Calendar guide

The first time you open the Calendar tab, KinLife will ask you to connect your Google Calendar. Click Connect Google Calendar, approve the permissions in the Google popup, and you'll land back on the calendar view with your events loaded.

Each family member connects their own Google Calendar. You'll see everyone's events overlaid in the family view, colour-coded by member.

Prefer Apple? KinLife also connects to Apple Calendar (iCloud) with the same two-way sync. Whichever provider the first adult connects locks the family to that provider, so everyone stays in sync. The walkthrough below is written for Google, but the day-to-day flow is the same on either.

If you ever want to disconnect or re-auth, head to Settings.

KinLife classifies every calendar entry into one of three buckets. Each has different defaults and shows up differently in the calendar view.

• Events: standard events with a time, location, and participants (soccer practice, meetings, dinners). Most things are this.
• Reminders: annually-repeating significant dates (birthdays, anniversaries). KinLife auto-sets yearly recurrence, so you only enter each one once.
• Ongoing: full-day info periods that span multiple days (school holidays, term breaks, a sports season). Always all-day, no start time, paired with an end date.

Click Create event in the top-right of the calendar. Fill in a title, date, start time, and duration. Pick a category (School, Home, Work, or Other) and tag which family members are involved.

The Notesfield is free-text that lands inside the event's description in Google Calendar, useful for instructions, meeting agendas, or anything else you'd normally type in the GCal description field.

External guests (not in your family) go in the Guestsbox as comma-separated emails. They'll receive a standard Google Calendar invite.

Every event has two member lists:

• Participants: people who are actually attending. The event shows up on their calendar as theirs. At least one participant is required.
• Aware : people who should know about the event but aren't going. For example: mum should know about dad's 7am golf so she doesn't double-book breakfast. The event shows up dimmer on their calendar view.

Any note from Notes & Listscan be attached to an event. The link shows up in both places: the event's detail dialog (clickable, jumps to the note) and the event's Google Calendar description (as a deep-link URL). Good for packing lists, gift ideas, meeting agendas, recipes.

To attach: open the event form, pick the note in the Linked notes selector. To detach, remove it the same way.

Events that already exist in Google Calendar (ones you created directly in GCal, invites you accepted, Calendly meetings) show up in the KinLife calendar as plain events. To add KinLife's extra metadata (category, family participants, notes, linked lists), click the event, then click Manage in KinLife.

The dialog that opens shows a clear banner explaining what will change:

• KinLife appends [KinLife] to the event's title.
• The description is rewritten into KinLife's structured format (category, participants, your notes, linked lists, and a deep-link back to KinLife).
• The original event date, time, location, and attendees are kept as-is.

If the original event was organised by another family member, the banner tells you so. KinLife pushes the changes as them (with your family's permission), which keeps every attendee's calendar in sync. If it was organised by someone outside your family (Calendly, a colleague), the changes only show up on your copy. The organiser and other attendees keep seeing the original.

When someone invites you to an event via Google Calendar, the event detail dialog in KinLife shows Yes, Maybe, Nobuttons at the bottom. The currently-selected answer is highlighted. Click a different one to change your response. Your RSVP is pushed to Google Calendar immediately, and the organiser gets notified the same way they would if you'd responded from Google Calendar directly.

RSVP controls are hidden on events you organised yourself (there's nothing to respond to on your own event).

The rule: Google Calendar is the source of truth. KinLife reads from and writes to it; the KinLife database only stores metadata KinLife owns (category, classification, participants, linked notes, structured-description layer).

• Create in KinLife: creates the event in Google Calendar, plus a copy on each tagged family member's calendar (so it shows up on their calendar too).
• Edit in KinLife: only the fields you actually changed are pushed to Google Calendar. Any hand-edits you made directly in GCal between loads are preserved.
• Edit in Google Calendar directly: on the next calendar refresh in KinLife, the updated title / time / description flows back in. You can edit in either place.
• Delete in KinLife: removes the KinLife-created GCal events and all fan-out copies. For events KinLife doesn't own (invites you converted), "delete" only removes the KinLife tracking layer. The original GCal event is left untouched, because KinLife didn't create it.

Above the calendar grid you'll find filters for family member, category, and event type. Use them to declutter the view: "just Alice's school events", "everything but reminders", etc. Filter selections are persisted locally, so they stick across reloads.

The Delete button in the event detail dialog has slightly different semantics depending on who owns the event:

• KinLife-created event(you or a family member created it here): deletes the event from Google Calendar and every tagged member's calendar. Same as deleting the event in Google Calendar directly.
• Invited event you're tracking in KinLife (you clicked "Manage in KinLife" on someone else's invite): deletes only the KinLife tracking layer. The original Google Calendar event stays on your calendar and everyone else's. If you want to decline or remove yourself from the event, do it from Google Calendar directly.