Calendar & external tasks

Last reviewed: 2026-07-26

Plainva can connect your existing calendar and task accounts — CalDAV (Nextcloud, Fastmail, mailbox.org …), Google (Calendar + Tasks) and Microsoft (Outlook calendar + To Do) — and work with them in both directions. Your notes stay the center: events can become meeting notes, and external task lists mirror into your standard task database as ordinary notes.

Experimental. The calendar talks to live external accounts (CalDAV, Google, Microsoft) that can’t be exercised in Plainva’s automated tests. It works and is used daily, but treat it as a preview: keep a backup, and please report anything that looks off.

Connecting an account

Open Settings → your vault → Cloud accounts → Connect account…, pick a provider and tick Calendar & tasks in the services step:

• Nextcloud / CalDAV: server address, user name and an app password (in Nextcloud: Settings → Security → Devices & sessions). No registration, no keys — for Nextcloud, Plainva derives the CalDAV address from the server address itself (for other CalDAV servers use the WebDAV / CalDAV tile or Advanced: set endpoints individually).
• Apple iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, Zoho, Fastmail, mailbox.org, Yandex, Mail.ru: dedicated tiles with the calendar addresses already filled in — email address plus an app password is enough, no server field (for Apple the app password is mandatory; the assistant links the provider’s guide). Note: Yahoo itself flags its CalDAV service as unreliable — if it acts up, it is not Plainva.
• Google: needs your own OAuth client ID (the same BYO model as the Google Drive sync — see the Drive guide). In your Google Cloud project, additionally enable the Google Calendar API and Google Tasks API and add their scopes to the consent screen. The browser opens for consent; connecting validates the account before anything is saved.
• Microsoft: just click Sign in with Microsoft… and confirm in the browser — no setup needed. One Microsoft account can also carry Files (OneDrive) and Email in the same pass.

The assistant shows a per-service status (“connected — n calendars found”). You then manage the calendars (checked ones appear in the calendar tab) and the task lists (deliberately unchecked by default — ticking one starts the task sync described below) in the Calendar area; the Meetings folder (where meeting notes are created) and the Default calendar live there too. Passwords and tokens live in your operating system’s keychain.

Every device signs in for itself. If you use settings sync, the account details travel with you, but the sign-in never does — it deliberately stays on the device. An account picked up that way appears in the list on the other device but is not signed in there yet; in the mobile app it then carries a sign in marker and the calendar explains it instead of staying empty. Connecting once is enough.

The calendar tab

Open it from the left action rail (calendar icon) or the command palette (Open calendar). Five views are available via the switch in the header: Day, 3 days and Week show a time grid with an hour gutter on the left; events sit as blocks at their start time, their height is the duration, overlapping events sit side by side, and a red line marks “now”. All-day events and (with the task overlay on) due tasks sit in the strip above the grid. Month shows the month grid (one colored dot per calendar) plus a single-day time grid for the selected day on the right. Agenda lists the upcoming weeks grouped by day. Today jumps back; the arrows page by the current period (a day, three days, a week or a month). The first day of the week follows the Week starts on setting (Settings → App → Appearance: Monday, Saturday or Sunday) — it also applies to the sidebar calendar. The view refreshes automatically every few minutes; the refresh button forces it. Events that have already ended read dimmer (like Google Calendar), so today’s remaining agenda stands out.

• Create an event: clicking an empty slot in the time grid opens a small quick-create popover (title, time, calendar, location) — Save creates it right away, More options opens the full event dialog. Dragging across the grid sets the duration. The + in the header opens the full dialog: title, calendar, date/time or an all-day range, location, a description (a formatting editor — Markdown, ”/” for commands; formatted descriptions from Google/Outlook read as text rather than raw HTML code, and a formatted description is sent formatted too), a color, attendees, and an optional Outlook-style repeat. The color overrides the calendar’s color for that single event (no effect on Microsoft accounts — Outlook has no per-event colors).
• Attendees: type an email address and press Enter (or comma) to add it as a chip; the × removes one. The repeat is set right next to the date/time — pick a frequency, an interval, the weekdays (weekly), and how it ends (never / on a date / after N occurrences); you can also add or change the recurrence of an existing event.
• Edit / delete: clicking an event in the time grid opens the dialog prefilled with its values and with Meeting note and Delete actions. Changes are written to the provider with a safety check: if the event changed remotely in the meantime, Plainva refreshes instead of overwriting. For a single event the dialog also offers a calendar picker — pick a different calendar and the event is moved there (created in the target, deleted from the source; it gets a new provider id).
• Move / resize: you can drag an event straight in the time grid — dragging the body reschedules it (across to another day in the week/3-day view too), dragging its bottom edge changes its duration. The new time is written to the provider right away (recurring events stay editable only via the dialog for now).
• RSVP & responses: when you were invited to an event, the dialog lets you Accept, mark Tentative or Decline — Plainva sends your response through the provider (Google/Microsoft/CalDAV). The attendee list shows who accepted or declined (the back-channel).
• Email invitations: when an event has attendees, tick Notify attendees by email. On Google, Plainva then asks Google to send its native invitation (the same event, so the recipient’s replies sync back to your event); Microsoft notifies attendees automatically. For CalDAV — or to send a copy from your own mailbox — the calendar’s Send by email action opens the mail composer with a standards-compliant iCalendar invitation attached, so Gmail and other clients show it as an event with Yes/Maybe/No.
• Block in other calendars: the copy action on an event (or the Block in other calendars button in its dialog) mirrors it into one or more of your other writable calendars — either as an opaque Busy placeholder or with details (Notion-Calendar style). A recurring event is mirrored with its recurrence, so the block repeats too.
• Recurring events carry a repeat badge. Editing or deleting an instance asks “Only this event” (creates an exception / skips just that occurrence) or “All events” (changes the whole series). Plainva never rewrites an existing recurrence rule.
• Show tasks (next to the refresh button, when a standard task database is set): overlays the due-dated entries of your standard task database onto the time-grid strip and the month grid; completed tasks appear struck through. Off by default, the choice is remembered per device.

Event → meeting note

The note icon on any event creates (or re-opens) its meeting note — a normal note in your meetings folder named YYYY-MM-DD Title.md, pre-filled with the date, location and attendees, plus a small plainva.pim marker in the frontmatter that ties it to the event. Clicking the same event again always opens the same note; a note of yours that happens to share the name is never touched.

External task lists in your task database

Reminder lists (Apple Reminders over iCloud CalDAV, Nextcloud task lists) are their own collections on the server, so they appear under Task lists — never under Calendars. If a connected account shows no task lists, the section says so and offers Look again; when the lookup itself failed, the reason is shown instead and your previous selection is kept.

Tick a task list on a connected account and its tasks appear as notes in your standard task database: the title becomes the note (H1), the due date lands in the database’s date column, and completion maps to the database’s done checkbox property (the status column follows it; a database without a checkbox column uses the status convention — first option = open, last = done). The sync is two-way and field-wise:

• Edit the note (title, due, status) → the change is pushed to the provider.
• Change the task remotely → the note follows.
• If both sides changed, your local edit wins for that field; the rest follows the remote.

Two safety rules protect your data: deleting the note never deletes the remote task (it just stops syncing and is not re-imported), and a remotely deleted task never deletes your note (it simply becomes a normal note). Renaming or moving a task note is fine — the frontmatter marker keeps the link.

Current limits: tasks created as plain notes are not pushed to the provider (create them remotely or via the task database), and everything on this page is desktop-first for now.

Copies created by Block in other calendars carry a provider-specific Plainva link on Google, Microsoft and CalDAV. Calendar views show that relationship with a link icon; after a refresh, source and block are matched again instead of becoming unrelated duplicates.