We are excited to announce that for the 2nd year in a row, Tandem has been chosen by District Administration as a Top 100 Product!

Hi there! I know you’ve seen me around these past 5 years, but I don’t know that we’ve had a chance to be properly introduced. And, with so many new exciting things coming up for me, I thought it would be smart to reach out, say hello and cover a few things.

First, I want to compliment your willingness to step into your role almost 2000 years ago. It must seem like yesterday. When humans first discovered that they could contextualize time by breaking things down by years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds, their brains were naturally overwhelmed at managing all the things they were in charge of organizing in their own heads. They needed a worthy counterpart to help them stay on track. This is where you came in.

And, without complaint, you have served them all well. Extremely well, in fact. You’re always on hand and can be easily portable. Events can be erased and repositioned; and you worked into something they already know and have: pencil and paper.

For centuries this has worked, and worked well. Paper based planning and scheduling has come to be the norm once someone has too much in their head. And, they have worked equally as well for schools, universities, businesses and organizations.

But, times have changed.

People are busier now.
People desire to be more connected.
People want digital backups.
People now collaborate with others around the world via the internet.
People carry mobile devices that have very functional calendars on them.
People want a window into how they are managing resources, rooms and organizations.
People want to know they are organized.
People want technology to empower them to do more with less.
People want technology to simplify their lives.

While out of no fault of your own, people have outgrown you, in need of something faster, more connected; frictionless. Something that shows them how rooms, people, teams and groups are being scheduled. A system that helps them collaborate together when they are not in the same room.

You have to admit, they brought this on themselves. Many of them long for the simpler life they once had. The time has come again where people must evolve from the new pressures of the current state of scheduling. Their situation in history demands it.

So this is where I come in.  A new scheduling tool for where schools and universities are at today. A connected scheduling tool using the internet. A online tool that allocates facilities to teams or groups of people. A tool that updates a personal digital calendar automatically. A tool that posts a schedule to the social networks that are most used. A tool that is simple to use. A tool that, sadly for you, isn’t paper and pencil.

To be frank, people have known about your limitations for a while now. And, many people will continue to use paper and pencil for their own personal calendar, to keep them organized. They find comfort in its simplicity. But people who schedule schools and universities deserve better. They demand better. And today, they have an option.

Please don’t take this personally. I aspire to be as relevant as you’ve been all these years. So, take some “time off”. Relax. Schedule a cocktail or two. You deserve it. Focus on staying relevant in the personal digital calendar market (just beware that the names like Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar will come up often. I’ve seen them, and they are really, really nice).

As for scheduling schools and universities, just realize that from now on, I got this.

Your digital friend,

Tandem.

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.

At Tandem, we want your organization to have one online school calendar for ALL events. To accomplish this goal, there is a little known feature of the Tandem calendar that allows you to post your organization’s menu to your favorite online school calendar. To do this, follow these simple instructions:

1. Select the Menu Tab

2. Select “Add” from Menu view.

3. Enter the necessary information. If you do not have any menu types yet, enter them now.

Now, your menu is available and ready to be enjoyed!

The Tandem Calendar is a very powerful tool for an organization of any size. That is why we are not surprised to see the recent interest from colleges and universities in the Tandem event calendar. We are glad to see that Salem State, University of Washington, University of Alabama, and Ohio Northern University are all now using their Tandem calendar. Here are just a few reasons community colleges and universities are using Tandem:

Community Colleges: Needing a way to rent unused facilities to community groups, community colleges often benefit from the ability to place ALL school events in one place online. With this ability, community colleges can rent facilities with confidence knowing that the facility is not being used by any other group at that time. Tandem simplifies the process further by allowing community groups to pay online using a credit card.

Universities: With a large amount of events occurring in just each department, universities need an easy way to communicate events across all departments. With the Tandem calendar, we often see music or athletic departments benefit the most from its use. These departments benefit greatly from the ability to submit internal and external event requests, create customizable approval systems, and the ability to make certain events private.

Are you interested in learning more about the great features within the Tandem Calendar? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay abreast of all the great features within Tandem and ways you can earn rewards for you and your school.

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When you first begun to use Tandem, you are likely going to want to transfer old events from your previous system into Tandem. You can easily do this using our import events feature built within Tandem. To begin, you will need to export your events from your previous system into a CSV file. This is a very common file as it is a very simple Excel file. After you have this file, we recommend you download the import template that we provide to you within Tandem.

CONFIG>IMPORT EVENTS>EXAMPLE FILE

The example file that you have now downloaded includes all of the possible fields for an event within Tandem. The ones that are necessary are properly marked and the ones that are optional are also available. At this point, you will want to modify the events you exported from your previous system to have the same headers (titles) as the example file has.

Once this is done, you are able to import your modified events into Tandem. The system will then automatically alert you to any errors.

Contact us at 866-685-3449 or at support@intand.com if you need any help.

The Tandem Facebook Application received an update today that allows it to utilize the Facebook RSVP system. With this update, users are now able to RSVP for events within the Tandem Facebook App. For schools and universities, thsi gives them the ability to create events in Tandem and easily be able to track attendees via the Dashboard in Tandem. Just another great feature we are giving are user to help grow strong communities!

There are many alternatives for integrating your Tandem for School Calendar with your school website. Today, we would like to highlight how you can use the embed feature to place your Tandem calendar within your existing website. This option allows users to stay on your website while viewing the calendar as well maintain the look of your website when viewing your online school calendar. Here is a step-by-step guide:

1. Log into your calendar and select “Configuration” on the top right.

2. On the Configuration page select “Add to a Website”

3. Here you will find many different ways to integrate your online school calendar with your website. Scroll down to Iframe and copy the code that is in the box. This code is specifically for your calendar and is automatically provided by the Tandem calendar.

4. Next, you will need to paste the code you copied in the previous step into your website. How you manage your website will determine how easy this step is for you. In this case, I am using Wordpress, so it is fairly easy.

5. You are now finished! If you need help with this process, feel free to contact us. In the meantime, view how these other customers have embed their school calendar into their website:

Kings Local, Kings Mill, OH: http://www.kingslocal.net/sites/kings/calendar/Pages/kec.aspx

Valley Catholic School, Beaverton, OR: http://valleycatholic.org/high-school/athletics/calendar.php

Concordia Lutheran High School, Fort Wayne, IN: http://www.clhscadets.com/index.php?option=com_jevents&view=month&task=month.calendar&Itemid=147

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.