Tips & Helpful Advice

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Tips ☝️ (How we get the most out of AlignMe)

When travelling, we use icons for modes of travel. E.g. a flight diary entry always starts with ✈️ emoji. In AlignMe, simply type ✈️ in the search field to see all of your flights in a simple list

Also, if you type your flight number into the notes section, simply touch on the flight number on the day to get flight information

In Contacts, other than Birthdays and Anniversaries, we have a custom events set as RIP to commemorate the date of family and friends who have since passed away. This is then displayed in AlignMe, and can also be filtered to a list using Focus

When setting up a new Contact/Birthday, you don't need to have anything in a phone Contact except for a name and a Day + Month. You don't need a phone number, an email, or even a year.

So you can set a birthday for your new-born, great-great grandparents, dog, cat, goldfish - whatever!

Experiment with lots of new Calendars! Shared, subscribed (e.g. holidays), private, business - AlignMe will keep them all together or you can get the best out of Select and Focus views. You can also have Multiple Reminders Lists (set new Calendar/Reminders lists up in Apple Calendars and Reminders)

If you email/message someone from the Contact detail page (the one with all the Star sign info) on their Birthday, there are a few emoji's and a simple message pre-populated for all you busy people out there.

From your iOS device Home Screen, you can long-press the AlignMe icon and get a fast shortut to create new events or jump to Birthdays

Google Integration

Setting up non-Apple Calendars (Google and Outlook) to AlignMe

To add your Calendars/Reminders/Tasks into AlignMe (or any iOS App), simply add it to the iOS world in Settings. You can still use your current way of accessing your Calendars, as this runs in sync/in parallel. (Screenshots below iOS 14)

Settings/Calendar

iPhone or iPad settings

Accounts

Show all current accounts

Add Account

Add new account

Choose your account

Have your password ready and follow login instructions

Enable

Choose what entities you want to sync

Run AlignMe and SELECT!

Choose Select, select your entities, your Calendars/Tasks should now be visible

Google Shared Calendars: How to integrate into AlignMe?

One of our AlignMe users not only raised this question, but went off and found the answer!, which we will share here (thank-you Dave Stanley!)

If you have a GMail account, and someone has shared a GMail calender to you, you can bring the shared calendar as well as your personal Gmail calendar/account into AlignMe.

Make sure you are signed into the your correct Google account on your iOS device before you click this link.

Shared Google Calendars Setup

After setup/selection, return to your iPhone/iPad iOS Calendar app and tap Calendars at the bottom. Check the ones you want to see, and press done. Wait a few minutes and your Google Shared Calendars will start to sync to your iOS Calendar

From there, launch and select your shared Calendar

Discovered thanks to...

Scott Hanselman Blog

Settings

Global Display Settings

Follow System Theme

ON: Disables Custom Themes and follows your device's Light/Dark mode setting

OFF: Select custom themes above

Multi-Day Events

ON: Event is displayed every day➠ e.g. if the start and end date are 2 weeks apart, 14 daily events are displayed

OFF: Two events displayed Start day➠ end day➠🏁

Persistent Reminders

ON: Past UNCHECKED Reminders are moved to 🚩today, i.e. the Reminder will not go away until it is checked

OFF: Past UNCHECKED Reminders stay on their original date, i.e. the Reminder will be ignored and drift into the past

Completed Reminders

ON: Show Completed Reminders. You can uncheck a Completed Reminder in this mode

OFF: Completed Reminders are hidden from view

Fetch Range

Why have Fetch Range?

🐇 <---------> 🐢

AlignMe "grabs" an entire range of data into one object to allow the flexibility to sort and group items the way it does.

Getting snappy performance

The settings above affect the speed when switching views. If you have a very large number of calendars and entries, try speeding up by:-

Turning off "show completed Reminders"
Reducing the fetch range (default is -1 week, + 1 year)
Avoid using Day View. ( has to work hard to sort/group all the days)

Depending on the amount of Calendars/Data you are displaying, you probably won't even notice a delay. Also, performance will be improved in future updates

...and those iPhones/iPads are only getting faster!)

Wizards

Wizards give you a way to fast-switch between your two favourite views. These are saved, and toggled in your main view using the wand

These are two custom displays that you can fast-switch between on the main AlignMe view using the "Wizard" icon. Each wizard view contains;-

DWM Day Week or Month view

Fri Day Of Week

02 Day of Month

4:15 Time Of Day

0 Countdown

Bold Title Bold font for title

Multi-Line Title restricted to One line and cut-off, or Multi line with complete title contents

Calendar Source of data displayed on right (Calendar/Reminder/Birthday list)

Detail All information available (except notes), e.g. Location details, days to go (multi-day events) etc.

Image Display photo of Contact, or Anniversary image

Line Row Separator line

Views

Main AlignMe View

Select 👉

Display Settings

D-W-M

Group by Day, Week, or Month

Contacts

View Contacts editor, or display AlignMe's unique and (may we say fabulous) Birthdays Countdown view

Display Icons & Symbols ➡︎🏁⏰

► Top bar icons

Refresh Carries out a full fetch, then jumps to today.

Menu Access to all settings/features.

Calendar Toggle's graphic month view on/off (only in Month Display Mode).

(Display Mode)

Wizard View Fast-switch between your two custom views. (Set up in "Other Settings")

New Item New Calendar event, Reminder event, or Contact

► Row Symbols

Multi-day event ➠

Multi-day event end ➠ 🏁

Repeating event⇅

Birthday Event 🎂

Note 🗒

Overdue Reminder 🚩

Reminder alarm set (specific time) ⏰

Reminder High Priority event 🔴

Reminder Medium Priority event 🟠

Reminder Low Priority event 🟢

Reminder No Priority event ⚫️

Contacts/Birthday icons

Left to Right....

Sort by First Name/Last Name toggle

Display Contacts/Birthdays toggle

Contacts/Birthdays header title

+ Add new contact

Done

Month Calendar View 📅

Scroll AlignMe list to move the Month View display

Bottom label displays current event (top row of AlignMe List)

Top arrows jump forward/back a month

Heat map Shade of red highlights number of events that day.

Touch date to jump to a date in AlignMe display.

Long-press date to add a new item on that date.

Swipe to Focus View 🔦

A fast & snappy way to see one Calendar list only. Temporary until Refesh button clicked (top left)

All Items

Choose a row, swipe right-to-left

Swipe to Focus

Touch Focus

Only Selected Calendar shown

You can change Day/Week/Month/Compressed views. Touch Refresh (top left button) to return to normal Merged views.

Swipe to hide View 🙈

This HIDES the selected Calendar list, until Refesh button clicked (top left)

Future updates on the To-Do list

Watch app? iPhone widget? These and other suggestions are on the horizon. But it may take a (long) while. Simply because we just don't have the time or resource to do it right now. We have eight fairly sophisticated Apps all needing maintenance and each app having many requests for more features ...but we are not a big organisation - just a retired couple who lead very active lives outside of coding!

If you want features that are not yet available in Align Me, perhaps look at other apps on the market for now to satisfy your needs. Enjoy Align Me for what it is, not what it isn't. We will hopefully suprise you one day with some added features!

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