I'm looking for a Calender either as an standalone program or as an Online Service that automatically schedules future dates based on what is being currently planned.
It's a bit hard to explain so I'll just use an example.

I work in a cell culture lab that has many different experiments but all these experiments follows schedules.
If I begin a cell culture today, day 0, then on days 2, 4, and 6 there are tasks that we have to complete on those days. It's like cause and effect. The fact that I begin a Day 0 culture means that I have work on Days 2, 4, and 6 whether it is a weekend or not.
Some experiments have work on Days 1, and 6- others on days 3 and 6 and others only on day 6.
It is such a hassle with all the experiments we have to run to manually count and write day by day on a calender.

So I want a program that, based on Day 0 and the identity of which experiment I am running, plan out the remainder of the days.

 

I don't think any calendar program will do that for you. But I think you could use a spreadsheet like Excel to calculate the dates and then transfer those into a normal calendar.

The date calculations in Excel could be as elaborate as you want. You could use a pull down menu list to list all the experiment types, and then the worksheet could look up from a table all of the necessary intervals.

I'm not 100% sure how to get the dates transferred from Excel into a calendar. It could be anything from copy and paste to an elaborate Visual Basic script. It just depends what you need and the program you want to use.

You could also look into project management software. It's meant for managing a portfolio of projects all running in parallel. It helps identify dead spots, avoid conflicts, allocate resources and so on.

 

I'm looking for a Calender either as an standalone program or as an Online Service that automatically schedules future dates based on what is being currently planned.

It is such a hassle with all the experiments we have to run to manually count and write day by day on a calender.

So I want a program that, based on Day 0 and the identity of which experiment I am running, plan out the remainder of the days.

Sounds like project management software is what you really need. It's been quite a while since I had to live my life according to a Gantt chart, so I don't know what's current. Google gantt chart and PERT chart, and see if that's what you need.

 

I'm divided on project management software. If you're not already a whiz with Excel, it probably is a smart way to go. If you live and breath Excel, like I did for decades, it would be easier for me to bang out a custom solution in Excel than to climb another learning curve. On the other hand, being the local expert in project management software would make you a rarer asset than yet another spreadsheet jockey.

 

I would not be surprised if you could find an app to suit your very specific needs.

 

Hello,

Have a look at this wiki page for project planning softwares:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software

Bertus