Managing dates and time intervals is essential for applications in areas such as service bookings, event planning, corporate meetings, and consultations. Inaccurate or rigid tools can significantly complicate workflows for both developers and end users. This inevitably affects the quality of the user experience and may cast a shadow on the application’s reputation in the market. Recognizing the importance of this challenge, our team has invested considerable effort into implementing everything necessary for the convenient configuration and management of one of the core elements of service applications - working with dates and time.In this article, we’ll explore the platform’s capabilities and explain how OneEntry helps solve these tasks.
Example of how dates are configured ⬆️
🛠️ OneEntry Calendar Capabilities
At the core of OneEntry’s calendar logic is a flexible attribute called “Time Interval,” specifically designed for precise and convenient management of time structures. It allows users to easily configure time slots, create recurring events, and define exceptions. The system operates based on the UTC (Greenwich) time zone, ensuring accuracy when working with international users across various time zones.
Example of how time intervals are configured ⬆️
🗓️ Flexible Configuration of Dates and Time Intervals
OneEntry offers advanced tools for configuring and managing dates and time intervals:
- Selecting individual dates: You can select specific dates for events or bookings and quickly mark them on the calendar.
- Setting date ranges: Define time periods for events by specifying start and end dates. For example, you can highlight a week for a special promotion or vacation period.
- Recurring dates: Easily configure automatic repetition of events with a chosen frequency: daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. This is ideal for recurring meetings or class schedules.
Configuring time slots within a day:
Defining individual time slots: Specify detailed intervals with minute precision, such as 10:00–10:50 or 13:00–13:50.
Grouping and managing multiple slots: Slots can be grouped and managed through a single control panel, allowing quick schedule adjustments based on current needs and priorities.
Display in application interfaces: All configured intervals are clearly displayed in the client-facing application, providing users with a convenient way to book services or appointments, particularly valuable for beauty salons, medical centers, and other service-based businesses.
🚩 Exceptions — Advanced Calendar Configuration
One of the most important advantages of the OneEntry calendar is its powerful and flexible exception management system. The ability to define exceptions greatly simplifies calendar management, making it easy to adapt schedules to changing conditions.
Why are exceptions important?
Exceptions are essential for accurate schedule management, especially when events repeat regularly. There are often situations when a standard schedule needs to be modified due to holidays, days off, unforeseen circumstances, or personal working preferences.
Exception configuration options:
-Excluding entire days from the schedule: Easily remove full days from the calendar, such as public holidays or planned breaks.
-Excluding specific time intervals within a day: Exclude individual time slots from a regular schedule. For example: lunch breaks, urgent tasks, or one-off meetings, that don’t fit into the standard structure.
Practical use of exceptions:
-For weekends and public holidays, exceptions allow these dates to be automatically excluded from work schedules and booking calendars.
-When adjusting working hours (e.g., shortening the workday), exceptions make it easy to visually and quickly modify the standard schedule.
-For irregular meetings or events, exceptions allow you to individually configure the calendar, minimizing confusion and errors.
Example of how exceptions are configured in the calendar ⬆️
🔄 Use Cases: How Calendars and Exceptions Work in Real Applications
OneEntry is well-suited for a wide range of use cases thanks to its robust calendar and exception functionality:
Service booking:
- Setting staff working hours: Easily define staff schedules based on their availability and individual preferences.
- Excluding specific hours or days: Flexibly remove time slots that are not available for booking such as breaks, personal days off, or vacations.
- Example in the application interface: Clients see only the available time slots for booking, which reduces staff workload and improves the overall user experience.
Event and meeting organization:
- Flexible recurring meetings: Configure recurring meetings, seminars, or training sessions with automatic repetition, saving time on manual planning.
- Applying exceptions for special conditions: Exclude holidays, rescheduled events, or other unforeseen changes with minimal effort, keeping the calendar organized and transparent.
🌍 Working with Time Zones and Formats
The platform operates in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), which helps avoid confusion when working with users across different countries and ensures accurate data display regardless of time zone. This approach is especially important for international services, where stable and synchronized scheduling is critical to delivering a high-quality user experience. The platform also supports customizable time formats either 12-hour or 24-hour to meet the needs of different regions and user preferences.
⚙️ Why OneEntry is More Advantageous Than Other Solutions
In many popular content management systems (such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Strapi, Sanity, Contentful, and Payload), calendar and time interval functionality is either limited or requires additional configuration and external integrations. Below is a brief overview of the challenges developers and product teams often face when working with these platforms:
- Shopify and WooCommerce do not offer built-in calendar configuration features (e.g., service booking or time slot scheduling) out of the box. As a result, additional third-party plugins must be installed, which complicates integration, increases costs, and makes the system harder to maintain and support.
- Platforms like Strapi and Payload CMS do not include built-in tools for managing complex time intervals or calendars. To implement flexible schedules or bookings, developers have to manually configure fields, write additional code, and create custom interfaces. This significantly increases development time, raises the risk of errors, and complicates future maintenance and scaling.
- Sanity and Contentful offer basic functionality for working with dates and times, such as storing dates or date ranges. However, these platforms lack built-in tools or mechanisms for conveniently managing exceptions (such as excluding specific days or time slots from a recurring schedule). Managing exceptions for holidays, breaks, or personal schedule changes requires custom logic and manual implementation, which adds extra complexity and time.
Note that in OneEntry:
- All functionality for managing time intervals and exceptions is built into the system and available out of the box.
- There’s no need to install third-party plugins or applications.
- The interface is designed to make schedule and exception management as intuitive and user-friendly as possible for all types of users.
🔧 Tips for Configuring Calendars in OneEntry
- Use exception settings to make schedules more adaptable.
- Synchronize frontend interfaces and backend data with the calendar via the OneEntry SDK for maximum accuracy.
- Regularly verify time zones and display formats, especially for international applications.
- Integrate event notifications and reminders with external systems (e.g., messengers or email services) to enhance user convenience.
The OneEntry calendar is ideal for businesses and applications where precision, ease of management, and maximum flexibility are essential. It offers a complete set of built-in tools out of the box, freeing developers from the need to install additional apps or spend time on custom development. Its intuitive interface and well-designed exception system significantly simplify the configuration and maintenance of schedules, reducing administrative overhead and enhancing the overall user experience.
You can find more detailed information about OneEntry’s calendar and time interval capabilities in the official documentation:
📖 Learn more about Time Interval in the official documentation
Try the OneEntry platform and experience its advantages in practice: precision, flexibility, and convenience are now available to everyone.
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