or resize an event, and click a slot to create one.

Events, Guests, and Replies

An event carries everything you expect: a title, a time or an all-day span, a location, a description, a color, and a calendar it belongs to. You add guests by email, choose whether they may invite others, edit the event, or see the guest list, and each guest gets an email invitation with a standard calendar attachment so it lands correctly in whatever calendar they use. Guests reply yes, no, or maybe, and their responses show on the event.

Guests and invitations: add attendees, send standards-based email invites, and track yes, no, and maybe replies.
Guest permissions: control whether guests can invite others, modify the event, or see who else is invited.
All-day and timed events, with a location, description, color, and reminders.
A conferencing link field that carries a join URL onto the invite so a meeting link travels with the event.

Recurring Events

Backbuild Calendar supports recurring events with the standard recurrence rules, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and the common patterns in between. When you edit a recurring event, it asks the question every calendar user knows: apply the change to this event only, to this and all following events, or to the whole series. Individual occurrences can be moved or changed without breaking the rest of the series.

Reminders and Notifications

Every event can carry its own reminders, set as a number of minutes, hours, or days before it starts, and a calendar can define default reminders that new events inherit. Reminders fire as notifications so a meeting does not slip past you.

Multiple Calendars and Sharing

You keep as many calendars as you need, work, personal, a project, a team, each with its own color, and turn them on and off in the view. Sharing is built on granular access: a person can be given the ability to see only that you are busy, to see full event details, to make changes, or to manage the calendar. Calendars shared to you appear under Other calendars, ready to overlay and recolor for your own view. The full model, and which sharing actions are available in the app today versus through the API, is in Calendars, Sharing, and Find a Time.

Many calendars, each with its own color and visibility toggle.
Four access tiers: free-busy only, see details, make changes, or manage.
Follow shared calendars: calendars shared to you appear under Other calendars to overlay and read.

Find a Time and Free-Busy

When you are scheduling across people, Backbuild Calendar shows a free-busy grid so you can find a slot that works for everyone without seeing the private details of their events. The same free-busy engine powers scheduling across your organization's members, returning only busy or free, never the contents of a private event you are not allowed to see.

Time Zones and a World Clock

You set your primary time zone, and you can display a secondary time zone down the side of the day and week grids, so a meeting reads correctly in both your zone and a colleague's. The world-clock gutter can carry more than one additional zone for teams that span the globe.

Two-Way Sync with Google Calendar and CalDAV

This is where Backbuild Calendar earns its place for people who already have a calendar elsewhere. You connect a Google account through a standard consent flow, or connect a CalDAV server with its address and credentials, and Backbuild Calendar keeps the connected calendar in two-way sync: events created or changed on either side flow to the other, with loop protection so a change is not echoed back and forth, and conflict handling when both sides change the same event. You do not have to abandon the calendar your colleagues invite you on to adopt Backbuild Calendar; you can run both, in step, and consolidate on your own schedule.

Google Calendar connects through a standard OAuth consent flow.
CalDAV servers, which is how Apple iCloud Calendar and most self-hosted calendars are reached, connect with a server address and credentials.
Microsoft 365 sync is built on the same engine and its connector is rolling out; it is not connectable yet.
Two-way sync with conflict handling and loop protection, so both calendars stay in step.
Per-calendar direction: a connected calendar can run two-way, pull-only, or push-only.

Your Schedule Is Portable

Your calendar is yours to move. When you keep an external calendar in two-way sync, your events also live in your connected Google or Apple or CalDAV account, so they are never trapped in one place, and the whole calendar is readable through the Backbuild REST API. Guest invitations are sent as standards-based email with a calendar attachment, so they land correctly in whatever calendar the recipient uses.

A Live, Multi-Device Calendar

Your calendar is a single live object shared by every device you sign in from. An event created on your laptop appears on your other open sessions in real time, so your devices never disagree about your day. You use Backbuild Calendar through the Backbuild web app and the Backbuild desktop app for Windows and macOS.

How Your Events Are Stored and Protected

Event visibility is server-authoritative. When you look at a calendar you have only free-busy access to, the server sends back plain busy blocks, and the screen renders exactly that, it never receives and then hides the private details, so there is nothing on the client to reconstruct. Every read and write is authorized against your identity and your organization's roles, and changes are recorded in an append-only audit trail. Data is encrypted in transit over TLS and at rest, and each organization's calendars are isolated from every other organization's. Role-based access control and audit logging are on every plan, including Free.

What Backbuild Calendar Does Not Do Yet

Being straight about the edges matters. A few capabilities are on the roadmap or absent today, and you should weigh them before you switch:

Appointment booking pages (a public page where people book a slot with you) are on the roadmap and marked as coming soon on the pricing page.
Extra event types beyond a standard event, a task, an out-of-office block, focus time, a working-location entry, and an appointment schedule, are coming soon.
Native video meetings are on the roadmap: an event can carry a video meeting join link today, but Backbuild's own secure meeting product is marked as coming soon.
A subscribable calendar feed (a read-only URL another app follows) is not usable yet; to keep another app in step today, use two-way sync.
Native mobile apps are built and their store distribution is still rolling out, so today you use Backbuild Calendar through the web app and the Windows and macOS desktop app, and reach it on your phone through two-way sync with your phone's calendar.
Offline access is not available today; Backbuild Calendar needs a connection.
Automatic event creation from email (adding a flight or reservation to your calendar from a message automatically) is not a feature today.

Where Backbuild Calendar Fits

Backbuild Calendar is the right choice when you want a full-featured calendar, recurring events, guests and replies, reminders, multiple calendars and sharing, find-a-time, and world-clock time zones, that lives in the same workspace as your mail, contacts, documents, and sheets, is free on every plan, and can keep your existing Google, Apple, or CalDAV calendar in two-way sync while you consolidate. It is not the right choice today when your hard requirement is a public appointment booking page, a native video meeting product, a store-installed mobile app, or offline access.

For step-by-step guides, start with the Backbuild Calendar documentation: the views and event editor, recurring events, guests, and reminders, calendars, sharing, and find a time, settings and time zones, and external sync.