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GETTING STARTED
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FUNDAMENTALS
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ADVANCED
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REPORTING
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TOOLS
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FAQ
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Getting Started

Options--Appointments Tab

The Appointments tab allows you to adjust setting related to DCO events that are placed on an Outlook calendar as appointments.

Access Appointments Options. To access the settings relating to Appointments, click on the Options tab on the DCO main screen and then click on the Appointments tab.

Default Calendar Folder. This field allows you to select a single calendar as the default calendar folder where DocketCalendar date calculations will be directly added. Calendars in the dropdown list will include your personal calendar, any additional calendars you create in your Outlook account and any calendars which have been shared with you. If you accept the default setting for this field, both deadlines and appointments will be placed on your default Outlook calendar–the single calendar Outlook automatically creates when it is installed. If you follow our recommendation, you should choose your firm’s firmwide calendar as the Default Calendar Folder. This will result in all date calculations for all cases handled by your firm being placed on a single calendar.   For the firmwide calendar, we recommend for a solo practice using the primary calendar of the solo practitioner and in a larger firm using the primary calendar of a separate Outlook account set up specifically for that purpose. Once created, your firm’s firmwide calendar will not appear in the list of the Default Calendar Folder field and will not be available to select until it has been shared with you.

You Can Ignore These Settings:

The following settings can generally be ignored:

  • Public Folders Scan/Public Folders Autoscan.  Default:  All folders.
  • Public Calendar “Favorites” Folder.  Default: Favorites.
  • Additional Shared Calendar Folder. Typically, when another staff member’s calendar has been shared with a staff member using the DocketCalendar Add-In, it will automatically appear in the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder. But if a shared calendar is not present–it may have been deleted or not correctly “accepted”–this option provides an alternate way to add it to the Calendar Folder. You do so by entering the email address of the staff member who shared the calendar and clicking Add.
  • Cache Calendar/Task Folders.  Default: Yes. This setting determines whether the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder is retained from session to session or retrieved from the Exchange Server when the DocketCalendar Add-In is started. It may affect how long it takes for the DocketCalendar Add-In to load. You should accept the default.  If recently added shared calendars fail to appear in the Calendar Folder list, temporarily changing the default from Yes to No and restarting the Add-In may solve the problem. If it persists, you should contact customer support.

Show Calendar Folder on “Use Rules Tab”. Default: Unchecked. If checked, the list of calendars to which you have access will appear in a dropdown list on the Use Rules tab. When you perform a rules calculation, you will have the option to choose any calendar in the list and the events you create will be placed on that calendar.

Appointment Length.  This setting determines the length of time that will be reserved on your calendar, when a rules calculation places an appointment event on your calendar that takes place at a specified time. The default is 60 minutes. If the Appointment w/Time Status setting is set to “busy”, your calendar will show that you are busy for the period of time selected.

Reminder For Appointments (minutes). The default amount of time before an appointment that you will receive a pop-up reminder in Outlook. The default reminder is 15 minutes.

Default Category for Appointments. If you use Outlook categories, you can select the one you want assigned to appointments by default. We recommend that you select Category “Z CRO”. You will need to create that Category in Outlook before it can be selected here. 

All Day Appointment Status. Default: “free”When you choose to display deadlines on your Outlook calendar as appointments, they are configured as all day events, so that they will appear at the top of the calendar, separated from other appointments scheduled for a particular time. Since normally Outlook will show you as “busy” during appointments, people looking at your calendar would not be able to tell when you were free to schedule a standard appointment on any day when at least one deadline appeared on your calendar. This setting is used to show your appointment status as “free” for these all day “appointments”.

Appointment w/Time Status.  Default:  “busy”.  This setting determines whether a calculated event that is a court appearance or appointment will show the time slot when it takes place as “busy” on your Outlook calendar, so that other people will not try to schedule other appointment at that time. The default is “busy”.

Case Name Location.  Default Setting: Prepend to subject. This option determines where the case name will be placed in the subject or the body of an Outlook calendar entry or Task list. For help on how to view the body of a deadline or appointment placed on your Outlook calendar. If you do not want to accept the default setting, select one of the other options from the dropdown list:

  • Prepend to subject. Puts the case name first on the subject line, before the event description. (Default and recommended setting)
  • Append to subject. Puts the case name after the event description in the subject line. If the event has a lengthy description, the case name may be cut off when you view the subject line on the Outlook calendar.
  • Prepend to body. Puts the case name in the body of the calendar entry, before the rule snippet or rule ID.
  • Append to body. Puts the case name in the body of the event after the location of the rule snippet or rule ID.
  • Don’t add. Removes the case name from the subject and body. This option is not recommended, because you may not be able to identify the case without the case name.

Custom Text Location. Default setting: Prepend to body. This option determines the location of custom text entered during docket calculations in the calendar entry on the Outlook calendar. It can be put at the beginning or end of the subject line or body of the calendar entry using the following selections:

  • Don’t add. Custom text not displayed.
  • Prepend to subject. Displayed at the beginning of the subject.
  • Append to subject. Displayed at the end of the subject.
  • Prepend to body. Displayed at the beginning of the body.
  • Append to body. Displayed at the end of the body.

Add “DocketCalendarEvent” Tag. Default setting: No. If enabled, this setting will configure DocketCalendar to automatically insert the text string “DocketCalendarEvent” into the body of each Outlook appointment and meeting invitation generated by DocketCalendar when deadlines and events are created. These text characters can be used to uniquely identify DocketCalendar appointments on the calendar of staff members as well as the meeting invitations for these events appearing in the Outlook inboxes of staff members. Using this identifier, staff members can search for DocketCalendar events among others on their calendars, create filters to only display these events on calendars or create Outlook “Rules” to remove automatically meeting invitations from their Outlook inboxes. Since we recommend that you set up an Outlook Rule to suppress meeting invitations and cancellations, this setting should be changed to “Yes”.

Installing the Outlook Add-In

DocketCalendar for Outlook works through an Outlook Add-In, which you must download and install on each workstation where docket calculations will be performed.

The DocketCalendar Add-In is downloaded from the following link: https://tools.docketcalendar.com/outlook/setup.exe

To download and install it:

  1. Click on the link; or, if that does not work, copy and paste the link into your browser’s address bar and hit the Enter key.

This will cause your browser to begin downloading the DCO Add-In’s installation file, “setup.exe”.

2. Depending on the Internet browser you are using, do the following: 

  •  If you are using Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge, click the Run button on the banner at the bottom of the screen.
  • If you are using Google Chrome, double click on Setup.exe in the left bottom corner of your screen.
  • If you are using Firefox, click on the Save File button on the box that appears on the screen.

If you do not see another box in the top right corner, click on the downward pointing arrow to the right of the address bar to display it.

Double click on the word “setup.exe" in the box to start installation of the Add-In.

If you receive an error message during installation, warning you that DocketCalendar for Outlook “is not trusted,” then you will need to add the web address of the computer where the setup file is located, “www.docketcalendar.com,” If you need help contact support@docketcalendar.com

If you do not receive an error message, another box will appear on the screen, giving you the option to install the Add-In. Click the Install button.

After the setup program runs, another screen will appear, indicating that installation has been successful.

Click the Close button on that screen. The Add-In is now ready to use.

Quick Start Guide

Once you have installed DocketCalendar, close and restart Outlook. You will now see an Add-Ins tab. Click the Add-Ins tab and then click the DocketCalendar button to launch DocketCalendar

The first time you lunch DocketCalendar, you will be prompted to enter your login credentials. Once you have entered your login credentials, you will not need to use a login and password again unless you logout.

When DocketCalendar first launches, it will set itself to add events to your personal default Outlook Calendar. You can change this setting later but for now we want try a test so begin by using the default settings.

Follow the red arrows. Select a court from the Jurisdiction dropdown menu. Then select a trigger from the Trigger menu. (If you select a service trigger, the service dropdown will become active. If you select a trigger with a time, trial or hearing for example, you will need to select a time ) Add a Case Name. (Your case name will be automatically saved when you add the events to your calendar)

Next follow the highlighted green boxes, click Calculate Events, you can uncheck any events you do not want to add to your calendar.

When you are ready to add your events to your calendar, follow the highlighted blue box, click Add Checked Events.

You will see a confirmation popup screen. (Check all your trigger details before you proceed) When you are ready, click create events.

You should now see your events on your calendar.

Click on any event in the group you have just added. You should see the DocketCalendar Events window covering the bottom half of the event screen. If you do not see it, look at the bottom of the event window for the DocketCalendar icon with the plus button. (Second screen shot below)

To move the DocketCalendar Events window up and down, follow the red arrow in the screen shot and click and drag the double line up or down. To delete all of the events in the series that you have just added, click the Delete All Events button highlighted in the green box. To collapse the Docket Calendar Event window, click the minus sign in the blue box.

To expand the Docket Calendar Events window, click the Plus sign highlighted in the blue box.

Adding a Calendar to Outlook

You may choose the primary calendar of any Outlook account shared with you, or you can create a new calendar in an Outlook account to serve as the calendar folder. You must follow this procedure, or the new calendar will not work correctly as a calendar folder with DocketCalendar.

Add a Calendar to an Outlook Profile

Log into the Outlook account where you want to create the new calendar.

At the bottom of the screen, click on the three dots and select the folders icon.

Click on the email address and choose new folder from the context menu.

Display the dropdown list in the folder contains the field and select calendar items.

Press the OK button

Name the calendar.

Display the dropdown list in the folder contains the field and select calendar items.

Press the OK button

Manually Adding the Firmwide Calendar to the Shared Calendars List

  • Open the Outlook account of the staff member and navigate to the calendars page.
  • From the manage calendars section of the main menu at the top of the screen, select add calendar.
  • To add the firmwide calendar from the Address Book, click the from address book menu item.
  • To add the firmwide calendar by opening it, click the open shared calendar menu item. Enter the email address of the Outlook account where the calendar to be shared is located.
  • Click the OK button.
  • The shared firmwide calendar will appear in the list of Shared Calendars under the name or display name of the Outlook account where the firmwide calendar is located.

Firm Calendar

DocketCalendar adds events to any Calendar you own or have shared access to. When you first install DocketCalendar it defaults to adding events to your Primary Calendar. Regardless of the size of your firm, we consider it a best practice to create an extra email account specifically dedicated to deadlines. Although you can call this Calendar anything, we generally recommend you simply give it the first name "Firm" and last name "Calendar" The Firm Calendar becomes the central place where all of your deadlines will be located.

There are several compelling reasons for this approach.

Changes to Personnel - Calendaring may be one person's responsibility today, and another person's responsibility next year. Having a central Firm Calendar means you simply assign the new person access to the Firm Calendar. You don't have to consider moving events from one Calendar to another and you'll always have total control over who has access to this calendar.

Coverage - When someone is out of the office or on vacation, having a Firm Calendar means that any individual with appropriate access to the Firm Calendar can handle routine management of deadlines.

Access - Having a Firm Calendar makes it easy to provide any person in the firm who may need to see deadlines access without having to rely on individuals to share their calendars.

Reporting - If you have multiple people calendaring separately each on their own calendar, in order to produce a firmwide report of deadlines, you would need to have access to all of the calendars where deadlines have been created and you would need to search them all to produce a report. With a central Firm Calendar, reports are easy to produce.

The Firm Calendar contains all deadlines. Each Attorney only gets the deadlines related to their matters.

Reporting - If you have multiple people calendaring for different Attorneys in the firm and each person is using their Calendar you will have the firm's deadlines spread throughout your users Outlook Calendars. If you wish to pull a report of deadlines, you would need to get each person who has created deadlines to produce a report and then compile that data into a single firmwide report.

Sample Report using Outlook Quick Search and the Firm Calendar

Options--General Tab

General Options

Default Jurisdiction.  If there is more than one court in your subscription, you can pick one as your default and it will appear on the screen every time you perform a rules calculation.

Appointment & Task.  Default:  All rules events are appointments. DocketCalendar has the ability to treat events as either Outlook appointments or tasks. We recommend keeping this set to the default value.

Add Court Rule to Body. Default: Rule Text. By default, the system adds the text from the rule underlying a date calculation to the body of the appointments or deadlines created on the Outlook calendar.

  • Don’t add: Rule text will not be added.
  • Rule Text: the default—rule text will be added.
  • Rule ID only. An identification code, frequently the official abbreviation used to refer to the applicable procedural rules, will be added

Add Date Rule to Body. Default: Yes. The Date Rule is an abbreviated summary of the calculation used to calculate the event date. 

Add Activity to BodyDefault: Yes. Each Event title or “Activity” is limited to the character length of Outlook’s Subject Line. If you are adding your Case Name to the Subject as well, in some cases the last few words of the Activity may become truncated. To overcome this limitation, this setting allows you to see the full text of each Activity repeated in the Body of the appointment.

Save Case Name. Default: “Yes”. By default, the system will save case names entered, so they can be re-used later. Change this option to No if you do not want to store case names.

Preload Related Events. Default: “Yes”. By default, when you open an event on your Outlook calendar, all of the related events created by the Trigger are displayed in a list with the event you opened highlighted in light red. This allows you to open any of these other events, but the process of loading the related events can cause older computers to slow down to an unacceptable level.  If you change the option to “No”, this will prevent the related events from loading when you open the event and speed things up. To view the other events, you can click the Load button, which will load the events on to the form on demand.

Recalculated Events. Default: When a trigger date gets changed, and the events are recalculated, there are two choices. One choice is to leave the event content alone (subject and body), and just update the date (default). The other choice is to replace the existing events with new events from the latest version of the rules. If you change the default, any changes to the description you may have made during the first calculation will be overwritten.

Check for Updates. Default: “Yes”. If yes, when the Add-In opens, it checks for rules updates and presents a notification if any are found.

Show Excluded Events. Default: “No”. You have the option of preventing certain related events from appearing when they create deadlines during rules calculations, using the Excluded Events tab. 

Show Trigger on Calendar. Default: If changed to yes, a check box will be shown on the Use Rules tab, and if checked during event creation process, the Trigger itself will be created as an appointment. For example, if you select Interrogatories Served and enter last Friday as the trigger date, an event called Interrogatories Served, dated last Friday, will be placed on the calendar if a user selects the checkbox “Trigger on Calendar”.  This option shows and hides that check box. DocketCalendar already creates these types of events for Triggers like Trial, or Hearing on Motion, where we know the trigger itself belongs on the calendar. Most users will not want to turn this option on.

Request Response. Default: Yes. We recommend switching this to no as most attendees will not accept the invites and simply delete them.

Show Confirmation Screen. Default: Yes. The confirmation screen appears after you have completed a calculation by clicking on Add Checked Items on the Use Rules Screen. It shows you the selections you have made during a rules calculation and gives you an opportunity (by clicking the Cancel button) to enter information you may have omitted.  Clicking Create Events completes the event creation process.

Options--Appointments Tab

The Appointments tab allows you to adjust setting related to DCO events that are placed on an Outlook calendar as appointments.

Access Appointments Options. To access the settings relating to Appointments, click on the Options tab on the DCO main screen and then click on the Appointments tab.

Default Calendar Folder. This field allows you to select a single calendar as the default calendar folder where DocketCalendar date calculations will be directly added. Calendars in the dropdown list will include your personal calendar, any additional calendars you create in your Outlook account and any calendars which have been shared with you. If you accept the default setting for this field, both deadlines and appointments will be placed on your default Outlook calendar–the single calendar Outlook automatically creates when it is installed. If you follow our recommendation, you should choose your firm’s firmwide calendar as the Default Calendar Folder. This will result in all date calculations for all cases handled by your firm being placed on a single calendar.   For the firmwide calendar, we recommend for a solo practice using the primary calendar of the solo practitioner and in a larger firm using the primary calendar of a separate Outlook account set up specifically for that purpose. Once created, your firm’s firmwide calendar will not appear in the list of the Default Calendar Folder field and will not be available to select until it has been shared with you.

You Can Ignore These Settings:

The following settings can generally be ignored:

  • Public Folders Scan/Public Folders Autoscan.  Default:  All folders.
  • Public Calendar “Favorites” Folder.  Default: Favorites.
  • Additional Shared Calendar Folder. Typically, when another staff member’s calendar has been shared with a staff member using the DocketCalendar Add-In, it will automatically appear in the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder. But if a shared calendar is not present–it may have been deleted or not correctly “accepted”–this option provides an alternate way to add it to the Calendar Folder. You do so by entering the email address of the staff member who shared the calendar and clicking Add.
  • Cache Calendar/Task Folders.  Default: Yes. This setting determines whether the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder is retained from session to session or retrieved from the Exchange Server when the DocketCalendar Add-In is started. It may affect how long it takes for the DocketCalendar Add-In to load. You should accept the default.  If recently added shared calendars fail to appear in the Calendar Folder list, temporarily changing the default from Yes to No and restarting the Add-In may solve the problem. If it persists, you should contact customer support.

Show Calendar Folder on “Use Rules Tab”. Default: Unchecked. If checked, the list of calendars to which you have access will appear in a dropdown list on the Use Rules tab. When you perform a rules calculation, you will have the option to choose any calendar in the list and the events you create will be placed on that calendar.

Appointment Length.  This setting determines the length of time that will be reserved on your calendar, when a rules calculation places an appointment event on your calendar that takes place at a specified time. The default is 60 minutes. If the Appointment w/Time Status setting is set to “busy”, your calendar will show that you are busy for the period of time selected.

Reminder For Appointments (minutes). The default amount of time before an appointment that you will receive a pop-up reminder in Outlook. The default reminder is 15 minutes.

Default Category for Appointments. If you use Outlook categories, you can select the one you want assigned to appointments by default. We recommend that you select Category “Z CRO”. You will need to create that Category in Outlook before it can be selected here. 

All Day Appointment Status. Default: “free”When you choose to display deadlines on your Outlook calendar as appointments, they are configured as all day events, so that they will appear at the top of the calendar, separated from other appointments scheduled for a particular time. Since normally Outlook will show you as “busy” during appointments, people looking at your calendar would not be able to tell when you were free to schedule a standard appointment on any day when at least one deadline appeared on your calendar. This setting is used to show your appointment status as “free” for these all day “appointments”.

Appointment w/Time Status.  Default:  “busy”.  This setting determines whether a calculated event that is a court appearance or appointment will show the time slot when it takes place as “busy” on your Outlook calendar, so that other people will not try to schedule other appointment at that time. The default is “busy”.

Case Name Location.  Default Setting: Prepend to subject. This option determines where the case name will be placed in the subject or the body of an Outlook calendar entry or Task list. For help on how to view the body of a deadline or appointment placed on your Outlook calendar. If you do not want to accept the default setting, select one of the other options from the dropdown list:

  • Prepend to subject. Puts the case name first on the subject line, before the event description. (Default and recommended setting)
  • Append to subject. Puts the case name after the event description in the subject line. If the event has a lengthy description, the case name may be cut off when you view the subject line on the Outlook calendar.
  • Prepend to body. Puts the case name in the body of the calendar entry, before the rule snippet or rule ID.
  • Append to body. Puts the case name in the body of the event after the location of the rule snippet or rule ID.
  • Don’t add. Removes the case name from the subject and body. This option is not recommended, because you may not be able to identify the case without the case name.

Custom Text Location. Default setting: Prepend to body. This option determines the location of custom text entered during docket calculations in the calendar entry on the Outlook calendar. It can be put at the beginning or end of the subject line or body of the calendar entry using the following selections:

  • Don’t add. Custom text not displayed.
  • Prepend to subject. Displayed at the beginning of the subject.
  • Append to subject. Displayed at the end of the subject.
  • Prepend to body. Displayed at the beginning of the body.
  • Append to body. Displayed at the end of the body.

Add “DocketCalendarEvent” Tag. Default setting: No. If enabled, this setting will configure DocketCalendar to automatically insert the text string “DocketCalendarEvent” into the body of each Outlook appointment and meeting invitation generated by DocketCalendar when deadlines and events are created. These text characters can be used to uniquely identify DocketCalendar appointments on the calendar of staff members as well as the meeting invitations for these events appearing in the Outlook inboxes of staff members. Using this identifier, staff members can search for DocketCalendar events among others on their calendars, create filters to only display these events on calendars or create Outlook “Rules” to remove automatically meeting invitations from their Outlook inboxes. Since we recommend that you set up an Outlook Rule to suppress meeting invitations and cancellations, this setting should be changed to “Yes”.

Options--Tasks Tab

The options on the Tasks tab under the Options tab allow you to configure certain settings that affect how deadlines or appointments are displayed on Outlook’s To-Do task list, differently from when they are displayed as appointments on Outlook Calendars. As noted previously, we do not recommend that you configure DocketCalendar display events and deadlines as tasks, because of limitations in Outlook functionality.

Access Tasks Options. To access the settings relating to Tasks, click on the Options tab on DocketCalendar main screen and then click on the Tasks tab.

Task Folder. If you have chosen to treat deadlines or appointments as Tasks, they are stored by default in Outlook’s Task list. The Task Folder option gives you the ability to store them in a separate Task folder, so that they can be segregated from other tasks created using Outlook. To use this option, you will need to create a new Task list in your Outlook folders. Once it is created, it will appear in the Task Folder dropdown list, where it can be selected.

Case Name Location. (Default and Recommended setting: Prepend to Subject) This setting, like the setting for Appointments, determines the location of the case name either on the Subject line or in the body of the task. See Case Name Location in Appointment Options for the available choices.

Custom Text Location. (Default and Recommended setting: Prepend to Body) Similarly, if you use the Custom Text field, this setting determines it's location on the body of a Task. To understand the choices, see Custom Text Location in Appointment Options.

Outlook Mobile App

We strongly urge you to install the Outlook Mobile App on the mobile phones of staff members who will receive meeting invitations through DCO. There are several reasons for our recommendation.

Your Mobile Phone's Native Apps Can't Block DocketCalendar Meeting Invitations

When DocketCalendar events are sent to your calendar using meeting invitations, event notifications cannot be avoided, if you are using your smartphone's email and calendar applications to receive them. With the Outlook application installed on your desktop, an Outlook rule can be configured to suppress the appointment invitations DocketCalendar sends out to "attendees". But Outlook Rules won't work on your mobile phone's native email and calendar applications. When Outlook interacts with your mobile phone, your emails go to the phone's email app, and your appointments go to its calendar app. Both Android and iPhone standard applications will receive the DocketCalendar meeting invitations in their inboxes. But the Outlook Rule you configured for your Outlook desktop application will not stop the meeting invitations from showing up on your mobile phone. Consequently each time a DocketCalendar meeting invitation is received in your phone's calendar application, your phone will buzz, you will see a banner notification and, if you have an iPhone, the mobile phone's calendar app will display a red dot. On the iPhone you can disable the Invitation specifically but you cannot disable the red dot on the Calendar App unless you turn off all Notifications. If you turn off all Notifications, your phone will not notify you when you have an appointment on your calendar. The only option for the standard phone app to work without buzzing when you receive invites but to notify you when appointments are about to begin, is to leave Allow Notifications turned on, but Invitation notifications turned off. You will either need to ignore the red dots on the Calendar App, or you will need to accept them on the phone.

Using the Outlook Mobile App Will Honor Outlook Rules and Eliminate Unnecessary Notifications

To eliminate DocketCalendar meeting invitations and notifications, the simple solution is to replace your phone's standard mail and calendar applications with the Microsoft Outlook Phone App. The Outlook Mobile App consolidates both email and calendar in a single app. Mail and Calendar both support multiple email accounts so you can keep your business and personal account accessible within the same application or you can just use Outlook’s Phone App for firm related activities. In addition to having access to multiple accounts, the phone app allows you to view shared exchange calendars. This is a feature the standard phone calendars do not support. In addition, DocketCalendar meeting invitations will not show up in the Outlook Phone App. The events will flow directly to the calendar and, because of the Outlook Rule, the invitations will be deleted as they arrive in the user’s email account. This creates a seamless handoff of the events from DocketCalendar to Outlook to the Outlook Mobile App. As with any program, it has subtle differences but the functionality is improved in almost every way with the Microsoft Outlook Phone App.

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How to Assign a Calendar

Assigning your first calendar

Once you have linked your email account and granted permission to DocketCalendar, you will be prompted to assign your first calendar.

Click here if your have not yet linked your email account to DocketCalendar

DocketCalendar should automatically walk you through this process the first time you log in after granting permission. Once you have assigned your first calendar, the "Connect a Calendar" button will change to "Assigned Calendars".

If you need additional guidance, please follow the steps below.

Assigning Additional Calendars

1. Add the number of desired calendars to your subscription from the shopping cart. The shopping cart can be accessed by clicking on “Subscription” under the manage tab in DocketCalendar. You may add an unlimited amount of calendars while in free trial mode.

2. Click on Assigned Calendars under the SETTINGS & PREFERENCES section on the toolbar. (Screenshot Below)

3. If you want to assign a calendar that does not belong to your linked email account, you will need to share that calendar.  Share Outlook    Share Gmail

3. Give your calendar a name.

4. Enter the email address of this calendar. (If this is a secondary calendar, enter the email address of its primary calendar)

5. Locate and select the calendar you want to assign from the “Select Calendar” dropdown. If you do not see the calendar you want to assign, you will need to share that calendar with the linked email account. (If you have not shared any calendars with your linked email account, you will have three options to choose from; United States holidays, Calendar, and Birthdays)

6. Click “Assign.”

Note: If your newly shared calendars do not appear in the select calendar dropdown, you may need to accept/add them from your linked email account.

After calendars have been shared, you will need to accept the invitation and click view. The invitation will be sent to the inbox of the linked email account.  

Outlook Users: If your IT administrator shared the calendars from a PowerShell command, they will need to be added to the calendar using the Add Calendar / Add From Directory function.

Google Users: In order to add a shared calendar to your Gmail account, you must be logged in to only that Gmail account in your web browser. If you use Gmail normally for any other email address, we recommend, just for adding new shared calendars, that you open an incognito window in Chrome and login to your Linked Gmail account there. Then accept the shared calendar.

You can not edit the name or email for notification after assigning a calendar. If you need to remove an assigned calendar we recommend you remove the events from your calendar first.

Choosing Your Linked Email Account

You can connect DocketCalendar to any Outlook or Google calendar. Which calendar should you use?

Click here to view the previous section on how DocketCalendar integrates with your Outlook or Gmail calendar

Considerations

Who has access to this email?

Everyone at your firm who uses DocketCalendar must log into this email account. You will want to choose an email to which multiple people at the firm can log into. If you choose a personal email, your credentials will need to be shared with anyone who wants to log into the DocketCalendar application.

Should I create a new email account?

We recommend creating a new email account as the connection point to DocketCalendar. You can name this calendar whatever you want; something like firmcalendar@yourdomain.com is always a good choice. Whatever you decide, we strongly recommend you do not call your new email account simply "calendar" Everyone who uses email has a "calendar" it is too generic for an email account name.

Can I use an email account that already exists?

Yes. You may already have an email account that multiple people have access to like an admin@ or info@. One consideration is that the linked email account will have all of your internal staff's calendars on it. You may only want authorized calendaring personnel to access this calendar so be mindful not to repurpose an existing email account that is used by people in the firm who you may not want to have edit access your firm calendar.

Do events generated by DocketCalendar have to go on this calendar?

No, events do not have to go on this calendar.

Outlook: The linked email account is the connection point between your Outlook domain and DocketCalendar; placing deadlines on this calendar is optional.

Can I change my linked email account later?

Yes, however, changing the linked account requires DocketCalendar assistance.

Outlook Users: Does this email account have to be an Outlook 365 account?

Yes, the linked email account must be an Outlook 365 email account, however DocketCalendar will not work with a free Outlook.com account.

Gmail Users: Can I use any Gmail account?

Yes, you can use any standard Gmail or Google Workspace account.

Once you have selected your Linked Email Account, you'll want to connect your email account to DocketCalendar.

Click here to connect your email account to DocketCalendar

Attaching Documents to your Deadlines

DocketCalendar does not allow you to upload documents to your deadlines through the application. If you need documents attached to your calendar events, after you save your events to your calendar or calendars, you can open the events that you need to attach documents to and add them directly to the events on your calendar.

Although you can upload a document to an event, documents attached to events on your firm calendar will use memory and although this feature is supported with both Outlook and Google there are several considerations.

1) Documents added to events become duplicates which can lead to document proliferation.

2) Documents added to a Trial Trigger can create over 100 copies of the document on each calendar you add your events to. Even a 1 meg file stored in a trial on 5 calendars suddenly becomes 500 megs of data stored in your Outlook Calendar.

3) Too much data in your Outlook Calendar can lead to performance issues

4) Calendar events containing a physical copy of a document can be forwarded outside your environment inadvertently. Sending a copy of a deadline to apposing counsel or a deponent could include copies of sensitive information.

Document links do not add unnecessary data to your calendar and they come with built in security. Most shared files can be password protected so if you are using One Drive or Drop Box and someone not on your intended list for review rights to a document winds up with a copy of an event with your document link, they will not be able to view it.

File Sharing

Instead of adding a physical copy of your document to your events, we recommend inserting a link into the Description field in DocketCalendar events, which can be applied at the Case level if you want a link to your event available on all Case related deadlines, or you can insert a link into the Description field for any Trigger as you calculated deadlines, and you can also insert links into individual events.

For this article we will look at the two common file sharing programs. Dropbox, and OneDrive. Both of these file sharing programs have the same functionality so we will use One Drive as an example.

For OneDrive, open any file folder you have in OneDrive and right click on the file you want to share.

In the dropdown menu, click the Share icon.

A new window will popup with a Copy button that will copy a link to your document inside your OneDrive folder. Click the copy button.

Then go to DocketCalendar to past your link into your Case, Trigger or Event.

If you are calculating new deadlines, you can paste your link right in the Description field on the Create Events Screen. Once you calculate and save your events to your calendar, all of the events related to your trigger will have your event link.

If you have already created events that you want to add a document link to, you can edit the trigger to add your document link to all of the related events by editing the trigger. See View & Edit Triggers.

If you want to add a document link to a single event. See View & Edit Events

Multiple DocketCalendar Screens: There can be more than one!

DocketCalendar does not work in multiple tabs in the same browser, but it does work with multiple sessions in different browsers. With Chrome, Firefox & Edge you can open three sessions of DocketCalendar and perform Calculations and Updates on all the simultaneously.

Quick Start Google

Welcome to DocketCalendar

This Quick Start Guide assumes that you have already connected (Linked) your DocketCalendar account to your Google Gmail account.

Click here If you have not yet connect DocketCalendar to Gmail

If you've already been using DocketCalendar and have just connect to Outlook, this Quick Start Guide will help you find your way to the new features in the application that you have unlocked. If this is your first time using DocketCalendar, these links will help you get started.

First Time Users Click Here

DocketCalendar User Guide

How To Create Your First Case

How To Calculated Deadlines And Save To Your Calendar

How to Edit a Trigger

How to Edit an Event

What's New?

DocketCalendar now fully supports Pop-up & email reminders and Google Colors . Click here for more information about Google reminders and Colors

Training is free!

We would love to help you get started. Click here to book a DocketCalendar training call.

Click here to log in to DocketCalendar

Can't find what you are looking for or need help getting set up, click here to reach us directly or to schedule a free support call.

Quick Start Outlook

Welcome to DocketCalendar for Outlook

This Quick Start Guide assumes that you have already connected (Linked) your DocketCalendar account to your Microsoft Outlook account.

Click here If you have not yet connect DocketCalendar to Outlook

If you've already been using DocketCalendar and have just connect to Outlook, this Quick Start Guide will help you find your way to the new features in the application that you have unlocked. If this is your first time using DocketCalendar, these links will help you get started.

First Time Users Click Here

DocketCalendar User Guide

How To Create Your First Case

How To Calculated Deadlines And Save To Your Calendar

How to Edit a Trigger

How to Edit an Event

What's New?

DocketCalendar now fully supports Pop-up reminders and Outlook Categories. Click here for more information about Outlook reminders and Categories

Training is free!

We would love to help you get started. Click here to book a DocketCalendar training call.

Click here to log in to DocketCalendar

Can't find what you are looking for or need help getting set up, click here to reach us directly or to schedule a free support call.

Can't find what you are looking for or need help getting set up, click here to reach us directly or to schedule a free support call.

General Reminders: Create Reminder Events For Your Deadlines

General Reminders give you the ability to create a group of event reminders associated with a specific date. Outlook creates pop up reminders but you may also want additional events to your calendar so you can see them when you view your calendar. The General Reminders events can be set before “prior” or after “post” any date and can be grouped with other reminder events so that if your trigger date (for example, day of trial or day of deposition) changes, you only have to update the reminder group’s “trigger” date and all of the reminders will also update to your new date.

In this example we have reminders on Calendar for a Deposition

General Reminders has a few pre-built triggers like , 1 day, 1 week, 1month reminders and then it has groups that are built to be used in a pseudo custom fashion. There are 3 sets. Custom Reminders, Customer Reminders Past & Prior, Abbreviated Reminders. They all function similarly but they have slightly different default language.

Custom Reminder triggers produce an event for every day 1 to 31 days past and prior, every 2 weeks up to 4 months, every month up to a year and a 2 year reminder. Using our Excluded Events feature, you can create your custom group of events by excluding those you don't want leaving you with the exact group of deadlines you wish to create in a reminder group. For example. Excluding all events except 3 days before, 9 days before, 27 days before would produce only those 3 reminders. For more on excluded events see the Exclude Events section of the user guide. 

You can manually change the text in the Event Titles or you can apply text globally to your reminders using the custom text fields, Location, Subject, Description.

To add the General Reminders rule set click on the Subscription button in the Manage Section of the Sidebar Menu

Next select Other from the State Selection Dropdown Menu and then using the center scroll bar, scroll down to the bottom of the available rule sets. You will see General Reminders at the bottom of this section.

Note: General Reminders includes the 2 Triggers that are in General Reminders II, but if you only need to create single Events either as All Day Events or Events with Time, you can just use the General Reminders II rule set. It is only $12.00 per year.

Using General Reminders to create a group of events prior to a Deposition Date.

We have a Deposition on Calendar for Thursday Oct 13th. We want to create reminder events for this deposition on our Calendar.

Begin by going to the Create Events Page and selecting my Case.

Change the Jurisdiction to General Reminders

In this example we are using a General Reminders Trigger for 90,60,45,30,14,7,3,1 Reminders. DocketCalendar will calculate each event and insert the appropriate Reminder length in the Event Title. IE 90 Day Reminder:

Type image caption here (optional)'

By combining the Case Name, Subject Field and the Event Title, your Reminder Event will read "Happy V Lucky (Bozo Depo) 90 Day Reminder:

You can use a Category or Event Color to make your reminders stand out on your Calendar

How Many Calendars Do I Need?

You need at least one calendar to operate DocketCalendar. If everyone at the firm keeps their deadlines on a single shared calendar, one calendar will be sufficient.

Click here to watch a short video- How many calendars do I need?

NOTE: Each person who works with deadlines is counted as a user. DocketCalendar charges a user fee based on the number of users who work with deadlines..

By default, each user comes with one calendar. You may not need to set up each user's calendar if you work with shared calendars, but we recommend connecting DocketCalendar to every user's primary calendar so that you can quickly push appearance deadlines to the attorney's and paralegals calendars.

The two advantages to having deadlines on your calendar-

- Popup reminders only work on events that are placed on your calendar.

- A shared calendar, in even a two attorney firm, can create clutter and making identifying your own deadlines more difficult.

The advantage to having a shared calendar is to give the firm's staff access to a single view where all deadlines can be seen. Anyone who has access to DocketCalendar will have access to the internal Firm Calendar. However, you may want an Outlook firm calendar so that attorneys have the option of viewing either their own deadlines or all deadlines.

If you or someone at your firm wants to receive deadlines on their calendar, you will need to add a calendar in the shopping cart.

The number of calendars you need is up to you and the members of your firm; feel free to add or remove calendars for free while in the trial period to determine what works best for your firm.

There are a variety of ways that Attorneys, Paralegals, Secretaries and Staff may use and share calendars.

The most common methods are as follows...

Solo Firm - Everyone shares one calendar.

Small Firm - Attorneys have their deadlines on their calendar. Paralegals, secretaries and staff may share an attorney's calendar or a firm calendar.

Mid Size firm - Every attorney, secretary, paralegal and staff members has their deadlines on their own calendar. The office maintains a central firm calendar as well.

Multi Office Firm - Every attorney, secretary, paralegal and staff members has their deadlines on their own calendar. Each office maintains a central firm calendar. Some firms find it useful to keep a central calendar with all offices deadlines as well.

Appearances Calendar - You may want to have a specific calendar to keep track of all court appearances and physical appearances such as depositions.

DocketCalendar will support as many calendars as you need. You only need one to use DocketCalendar, but you can have an unlimited number of calendars to support your firm's calendar requirements. DocketCalendar is capable of communicating with any calendar in your Outlook or Google domain.

Scheduling Orders: How to Calendar a Trial Order

In US District Courts DocketCalendar offers a Scheduling Order Template with no court rules so that the user can create a group of related dates with total control over the Event Titles and the Dates.

From any USDC Court select the Trigger: Scheduling Order Template (No Rules - Enter Dates from Order) You do not need to set the Trigger Date.

Press the Preview / Select Events button to display your events. Uncheck any Events you do not need and click the Next Edit Events / Add Calendars button

On the Edit Events / Add Calendar Screen you can Edit the Date for each Event by clicking into the Date Field, changing the Date and clicking Update Date.

You can Edit the Text of Any of the Events by Clicking the Pencil to Edit the Events. See Create Events for more details about Creating Events.

Click Add Events to Calendar(s) when you are ready to Save your Events to your Calendar.

For any Jurisdiction that does not offer a Scheduling Order Template. DocketCalendar offers a Generic Scheduling Order Template in General Reminders.

To use the General Reminder Scheduling Order go to the Create Events Page. Select your Case and then change the Jurisdiction to General Reminders and the Trigger: Scheduling Order Template (No Rules - Enter Dates from Order) Follow the steps above to customize your Scheduling Order Events.

Entering Non Rules Based Events: Client Meeting, Follow Ups

Sometimes you need to enter an event on your Calendar associated with your case that is not Court Rules based. There are several examples where manual entry is required.

1) You want to add a single event to your Calendar either as an All Day Event or an Event with Time. IE: Lunch with Client on Friday to discuss case.

2) You want to add a group of Events onto your Calendar to remind you of an upcoming important event. IE: One month, one week, and one day reminders before the day of a trial.

3) You have a Scheduling Order for your Case and need to enter a group of events with custom dates.

To Accommodate these scenarios we offer two rules sets General Reminders & General Reminders II

General Reminders give you the ability to create a group of event reminders associated with a specific date. General Reminders can be used for all three examples. Single events on a designated day, Groups of Reminders, and Scheduling Orders.

To Create Single Event you will need either the General Reminders rule set or the General Reminders II rules set. Click on the Subscription button in the Manage Section of the Sidebar Menu

Next select Other from the State Selection Dropdown Menu and then using the center scroll bar, scroll down to the bottom of the available rule sets. You will see General Reminders and General Reminders II at the bottom of this section.

Note: General Reminders includes the 2 Triggers that are in General Reminders II, but if you only need to create single Events either as All Day Events or Events with Time, you can just use the General Reminders II rule set. It is only $12.00 per year.

General Reminders II includes only 2 Triggers. “0 day reminder”  and “0 day reminder with time” These two triggers are for instances when you simply want to add an event to your calendar linked to your case name in DocketCalendar. 

To create a 0 day event or 0 day event with time, go to the Create Events Screen. Select the Case from the Case Dropdown that you want to create a single event for, and then Click on the Jurisdiction Dropdown to Select General Reminders. Note: The Jurisdiction Dropdown is searchable. You will only have access to General Reminders or General Reminders II if you have added them to your subscription.

Next select either 0 Day Event or 0 Day Event with Time, set your Trigger Date and Time if necessary and then click the Preview Events Button.

You will see a single Event listed at "Day of Event with Time" To customize your Event Title, click the Next: Edit Events / Add Calendars button.

On the Edit Event Screen, Click the Edit Pencil next to the Event Title "Day of Event with Time"

The Event will expand to show a blank field. You can enter any text into the Title Field and then click the Save button on the right side of the Title Field.

Once you click the Save button, your custom text is saved, but the screen will show the default text with (Edited) to indicate that the event has been customized. Click the Add Events To Calendar(s) button.

On the Confirmation Screen you will see your Customized Event Title displayed.

Can we customize the rules?

You cannot modify existing events or calculations. You can manually customize the event details and you can exclude events that you may not want to add to your Calendar. For non rules based events you can use General Reminders as a way to create custom Groups of Events. See Entering Non Rules Based Events for more information. =

If you need further customization, contact us about building new rules for you at support@docketcalendar.com

Don't See Your Court?

Just ask! DocketCalendar continues to build their library through feedback and customer demand. Once they build a rule set, it is monitored and kept it up to date, so generally new rules are not built until they have been requested. For most standard litigation related rule sets in State or Federal court, rules are built for free if there is at least one subscriber. Send requests for courts to support@docketcalendar.com

Delete a Group of Events

DocketCalendar Events are typically grouped together in Triggers. Each Trigger can have between one and over a hundred Events or Deadlines. When you Calculate a Trial and Save all of the Events to your Calendar, if your Case settles, you may want to remove all of the future Deadlines for your Trial from your Calendar. Archive Trigger Allows you to remove and entire group of Events from all of your Calendars. See Archive for more information

Court Rules Updates

DocketCalendar uses the CalendarRules engine and their proprietary technology and legal staff to build and maintain all rule sets. Because DocketCalendar is cloud-based, it can provide updates to customers in real-time, without any interaction required by end users.

  • Updates are released to the CalendarRules team in advance of publication and added to our system on the effective date. Any subscriber to that court is automatically in compliance with the new rules.
  • Sometimes a court will publish rule changes with an immediate effective date or for the next day. DocketCalendar is positioned to make these changes effective immediately so the end user does not have to apply any updates.

Court-Observed Holidays

Each court has holidays defined through their court's rules. All calculations take into account court-specific holidays and rule definitions. When you calculate deadlines Holidays are automatically factored into your calculations. If you want to see the specific Holidays observed by a particular court, you can check using the Research Console / Find Holidays Tab.

DocketCalendar Terminology: What is a Trigger?

The CalendarRules rules-based scheduling engine, which DocketCalendar uses to perform date calculations, relies upon two factors that apply in virtually every case.

First, the deadlines are almost always based upon–or triggered by–events described by a court's procedural rules.

Second, the procedural rules normally specify the length of time before or after that event that a deadline expires and the formula to be used to calculate that date.  

CalendarRules attorneys have identified the procedural rules that apply to a large percentage of the Federal and State courts and other tribunals that decide cases in the United States. From their review of those procedural rules, they have extracted the information that is is stored in the CalendarRules database and then utilized by DocketCalendar to perform deadline calculations:

  • Court Rules: All of the rules of procedure that apply in a case pending before a particular court or tribunal, or if available, a particular judge, are consolidated into a single set of rules applicable to a particular Jurisdiction.
  • List of Triggers for Each Jurisdiction: A comprehensive list of the trigger events–the events upon which deadlines are based–contained in all procedural rules applicable to the jurisdiction.
  • Related Events: A comprehensive list of the related events–deadlines–that are expressly calculated in reference to each trigger event and for each related event, the time period allowed by the procedural rules to comply with it.
  • Deadline: A specific due date calculated from court rules.
  • Holiday List: A list of the official holidays applicable to the rule set for each jurisdiction.
  • Service Types: The types of service of court papers recognized under the applicable procedural rules for each jurisdiction.
  • Date Rule: For each related event, the formulas specified in the procedural rules that describe how to calculate the deadline, including how the time period is affected by service types and when the deadline falls on a weekend or legal holiday.
  • Rule Text: For each related Event, an ID and snippet of text for each provision of the procedural rules that describes the event and its relation to the trigger event and prescribes the time period for compliance.
  • Calendar: Events created by a rules calculation will be placed automatically on you calendar. You can save which Calendars DocketCalendar saves Deadlines to for for each Case.
  • Jurisdiction: DocketCalendar uses the term jurisdiction as a shorthand to refer to all of the procedural rules that govern rule calculation for a case. Each jurisdiction on the use rules screen will automatically apply the federal rules of civil procedure, the local rules for that district.
  • Trigger, Trigger Event or Trigger Item: Virtually every deadline in a case is based upon and relates to an event spelled out in the procedural rules. In DocketCalendar, these events are called trigger events, trigger items or simply triggers. For example, summons and complaint served is the trigger.
  • Trigger Date: This is simply the date of the trigger event. Depending upon the trigger, it may be a date in the past or future, or today’s date—for example, the date of an upcoming trial or the date when a motion was served.
  • Related Events: This term refers to the deadlines and court appointments produced by a rules calculation based upon a trigger.  Most related events are deadlines, but where a trigger itself is a case-related court appointment that should appear on your calendar—e.g., deposition, hearing, trial, etc.—DocketCalendar will include it in the list as a Related Event.
  • Court Days; Holiday List; Rolling–Backward or Forward: When a deadline falls on a weekend or legal holiday. Each court has unique rules for how to address what to do with deadlines that land on a weekend or holiday. When court rules specify that a deadline is to be moved to the next court day, DocketCalendar refers to it as rolling forward; when court rules specify that the deadlines is to be moved to the previous court day, DocketCalendar refers to it as rolling backward.  
  • Service Type: Where a trigger is the service of a case filing, procedural rules in many courts add a period of time to the calculation of the related deadlines, depending upon the method of service or service type–for example, personal service, electronic service, service by mail, etc. DocketCalendar calls the addition of time to a deadline based upon the service type a service type offset.
  • Date Rule: When related events are calculated, DocketCalendar will allow you to view an abbreviated summary of the formula it used to calculate the deadline.  This is known as the date rule. DocketCalendar will also give you the option to include the date rule on your calendar entry for each of the related events.
  • Court Rule: DocketCalendar also allows you to view the text of the procedural rules which were used to formulate the date rule on which a deadline is based and the option to include the text in the body of the calendar entry for the deadline on your calendar. The court rule consists of two components:
  • Rule Text: One or more excerpts from the rules of procedural applicable to the case.
  • Rule ID: An abbreviation for the name of the applicable rules of civil procedure followed by the paragraph or section number for each rule text excerpt. For example, CCP 412.20(a)(3); 430.40(a), referring to two sections of the California Rules of Civil Procedure.

Parent & Child Events: Related Events & Sub Events

Parent Events with Children

Most Events in DocketCalendar are calculated from a Trigger Date. The Trigger Date is used to calculate the due dates, but some events are actually Triggered by an event that is being Triggered itself. We call Events with Sub Events, Parents, and their Sub Events Children. Example. Trial is the Trigger. Discovery Cutoff is a Parent,  L/D to Serve Notice of Motion re Non-expert Discovery is Triggered by Discovery. This would be a Child Event.

If you edit a single Event that is a Parent, you will be Prompted by DocketCalendar to consider Updating the Child Events. You can only Update the Date on the Child Events. This function is only to make sure that if you change the Date of a Parent, it's Child Events will be updated to the proper dates.

Recalculate Triggers: Change your Trial Date and Deadlines

When a Trial Date or a Hearing or Deposition Date changes, you can quickly Recalculate your Trigger and all of your Deadlines with the Recalculate Function.

To Recalculate a Trigger Date, Go to the Edit Trigger screen.

To Recalculate your Trigger click into the Date field and change the date, and time if necessary. Then Click the Recalculate Date button. When you use the Recalculate function DocketCalendar will also update any Text changes you make and any Categories you add or remove.

Note: Once you click the Recalculate Date button you will directed to a screen that will display all of your new event dates. Click the Update Calendars button to complete the process. Click the Back button if you do not want to process your changes.

Subscription: Make changes to your Courts & Calendars

Youcan make changes to your subscription but going clicking the Subscription button in the SETTINGS & PREFERENCES section of the side bar menu.

DocketCalendar will open a new window and automatically log you into your shopping cart where you can add and remove courts and calendars from your subscription.

You will see a current list of Courts and Calendars displayed with your monthly recurring total subscription rate.

Select the State or United States for Federal courts and Other for Miscellaneous courts. You will see a complete list of available courts. The List has it's own scroll bar independent of the main browser scroll bar. Scroll in the Court list to see all available courts. Once you find your court, Press the plus button next to the court to add it to your cart.

To Add Calendars Click the Green + button next to Add Calendars. The Total will update for each Calendar you add so you can see you monthly charge for the additional Calendars before you check out.

To remove Calendar, click the Red Button in the Subscription section.

(Note: If you have added any courts or Calendars, the Cart Tab will be expanded and the Subscription Tab will be closed. You can click the Arrow next to Subscription to open the Subscription Tab to remove courts or Calendars.

You will not be charged until you click Check out if you are a Subscriber and in Trial mode you will not be charged at all. Remove courts from your subscription by clicking the grey x next to the court you want to remove and remove Calendars by click the Red - next to Calendar(s) in the Subscription section of your shopping cart.

Once you have finished adding courts press the checkout button. (In trial mode this will say Add Courts to Trial)

Click the Edit Profile button to change your contact information.

Archive: Remove Events from You Calendar

Archive is a very powerful tool to help you manage your events when you are ready to remove them from your Calendar.

You can Archive any Event, Trigger, or Case, and all of your Archived Events will be removed from every Assigned Calendar and a copy of your Events, Triggers, and Cases will be stored automatically in Archive

The Archive Function is found on the Edit Screens. Edit Case, Edit Trigger, and Edit Event.

When you click any Archive button you will be prompted to confirm before the Archive takes place.

Archiving Events works like Exporting Events.

You will see a popup message with a % meter showing the status of your Process. DO NOT CLOSE YOUR BROWSER until the Update has completed and you have been returned to the View Case Screen. Processing Events takes time. You can open multiple sessions of DocketCalendar, but not in the same browser. See Multiple Docket Calendar Screens for more information on using multiple sessions of DocketCalendar.

Once your Events have been Archived, you can view your events by clicking the Archive button in the View section of the side bar menu.

Before you can Archive a Case, you must first Archive the individual Triggers

Archive shows All Archive Cases. This view is identical to the All Cases view except here you are viewing Archived Data. If you only Archive a single Event, DocketCalendar will show the Case, and the Trigger for that Event in the Archive so that you always see your data organized in the same structure. Case, Trigger, Event.

Any Event that has been Archived can be Deleted from the Archive by navigating to the Event View Screen for that Event in the Archive and clicking the Delete Button

Note: You can't Delete a Case from the Archive if you have only Archived some of the Events or Triggers. As long as there are Events belonging to a Trigger on your Calendar, the Archived Case and Trigger can't be deleted.

All Archived Case View

Archived Case Detail View

Archive Trigger View

Archive Event View

Events: How to Calculate Deadlines & Save to Your Calendar

The Create Events Screen is where you Calculate Deadlines and Create Events for your Cases. From any Case Details Screen, you can click the Create Events Button and you will be taken to the Create Events Screen with your Case Name and Jurisdiction preloaded.

You can also click 'New Events' in the EVENTS section of the side panel menu.

Once you have selected a Case your Case Name and all of your case related details will populate.

On the Create Events Screen, DocketCalendar will load your Jurisdiction, and your Custom Text Fields.

You can erase or edit the details in the Location, Subject or Description fields. DocketCalendar will remember the changes you make for each Trigger as you calculate and save them to your calendar but it will not overwrite any Text you have saved at the Case level.

To update the text for the Location, Subject, and Comment fields so that the Create Events Screen pre populates with different information, you must go to the Case screen, click Edit Case and make your changes in the Case. (Only do this if you want all future Triggers to have this information)

Once you have selected a Case, next you must select a Trigger from the Trigger Dropdown menu.

The Trigger Dropdown Menu is Searchable.

Select a Trigger, Set the Trigger Date to the appropriate date. The Time Field Field defaults to 8 AM. You only need to set the time if your event includes a time, otherwise leave it set to 8 AM. All Events will be created as All Day Events. If you forget to set the time on a Trigger that requires time, you will be prompted to confirm that you want your appointment time set to 8 AM or you can change it before proceeding. You can also set the length of time for the timed event.

If your Trigger includes a consideration for Service Type in the calculation, a Service Type dropdown menu will appear.

Note: For multi day events IE: Day of Trial (Your trial may be 4 days) DocketCalendar does not support multi day events or events with a different Start and End Date. To accommodate Multi day events we recommend using the Zero Day Event in General Reminders.

You will notice in the first screen shot, the Case is selected and the Description is Pre-filled with a Description from the Case. Add additional information into the Subject and Location to provide more details on your Calendar Events. Example, (Motion to Compel) will populate in the Subject field in between the Case name and the Deadlines (Straight V Narrow (Motion to Compel) L/D to file Notice of Motion)

Press the Preview Events button.

Once you have set your Date, Time and Text fields, DocketCalendar will Calculate all of your deadlines and produce a list of Events at the bottom of the screen. Scroll Down to view all of your events.

In the Preview / Select Events section You will see all of the available events for your Trigger.

If you have Excluded Events they will be unchecked automatically. You will see in the Results field, a record count for all of the Events calculated.

You can uncheck any events you do not want to save for this trigger. Only checked events will be saved to your Case and Calendars. If you want to review the Court Rules, click the arrow next to the check box to expand the event's details. You will see the full text of the Court Rule for each Deadline and the "Date Rule".  We also include the specific part of the Court Rule that pertains to the Date Calculation separately as the Date Rule.

You also have options to Print, Export to Excel, CSV, iCal, or VCS files. If, for example, you want to send your client a copy of the deadlines so they can drop them on their Outlook Calendar. Note: Export files are static files that will not interact with DocketCalendar. To send deadlines to your calendar or your firm's calendars, proceed to the Edit Events / Add Calendars Screen.

To prevent you from placing unnecessary events on your calendar, DocketCalendar will automatically uncheck events that are sub events, or grand children of another event. If you do not wish to add Discovery Cutoff to your calendar, you won't want the last day to file the notice of Discovery Cutoff added to your Calendar. To learn more about Parent and Child Events click here: Parent & Child Events

If you want to see the relationship of the events you have calculated, click the Show Tree View button. Note: If you have manually unchecked any events, those changes will be lost when you change views. If your unchecked events are stored as Excluded Events, they will remain unchecked.

You will need to switch back to Date view to proceed Click the Text Link Show Normal View to return to the default view.

Once you are have selected your events click the Next: Edit Events / Add Calendars button.

DocketCalendar will proceed to the Edit Events / Add Calendars screen and it will only display the Events you had checked on the Create Events Screen. You notice that there is a new record count. If you unchecked events, this number will reflect the number of Events you will be Adding to your Calendar(s).

On the Edit Events / Add Calendar Screen you can modify the text of each Event and edit the date.

To Edit the Date, click in the Date field and date picker will open. Select your new date and the date picker will close. Click Update Date Button

To Edit the Event Text, click the pencil icon next to the event title. The Event will expand to display a blank text field. You can type in the blank edit text field and replace the original text, or you can use the Copy button to copy the original text into the edit text field and then make changes to the text. If you want to abandon your change, click the cancel button. Click Save to Save your changes to the Event title. Note: DocketCalendar will not show the edited Event title. After the event is saved, The text (Edited) will be displayed next to the edit pencil showing that the Event has been edited.

If you missed unchecking an Event on the Create Events Screen, you can uncheck additional events on this screen

Add / Remove Calendars

Make any changes to the Calendars that will receive the Trigger events. You can Add and Remove Calendars at this stage.

Add / Remove Categories

Outlook users can Add and Remove multiple Categories. Google Users can choose or change one Color on the Group of Events.

Google users can modify the Event color and add an additional Popup Reminder and Email reminder for each individual Event.

Add Event to Calendar(s)

When you click the Add Events to Calendar(s) button and all of your Events will be added directly to all of the Calendar you have assigned to the Trigger.

You will see a popup message with a % meter showing the status of your Event Export. DO NOT CLOSE YOUR BROWSER until the Export has completed and you see the Confirmation Screen. Processing Events takes time. You can open multiple sessions of DocketCalendar, but not in the same browser. See Multiple Docket Calendar Screens for more information on using multiple sessions of DocketCalendar.

Once you see the Confirmation Screen, your Events are now on you Calendars. The process is complete.

View & Edit Triggers: Change Dates, Edit Location & Calendars

Triggers are all saved directly under each Case. To view your Triggers, click on the All Cases Button to view a list of all of your active cases. Then select a the View button next to the case you wish to view.

View Triggers:

The Case detail screen shows a list of all Triggers that have been saved to your calendar for the case. You can search the Trigger list using the header search fields. Note: the search fields are case sensitive. Click the View button next to the Trigger you wish to view or edit.

View Trigger Details:

On the View Trigger screen you will see all of the details for your trigger in two sections.

The top half of the View Trigger screen shows the Trigger specific information. Name of Trigger, Trigger date, all custom text applied to the Trigger a list of the Calendars that the trigger has been saved to and a list of the Categories used on the Trigger.

The Bottom half displays a list of all Triggers that have been saved to your calendar. The Trigger list is searchable and the search fields are case sensitive. Click the View button next to a Trigger to view or edit a specific Trigger.

Click the Back to Case Button to get Back to the Case View screen. 

Click Edit Trigger if you want to Recalculate a Trigger ,make changes to the text fields, add or remove calendars or Archive a Trigger.

Edit Trigger

The Edit Trigger screen is where you go to make changes to your Trigger and all the related Events for that Trigger.

Recalculate:

To Recalculate your Trigger click into the Date field and change the date, and time if necessary. Then Click the Recalculate Date button. When you use the Recalculate function DocketCalendar will also update any Text changes you make and any Categories you add or remove.

Note: Once you click the Recalculate Date button you will directed to a screen that will display all of your new event dates. Click the Update Calendars button to complete the process. Click the Back button if you do not want to process your changes.

Update Text & Categories:

To make changes to text fields or to update the Category on all events related to your Trigger, click the Apply Changes button. Note: Apply Changes will note Recalculate your Trigger. If you need to Recalculate and Update text at the same time, use the Recalculate Date button.

Add & Remove Calendars:

You can not Add or Remove Calendars while Recalculating or Updating Text and Categories. If you need to Add or Remove a Calendar and you also need to either Recalculate your Trigger or Update the Text fields or change a Category, make your changes first, then add or remove Calendars.

Archive Trigger:

To remove a Trigger and all of the related Events, Click the Archive Trigger Button

View All Events: Quickly Find and Edit any Event

ViewAll Events gives you quick access to All Events created by DocketCalendar. To access the All Events view click the ‘All Events’ button in the EVENTS section of the sidebar menu.

This is a handy way to find a specific event without having to build a Report, or go through the navigation of the Cases and Triggers to find what you are looking for. All of the rows are sortable so you can quickly sort by Date or Case Name or Trigger title. Click the View button to view or edit any event.

You can use the Search filter box to type in any partial word to narrow the view to specific items such as a Case Name or Event Title. You can search for a date by typing in the full date 09-06 will find all events on that day in any year. 09-06-2022 will find the specific date.

All Cases / Cases / Triggers / Events: Central Deadline Hub

All Cases

All Cases displays all of your Active Cases. The search fields are case sensitive. Click View to access the Case details screen or Case View.

Case View

The Case View screen is the home screen for your case. Case Details displays all of the information stored on your Case. Case Name, Jurisdiction, Calendars Assigned to the Case, Location Text, Subject Text and Comments or Body Text can all be stored and recalled each time you calculate a new trigger.

Edit Case:

When you make changes to the Case, the changes are stored at the case level and applied to all future calculations. Edit Case is also where the Archive Case button is located. (Before you can Archive a case you must first Archive all Triggers.

If you need to update events that have already been applied to your calendar edit either the Trigger or an individual Event.

Outlook Users do not have Email Reminders. Outlook Users have Categories instead of Event Color.

Create Events:

The 'New Events' button will take you to the Create Events screen and automatically select your Case and Jurisdiction. You can also navigate directly to the Create Events screen and select a case from the Case Dropdown Menu.

View All Events:

The View All Events Button on the Case Details Screen gives you a list of all of your case events for that specific case. Events can be sorted by Date, Event Title, Trigger Name and Calendars and all fields are searchable. Searches are case sensitive. Click the View Button to see Event Details and Edit Events.

Triggers:

Triggers will show all Triggers you have calculated and saved to your case. Click the View button to access Trigger Details, Edit or Recalculate your Trigger, and to View and Edit your Trigger Events.

Introduction: Welcome To DocketCalendar

DocketCalendar...what does it do?

DocketCalendar calculates court rules-based deadlines and automatically creates events on your Outlook or Google Calendar. DocketCalendar also has a built in calendar so you can start calculating deadlines before you connect to Outlook or Google.

- Automatically calculate, and create All rules based deadlines related to your case.

- Instantly populate your deadlines directly onto any Outlook or Google calendar.

- Automatically recalculate and remove deadlines from everyone’s calendar when matters settle or court dates change.

- Instantly produce robust deadline reports and much more!

Click here for a quick start video and instructional guide

Click here to Login and get started

The first time you log into DocketCalendar you will be able to instantly calculate deadlines and save them to DocketCalendar built in Firm Calendar.

You may want to try a few calculations before connecting DocketCalendar to your Outlook or Google environment. When you are ready, connecting to Outlook or Google only takes a few minutes.

Click here when you are ready to connect DocketCalendar to your Outlook or Gmail Account

Subscription Q+A

How does my subscription work?

Your DocketCalendar Subscription has two components; Court Rules and Calendars.
Each Court Rule set contains local court rules combined with the state court rules, you only have to use one court rule set to calculate your deadlines properly.

What comes with a court?

- Unlimited firm-wide use of that jurisdiction.

- The ability to remove courts from your subscription at any time; this way you only pay for what you currently need.

- The ability to add courts to your subscription at any time, you can gain immediate access to any court as new cases open.

DocketCalendar does not charge per user, only per calendar.

What comes with a calendar?

- Unlimited firm-wide use and access to that calendar.

- The ability to share the calendar with anyone at the firm.

- The ability to add or remove calendars from your subscription at any time.

How many calendars do I need?

- If everyone at the firm keeps their deadlines on a shared calendar or firm calendar, you may only need one.

- If you or someone at your firm wants to receive deadlines on their calendar, you will need to add a calendar in the shopping cart.

Click here for more information on how to select the right number of calendars

Linked Email Account: How DocketCalendar Talks to Your Email

DocketCalendar requires a dedicated full email account to function as a connection point between your firm's email domain and DocketCalendar. We call this your linked email account.

Your linked email account is the connection point between DocketCalendar and all of your firm's calendars. DocketCalendar will create events directly onto any calendar that is shared with your linked account's calendar. Once you connect an email account to DocketCalendar, the default calendar for that email account will be visible to DocketCalendar and you will be able create events on that calendar.

To add events to any other calendar in your firm, simply share the calendar from the person who needs to receive deadlines to your linked email account.

Example: rocky@docketcalendar.com needs to receive deadlines, he shares his calendar with the linked email account and then DocketCalendar will be able to write events directly onto Rocky's calendar.

Read the next article before you connect your email account to DocketCalendar- Choosing Your Linked Email Account

Click here to connect your email account to DocketCalendar

Choosing Your Linked Email Account

You can connect DocketCalendar to any Outlook or Google calendar. Which calendar should you use?

Click here to view the previous section on how DocketCalendar integrates with your Outlook or Gmail calendar

Considerations

Who has access to this email?

Everyone at your firm who uses DocketCalendar must log into this email account. You will want to choose an email to which multiple people at the firm can log into. If you choose a personal email, your credentials will need to be shared with anyone who wants to log into the DocketCalendar application.

Should I create a new email account?

We recommend creating a new email account as the connection point to DocketCalendar. You can name this calendar whatever you want; something like firmcalendar@yourdomain.com is always a good choice. Whatever you decide, we strongly recommend you do not call your new email account simply "calendar" Everyone who uses email has a "calendar" it is too generic for an email account name.

Can I use an email account that already exists?

Yes. You may already have an email account that multiple people have access to like an admin@ or info@. One consideration is that the linked email account will have all of your internal staff's calendars on it. You may only want authorized calendaring personnel to access this calendar so be mindful not to repurpose an existing email account that is used by people in the firm who you may not want to have edit access your firm calendar.

Do events generated by DocketCalendar have to go on this calendar?

No, events do not have to go on this calendar.

Outlook: The linked email account is the connection point between your Outlook domain and DocketCalendar; placing deadlines on this calendar is optional.

Can I change my linked email account later?

Yes, however, changing the linked account requires DocketCalendar assistance.

Outlook Users: Does this email account have to be an Outlook 365 account?

Yes, the linked email account must be an Outlook 365 email account, however DocketCalendar will not work with a free Outlook.com account.

Gmail Users: Can I use any Gmail account?

Yes, you can use any standard Gmail or Google Workspace account.

Once you have selected your Linked Email Account, you'll want to connect your email account to DocketCalendar.

Click here to connect your email account to DocketCalendar

How Many Calendars Do I Need?

You need at least one calendar to operate DocketCalendar. If everyone at the firm keeps their deadlines on a single shared calendar, one calendar will be sufficient.

Click here to watch a short video- How many calendars do I need?

DocketCalendar charges a user fee based on the number of calendars you send deadlines to.

The two advantages to having deadlines on your calendar-

- Popup reminders only work on events that are placed on your calendar.

- A shared calendar, in even a two attorney firm, can create clutter and making identifying your own deadlines more difficult.

The advantage to having a shared calendar is to give the firm's staff access to a single view where all deadlines can be seen. Anyone who has access to DocketCalendar will have access to the internal Firm Calendar. However, you may want an Outlook firm calendar so that attorneys have the option of viewing either their own deadlines or all deadlines.

If you or someone at your firm wants to receive deadlines on their calendar, you will need to add a calendar in the shopping cart.

The number of calendars you need is up to you and the members of your firm; feel free to add or remove calendars for free while in the trial period to determine what works best for your firm.

There are a variety of ways that Attorneys, Paralegals, Secretaries and Staff may use and share calendars.

The most common methods are as follows...

Solo Firm - Everyone shares one calendar.

Small Firm - Attorneys have their deadlines on their calendar. Paralegals, secretaries and staff may share an attorney's calendar or a firm calendar.

Mid Size firm - Every attorney, secretary, paralegal and staff members has their deadlines on their own calendar. The office maintains a central firm calendar as well.

Multi Office Firm - Every attorney, secretary, paralegal and staff members has their deadlines on their own calendar. Each office maintains a central firm calendar. Some firms find it useful to keep a central calendar with all offices deadlines as well.

Appearances Calendar - You may want to have a specific calendar to keep track of all court appearances and physical appearances such as depositions.

DocketCalendar will support as many calendars as you need. You only need one to use DocketCalendar, but you can have an unlimited number of calendars to support your firm's calendar requirements. DocketCalendar is capable of communicating with any calendar in your Outlook or Google domain.

How to Assign a Calendar

Assigning your first calendar

Once you have linked your email account and granted permission to DocketCalendar, you will be prompted to assign your first calendar.

Click here if your have not yet linked your email account to DocketCalendar

DocketCalendar should automatically walk you through this process the first time you log in after granting permission. Once you have assigned your first calendar, the "Connect a Calendar" button will change to "Assigned Calendars".

If you need additional guidance, please follow the steps below.

Assigning Additional Calendars

1. Add the number of desired calendars to your subscription from the shopping cart. The shopping cart can be accessed by clicking on “Subscription” under the manage tab in DocketCalendar. You may add an unlimited amount of calendars while in free trial mode.

2. Click on Assigned Calendars under the MANAGE section on the toolbar. (Screenshot Below)

3. If you want to assign a calendar that does not belong to your linked email account, you will need to share that calendar.  Share Outlook    Share Gmail

3. Give your calendar a name.

4. Enter the email address of this calendar. (If this is a secondary calendar, enter the email address of its primary calendar)

5. Locate and select the calendar you want to assign from the “Select Calendar” dropdown. If you do not see the calendar you want to assign, you will need to share that calendar with the linked email account. (If you have not shared any calendars with your linked email account, you will have three options to choose from; United States holidays, Calendar, and Birthdays)

6. Click “Assign.”

Note: If your newly shared calendars do not appear in the select calendar dropdown, you may need to accept/add them from your linked email account.

After calendars have been shared, you will need to accept the invitation and click view. The invitation will be sent to the inbox of the linked email account.  

Outlook Users: If your IT administrator shared the calendars from a PowerShell command, they will need to be added to the calendar using the Add Calendar / Add From Directory function.

Google Users: In order to add a shared calendar to your Gmail account, you must be logged in to only that Gmail account in your web browser. If you use Gmail normally for any other email address, we recommend, just for adding new shared calendars, that you open an incognito window in Chrome and login to your Linked Gmail account there. Then accept the shared calendar.

You can not edit the name or email for notification after assigning a calendar. If you need to remove an assigned calendar we recommend you remove the events from your calendar first.

Adding Calendars to Your Cases & Triggers & Events

Now that you have connected your linked email account and assigned your calendars you can begin adding calendars to your cases, triggers and events.

Add Calendars to your Case

Click on "All Cases" to view your cases. You will notice a prompt at the top of the screen to add a calendar to your case. This message will disappear after you add your first calendar.

Click "View" on the case you would like to modify and click the "Edit Case" button.

You will notice there is now a new field where you can add your assigned calendars.

Click in the box under the Assigned Calendars label to open the list of available calendars. Select the calendars you want to add to your Case (Note: Click anywhere on the screen to close the Calendar Dropdown menu).

Once you have selected your calendar, click the "Save Case" button at the bottom of the Edit Case screen.

You will now see your calendar listed on your View Case screen as well as the All Cases list view.

DocketCalendar will now add events for your case directly to your Outlook or Google Calendar the next time you calculate deadlines.

Add Calendars to your Triggers

To add the triggers you have already calculated to your calendar, you will need to add your desired calendars to each trigger.

From the View Case screen. Click the "View" button for the first trigger you want to add to your Outlook or Gmail calendar.

Click "Edit Trigger" and on the Edit Trigger screen you will now see an option to add calendars. Click in the box under the Assigned Calendar(s) label to open the list of available calendars. Select the calendar(s) you want to add to your trigger (Note: Click anywhere on the screen to close the Calendar Dropdown menu)

Next, click the "Update Assigned Calendars" button and DocketCalendar will begin adding the trigger's events to your Outlook or Gmail Calendars.

If you don't have all of your calendars set up, don't worry, you can go back anytime and add and remove calendars from any trigger or event.

When you return to the View Case Screen, you will now see the calendars for each trigger.

Add Calendars to your Events

You may, at times, want to add a single event to a calendar. For Example: The paralegal has all of the last day deadlines for the Deposition on their calendar, but the Attorney only wants the "Appearance" deadline on his or her calendar.

Click on the "View" button for the trigger you want to edit and then click on the "View" button for the event you want to edit.

On the Edit Event screen, scroll to the bottom of the screen. Click in the box under the Assigned Calendar(s) label to open the list of available calendars. Select the calendars you want to add to your event and then click the "Add/Remove Calendars" button. (Note: Click anywhere on the screen to close the Calendar Dropdown menu)

Secondary Outlook Calendars

How to Create a Secondary Outlook Calendar

Add a calendar to an Outlook profile from Outlook desktop.

Log into the Outlook account where you want to create the new calendar.

At the bottom of the screen, click on the three dots and select the folders icon.

Click the "New Folder" option.

In the create new folder window, scroll up to select "Folder contains: Calendar Items".

Name your calendar and click save.

You can then share your calendar with either the firm calendar or if you creating a secondary calendar on the firm calendar, you can share it with users in the firm.

Add a Calendar to an Outlook Profile from Outlook Web.

Log into the Outlook account where you want to create the new calendar.

Click the "Add Calendar" button, located above "My calendars".

In the new window click on the option to "Create blank calendar"

Name your calendar and set the calendar color and icon. Press save to create your calendar. You can then share your calendar with either the firm calendar or if you creating a secondary calendar on the firm calendar, you can share it with users in the firm.

Sharing an Outlook Calendar

Sharing an Outlook Calendar

In order to post events created through DocketCalendar to an Outlook calendar that belongs to another user, the calendar must be shared with to the linked email calendar.

Outlook Desktop

To share your Outlook calendar, click on the "Share Calendar" icon in the home menu of your Outlook calendar.

Select the contact you want to share your calendar with. Click the "Add" button and then pick from your address book to send an invitation to share your calendar.

Once you add the contact to the list of shared calendar contacts, you can change the permission level to "Can Edit"

Note:  Only people in your Outlook contacts listing for the account you have logged into will appear in the list.  

Outlook Web

To share your Outlook calendar, click on the three dots next to the calendar in the calendar view and select "Sharing and permissions".

Enter the name of the person you want to share your calendar with and click the share button.

Set permission level to "Can edit".

IT Admin Consent for Outlook

Depending on how your Outlook is configured, you may receive a request for approval for DocketCalendar, but if your user was given the option to accept permissions, you will not receive and approval request and you will see DocketCalendar listed as an "Enterprise Application".

Regardless of whether you approved a request, or the user has approved permissions, you will still need to click on the DocketCalendar Enterprise Application link and go to the permissions screen and "Grant" permissions.

User Approved Permissions Process

If you did not receive a request for approval for the DocketCalendar application, and your user was given the option to accept permissions follow these steps. See below for Admin Approval Process.

Log into the Azure Admin Portal and click on the Active Directory- SIGN IN HERE

From the Overview screen click Enterprise Applications

From the Enterprise Application screen click on the DocketCalendar application link.

From the DocketCalendar Overview screen click Permissions

From the DocketCalendar permissions screen click the "Grant admin consent for "Your firm's URL"" Once you click the Grand admin consent button you will be prompted to login with your Firm's admin credentials.

You will be prompted to login with Admin credentials.

Click accept on the permission request pop up window.

You will see a confirmation pop-up in the top right side of your permissions screen. Once you have completed this step, DocketCalendar is fully permissioned and ready for use. There is no automatic notification to the users that the approval process has been completed so you may want to inform your users that they can now login.

Admin Approval Process

You should receive and email request to Grant permission for DocketCalendar

From the Admin Consent screen, click on the DocketCalendar link under "My Pending"

In the Details section, click the "Review permissions and consent button".

Note: you will be prompted to login with Admin credentials and accept permissions. Once you have completed this step, you will need to go back to the Enterprise applications screen shown above, click on DocketCalendar, and go to the permissions screen.
Then click the "Grant permissions" button. You will be prompted to login with Admin credentials a second time and you will be prompted to accept permissions a second time.

Once you have completed this step DocketCalendar is fully permissioned and ready for use. Although the user will receive an email confirmation when you approve DocketCalendar through the Admin Consent Request Screen, there is no automatic notification to the users that the approval process has been completed after you Grant permission, so you may want to inform your users that they can now login.

Assigned Calendars: Linking to your Google & Outlook Calendars

This Quick Guide assumes that you have already connected (Linked) your DocketCalendar account to your Email account.

Click here If you have not yet connect DocketCalendar to your Email account

Assigning Calendars

1. Add the number of desired calendars to your subscription from the shopping cart. The shopping cart can be accessed by clicking on “Subscription” under the manage tab in DocketCalendar. You may add an unlimited amount of calendars while in free trial mode.

2. Click on “Assigned Calendars” under the manage section on the toolbar. (Screenshot Below)

3. If you want to assign a calendar that does not belong to your linked email account, you will need to share that calendar.  Share Outlook    Share Gmail

3. Give your calendar a name.

4. Enter the email address of this calendar. (If this is a secondary calendar, enter the email address of its primary calendar)

5. Locate and select the calendar you want to assign from the “Select Calendar” dropdown. If you do not see the calendar you want to assign, you will need to share that calendar with the linked email account. (If you have not shared any calendars with your linked email account, you will have three options to choose from; United States holidays, Calendar, and Birthdays)

6. Click “Assign.”

Note: If your newly shared calendars do not appear in the select calendar dropdown, you may need to accept/add them from your Linked email account.

After calendars have been shared, you will need to accept the invitation and click view. The invitation will be sent to the inbox of the linked email account.  

Outlook Users: If your IT administrator shared the calendars from a PowerShell command, they will need to be added to the calendar using the Add Calendar / Add From Directory function.

Google Users: In order to add a shared calendar to your Gmail account, you must be logged in to only that Gmail account in your web browser. If you use Gmail normally for any other email address, we recommend, just for adding new shared calendars, that you open an incognito in Chrome and login to your Linked Gmail account there. Then accept the shared calendar.

You can not make edits to an Assigned Calendar. If you need to Remove an Assigned Calendar we recommend you Remove the Events from Your Calendar Assigned to that Calendar first.

Login with Outlook

When you log into DocketCalendar, you will need two sets of credentials. Your DocketCalendar account login and password, and your Linked email account login and password. (Note - The linked email account is not your personal work email. See Below - Check with your Firm Admin for your Linked Account login credentials)

The first time you log into DocketCalendar in a new browser, you will need both sets of credentials, but once you have logged in, you can save your credentials to your password manager or your browser, and then you'll be able to log in with just a click.

Login to DocketCalendar

In addition to the DocketCalendar website, we recommend you bookmark the Microsoft office 365 website

Step 1:  Enter your Login and Password,  Click the End User Agreement checkbox and then the login button.

Login: Provided by DocketCalendar

PW: Request from your firm Administrator

Step 2: You will be prompted to log into your Linked email account. This is not your email account, it is a different login that you will need in order to log into DocketCalendar.

Request your Linked email address and Password from your email Administrator

DocketCalendar and your Web Browsers

Multiple Sessions

DocketCalendar does not allow you to "Create" events, "Recalculate" events, or "Edit" events in the same browser session. In other words, you can't calculate and save to Trials simultaneously in the same browser, however, you can calculate and save events in different browsers. We recommend opening at least 2 sessions. Either Chrome and Firefox, or Chrome and Edge, or all three Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

Browser Tabs

Although you can't calculate more than one trigger at a time inside a browser, you can open multiple browser tabs for reference. This will come in handy if you are working on a trigger related to another event and you want to keep a copy of that event open in another screen. If you right-click on any of the left-panel navigation windows, you can keep your current screen and open another session in a new tab. (Remember, one calculation at a time in each browser, but having multiple screens may come in handy from time to time.

Here are a few links to help you get started with DocketCalendar

DocketCalendar User Guide

How To Create Your First Case

How To Calculated Deadlines And Save To Your Calendar

How to Edit a Trigger

How to Edit an Event

Reports: Deadline & Custom Reporting Tools

Reports can be printed, converted into a pdf file or exported in a spreadsheet format. You can even copy the text from your browser and past it directly into an email.

How to Generate a Report

Click on 'Create Reports' in the Create section of the sidebar menu

You will be taken to the Create Reports Screen

The Report Tool includes a variety of filters that allow you to select the deadlines and other case-related events you want to view in a report format.

Report Options:

Date Filters:

Choose the beginning and end dates for a date range search

Case Filter:

Choose this filter to display all events in a particular case. Combine with other filters such as date range to produce a more specific subset of your case data.

Jurisdiction:

You choose this filter from a dropdown list of all Jurisdictions to which your firm has subscribed. This filter will give you all events relating to cases where the specified jurisdiction has been selected for the case.

Report Details:

Many of the details of your Cases, Triggers, and Events can be searched using Report Details. These fields are not Dropdown menus, but they have a prefill logic similar to internet fields that begin to prefill as you type. Report Details fields will only prefill with information from existing events you have saved in your cases.

These fields will present all possible matches for whatever you type into the field, but the options you can select are only total phrases from the field you are searching. In this example typing in Summ, will show three triggers that have the words Summary and Summons. You can't search for just Summ, you must select a complete Phrase. Select Summons and Complaint Filed in Court and your report will include all Summons events in all Case and Jurisdictions.

(If you want to do partial word searches in your reports see below for the Search Results field)

Triggers:

Search any Trigger title that you have used in a calculation

Event Name:

Search any Event Title you have used in a Calculation

Event Types:

Search for the three event types. Day to Appear or Attend, Day to File and/or Serve, Other

Subject:

Any custom text you type into the subject field on the Create Events Screen can be searched.

Location:

Location is a text field, it can filter any text saved in the location field.

Comment:

Any custom text you type into the comment or field on the Create Events Screen can be searched.

Calendar(s):

Any Calendars you have assigned to your cases can be searched

Categories(s):

Outlook Only. Search your Outlook Categories used in your Deadlines.

Once you are ready to run your report. Scroll Down to the bottom of the page and click the Preview Report Screen.

Display Options:

The default view for your reports will include Case Name, Event Date, Event Title. You can add additional fields by clicking the checkboxes in the Columns section of the Display Options.

Search Results

Filter Search Results:

Once you have clicked the Preview Reports Button you will notice a small Search box on the top right side of the screen. This search field is a global search and will automatically filter your report by matches in any field in your report.

You can Print your results, export your result to CSV or Excel and you can Copy the Raw Text using the Copy button.

Extra Reports Tip:

You can Click and Drag the text on the report screen and paste it into an email and it will display with Formatting. Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge will retain some formatting. In the screenshot below. DocketCalendar Report Data copied from Microsoft Edge and Pasted into an Outlook 365 Web Email puts the report data in a scrollable Excel view right in the email. Just copy from page and paste in email.

Excluded Events: Permanently Remove Unwanted Deadlines

Excluded Events provides advanced functionality that allows you to exclude events from being created during rules calculations and save your preference as a default. Each time you calculate that trigger, you automatically have the events you do not want to create unchecked.

DocketCalendar will provide a deadline for every court rule and this will include deadlines for every type of matter before the court. Procedural rules may trigger deadlines applicable to types of cases the firm does not handle. Excluding those deadlines will speed up the review process during rules calculations.

With Exclude Events you can: Exclude specific events from each unique trigger in any court you have in your subscription. You can apply your changes either to a single court, or to all "like" courts, for example, all State Superior Courts. This enables you to quickly set your entire rules subscription to your preference.

Click on ‘Excluded Events’ in the EVENTS section of the sidebarmenu.

You will be taken to the View All Excluded Events Screen. This page shows all of your currently Excluded Events. The first time you access this screen it will have no data to display.

To Add Excluded Events, Click the Edit Exclude Events Button and you will be taken to the Edit Excluded Events Screen.

1. Select the Jurisdiction that includes the events you wish to exclude from the Jurisdiction dropdown list.

2. Select the trigger in the Jurisdiction that creates the events you want to exclude.

3. Click the Preview Events button.

4. The list of the events relating to that Trigger will be displayed.

5. Select the events you wish to exclude by checking the applicable checkboxes. (Checking a box will make that event default uncheck at calculation).

6. Choose whether you want to apply the exclusions only to the selected jurisdiction or to all related jurisdictions that contain the same Trigger.

Note:  Use Apply to All Jurisdictions where several jurisdictions include the same trigger and related events. This will generally apply where two or more jurisdictions employ the same procedural rules—for instance, if your subscription includes several federal bankruptcy courts or district courts.

Click the Save Excluded Events button.

The list of events with checkboxes will clear from the screen and you will see a list of the specific Events Excluded for your trigger.

Click the View Excluded Events to return to the All Excluded Events Screen.

Restore Excluded Events

Excluded events can be restored, so that they will once again show up during rules calculations. To restore excluded events, you reverse the process used to exclude them. To restore Excluded Events: Follow the Steps above and uncheck the Events you want to restore.

View & Edit Events: Change Event Titles, Dates and More

If you need to make edits to a single event. Do not edit the event on your Outlook or Google Calendar Calendar. DocketCalendar will create individual copies of your events for each Calendar. Changes made on a Calendar will only apply to that person's calendar and if the Event is updated by DocketCalendar any changes made by an individual may be over written.

Finding Your Event

To Edit or Delete (Archive) an event, you will need to find the Event in DocketCalendar. If you are viewing a Trigger you will see a list of events for that Trigger on the View Trigger screen you can view, edit and delete from the list of event on any View Trigger screen. You can also use the View All Events function to find, view, and edit your events. From the View All Events Screen you can search your Events using the Search field.

If you are looking at the built in Calendar in the DocketCalendar application, you can click on any event on the Calendar and click the View Event button. You can also access any event from your Outlook Calendar. Each event on your Outlook Calendar will contain a link to the corresponding DocketCalendar event. Note: You must have your DocketCalendar login credentials to view the events in DocketCalendar.

View Event

The View Event Screen shows all of the details of your Event. Many of these values are also visible in your Calendar entries but the View Event Details screen contains every piece of event information available including the Original Event date, the Court Rule and Date Rules so if you recalculate, you will always know your original date and if you have questions about your deadline, you have the rule text right on screen.

If you want to Edit of Delete (Archive) and event, from the View Event screen, click Edit Even

Edit or Delete /Archive an Event

On the Edit Event Screen, you can Modify the Event Title, Change the Date, Modify any of the Custom Text Fields.

Edit Text:

Note: Text and Category Changes made to an individual Event will be retained during Recalculation and Update. If you update the Comment Text at the Event level and then Update the Comment Text at the Trigger level at a later time, the Trigger change will overwrite the Event. However if you make changes to the Comment Text at the Event level and then Update the Location, the changes made to the Comment at the Event level will be remembered. They will only be overwritten if that specific field is being modified at a higher (Trigger) level.

Text and Category changes do not apply to Children Events - See Parent Events with Children below

Although you can add and remove Calendars from an individual Event, The DocketCalendar program currently does not support these events during Trigger Updates. If you make updates to a Trigger, or you Delete / Archive a trigger any Events added to Calendars at the Event level will not be updated. In the event that you need to update a Trigger that has an event with additional Calendars added to it at the single Event level, we recommend, going back to the Event, removing the additional Calendars at the event level, make your Trigger changes, then add your additional Calendars back.

Edit Date:

You can modify the Date on any single Event. If you make changes to the Date, and you also make changes to the Text both functions can be updated at the same time. However, if you hare updating an Event that has Children, even if you select the Update Children option, only the Date will be used to Recalculate the Children.

Edit Calendars:

Add and Remove Calendars does not factor in Child Events. You can only Add or Remove a Calendar from a Single Event on the Edit Event Screen.

Parent Events with Children

Most Events in DocketCalendar are calculated from a Trigger Date. The Trigger Date is used to calculate the due dates, but some events are actually Triggered by an event that is being Triggered itself. We call Events with Sub Events, Parents, and their Sub Events Children. Example. Trial is the Trigger. Discovery Cutoff is a Parent,  L/D to Serve Notice of Motion re Non-expert Discovery is Triggered by Discovery. This would be a Child Event.

If you edit a single Event that is a Parent, you will be Prompted by DocketCalendar to consider Updating the Child Events. You can only Update the Date on the Child Events. This function is only to make sure that if you change the Date of a Parent, it's Child Events will be updated to the proper dates.

Changes made to Text, or Category will only be applied to the Parent. Typically you would use this function, for example, to add a Zoom link to the Day of Deposition, but not to all of the Child Events.

Delete / Archive  Events

You can remove an Event from your Calendar use the Archive Event Button. To remove an entire trigger Update the Trigger and use the Archive Trigger button.

Secondary Google Calendars

How to Create a Secondary Google Calendar

  1. Open the Google calendar associated with your Google account. If you have not created a shortcut to access your calendar, type "calendar.google.com" in your browser's address bar and press the Enter key.
  1. On the bottom portion of the calendar sidebar, click "+" to the right of the words "Other calendars" to display a menu.
  1. On that menu, choose "Create new calendar".

The Settings page for the new calendar will be displayed.

  1. Enter a name for your secondary calendar and click "Create calendar".

A gray banner at the bottom of the page will indicate that the new calendar is being created.

  1. After the banner disappears from the page, click the arrow to the left of Settings at the top of the page to return to the list of your calendars.

The secondary calendar will appear in the list of calendars on the left side of the page. The new calendar will now appear in the dropdown list of calendars on the "assigned calendars" page in DocketCalendar.

Application Defaults: Include Court Rule in Events

DocketCalendar contains many user controllable settings locate on the Application or "App" Defaults screen. These settings are global to all DocketCalendar Users. We suggest you review these settings with all of your users before making changes to the defaults.

When a User logs into DocketCalendar for the first time and reviews settings on the Update Options screen, they will already be configured as shown below and no further action is needed unless the User wants to change the default values.

Below is a list of available options. Once you have made changes, click the Save button to save your changes.

Linked Email Account

The Linked Email Account is set when you create your DocketCalendar Subscription. It is viewable from the App Default screen for confirmation purposes but it can not be changed. If you need to change your Linked Email Account you will need to contact us at support@docketcalendar.com

Default Jurisdiction.

If you have subscribed to the rules in more than one jurisdiction, you can select one as the default jurisdiction. When you create a case, this jurisdiction will be automatically selected. This setting would be useful to a practitioner whose litigation practice is limited primarily to a single jurisdiction. Default Setting: No Jurisdiction Selected.

Add "Court Rule" to Body

By default, the system adds text from the court rule to the body of the appointments or deadlines created on the calendar. Users can change this option as follows:

  • Don’t add: The Court Rule will not be added.
  • Rule Text: The default—rule text will be added.
  • Rule ID only. An identification code, frequently the official abbreviation used to refer to the applicable procedural rules, will be added—for example, FRCP 33(b)(2)—i.e., Rule 33(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Add "Date Rule" to Body

Default Setting: The Date Rule is an abbreviated summary of the calculation used to calculate the event date. It includes how many days, what type of days (court or calendar), what direction (forward or backward), and the roll method (what to do if the date lands on weekend or holiday). By default, the Date Rule is placed into the body of the appointment or deadline on the calendar. Users can change the option to “No” if they do not want the Date Rule in the body. 

Case Location

Default Setting: Prepend to subject: This option determines where the case name will be placed in the subject or the body of the calendar entry. If you do not want to accept the default setting, select one of the other options from the dropdown list:

Prepend to subject. Puts the case name first on the subject line, before the event description. (Default and recommended setting)

Append to subject. Puts the case name after the event description in the subject line. If the event has a lengthy description, the case name may be cut off when you view the subject line in the Google calendar.

Prepend to body. Puts the case name in the body of the calendar entry, before the Court Rule or Rule ID.

Append to body. Puts the case name in the body of the event after the location of the Court Rule or Rule ID.

Note: If you choose an option that puts the case name in calendar entry, either before or after the body, the case name will not appear in the subject of the event on the Google calendar and you not be able to see it without opening the calendar entry.

Don’t add. Removes the case name from the subject and body. This option is also not recommended, because you may not be able to identify the case without the case name.

Add "User Notification" Tag

This will place a unique text string on each event that belongs to a specific Assigned Calendar.

Email Reminder - Gmail Only

This setting assigns the default value on the Add Case screen for the length of time before an event or deadline created in a case that the Google calendar will generate an email notification for a particular event placed on the Google calendar.

Pop-Up Reminder

This setting assigns the default value on the Add Case screen for the length of time before an event or deadline created in a case that the calendar will generate a Pop Up notification for a particular event placed on the calendar.

Display "Events" Details:

This setting will override all event settings and remove all event details from your DocketCalendar Events.

Display Trigger Title on Calendar Body:

This setting will display the trigger Title on all related events. Default setting is Yes

Appointments w/time status

This setting determines whether a calculated event that is a court appearance or appointment will show the time slot when it takes place as “busy”, so that other people will not try to schedule other appointment at that time. The default is “busy”. It works in conjunction with Appointment length setting.

Appointment length

This setting determines the length of time that will be reserved on your calendar, when a rules calculation places an appointment event on your calendar that takes place at a specified time. The default is 1 hour. If the previous option is set to “busy”, your calendar will show that you are busy for the period of time selected.

Add “DocketCalendarDeadline” Tag

By default this setting is set to “Yes”. When enabled, the word “DocketCalendarDeadline” is placed into the body of a calendar item. When the calendar item is transmitted as a meeting invitation during the docket creation process, the presence of this tag gives the recipient the option to identify those invitations received from DC. Using the Google’s filtering function, the User is able to create a filter that can remove incoming meeting invitations and archive them or move them to another folder.

Event Color

This setting establishes a default color for events appearing on the Google calendar, as a result of Date Calculations. When a new Case is created, the selected color is automatically transferred to the Event Color field on the Add Case screen, where it becomes the default Event Color for every event created in that case. During a Date Calculation, the Event Color can be changed again, allowing all events created using a particular Trigger to have a different color than other events created in the case. By default, this setting is set to “No Color”. You can choose one of the colors from the dropdown list.

Search Triggers, Events & Rules

Sometimes, it is not obvious which Trigger to use to calculate particular deadlines in a case. You can search the Trigger Title when you are calculating, but you may only know the deadline and may not be sure what triggers it, or you may only know the court rule.

Search Triggers, Events & Rules allows you to keyword search all of the DocketCalendar content.

Click on the Research Console Button

You will be taken to the Search Triggers, Events & Rules Tab

To perform a search:

1) Select a Case with the Jurisdiction in question from the dropdown list.

2) Enter a keyword or phrase.

Use as few words as possible, or the root of words, remembering that DocketCalendar will be looking for an exact match. For instance, if you type "appeal", you will find "appealable", but if you type "appealable", you will not find "appeal".

3) Choose whether you want to search any Triggers, Events or Rules within the Jurisdiction by clicking on the applicable checkboxes.

Trigger: This option will search for all Triggers in the Jurisdiction that include the keywords.

Event: This option will search through all events--deadlines and court events--in the Jurisdiction that include the keywords and find the Triggers used to calculate them.

Rules: This option will search for the keywords in all excerpts of procedural rules in the Jurisdiction that relate to events that are calculated using Triggers.

4) Click the Search button.

DocketCalendar will search through the information you have selected and display a list of Triggers. That contain your key word or words. Keywords will be red.

5) Click the arrow to expand any Trigger to see your key word. You can click the arrow next to each event under the trigger to expand the Court Rule

Linked Email Account: How DocketCalendar Talks to Your Email

DocketCalendar requires a dedicated full email account to function as a connection point between your firm's email domain and DocketCalendar. We call this your linked email account.

Your linked email account is the connection point between DocketCalendar and all of your firm's calendars. DocketCalendar will create events directly onto any calendar that is shared with your linked account's calendar. Once you connect an email account to DocketCalendar, the default calendar for that email account will be visible to DocketCalendar and you will be able create events on that calendar.

To add events to any other calendar in your firm, simply share the calendar from the person who needs to receive deadlines to your linked email account.

Example: rocky@docketcalendar.com needs to receive deadlines, he shares his calendar with the linked email account and then DocketCalendar will be able to write events directly onto Rocky's calendar.

Read the next article before you connect your email account to DocketCalendar- Choosing Your Linked Email Account

Click here to connect your email account to DocketCalendar

View Jurisdiction's Holidays

Virtually all courts have rules that specify what happens when a deadline lands on an official holiday. What holidays are recognized for the purpose of rules calculations varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and when certain holidays are observed may vary from year to year, if they fall on a weekend.

DocketCalendar automatically takes these holidays into account when calculating a deadline, but there will be times when you might want to view the actual list of holidays used by DocketCalendar and when they are observed, particularly if you practice before multiple courts. The Holiday tool, accessible from a tab on the Docket Research screen, allows you to do this.

To view a list of Holidays for  a Jurisdiction in your subscription:

  1. Click on the Research Console and then click on the Find Holidays tab.
  2. Choose a Case with the Jurisdiction whose holidays you wish to view.

Only the Jurisdictions in your DocketCalendar subscription will appear in the list.

  1. Specify a date range by inserting a Start Date and End Date in the date fields, or accept the default date range of one year from the current date.
  2. Click the Find Holidays button.

Docket Calendar will display a list of the holidays for the Jurisdiction and the dates on which they fall or are observed.

Case: Your Central Hub for Case Information & Deadlines

Start by clicking on the 'New Case' button in the CASES section of your navigation:


DocketCalendar Cases store the basic information you will need to calendar deadlines. Case Name, Jurisdiction, Calendars assigned to the case, Reminder and Category or Color preference and you can also store information that will populate in the Location, Subject, and Comments or Body sections of each event. Each Case Record also contains a complete list of all Triggers and Events Calendared for the case and all edit functions related to the Case, Triggers and Events as well.

Case Details

Case Details stores your Case Name, Jurisdiction and the Calendars Assigned to the Case.

Add a Case Name - Case names will be combined with the deadline in the subject field of your events. We recommend brief case names.

Pick a Jurisdiction for your Case - The Jurisdiction Dropdown will show all courts in your subscription

Add Calendars to Your Case - Assign Calendars will display a list of all of your current Assigned Calendar Users.

Event Details

Event Details allows you to store Text or Comments in the 3 main fields of your events. Location, Subject and Comments or Body. Any information saved at the case level will autofill the Location, Subject and Comments section each time you calculate a trigger.

Location - Text entered in location will populate in the location field on your events

Subject - Text entered into the subject will populate in between the case name and the deadlines or event title

Comments - Text entered into comments will populate in the body or comments section of each event along with the Case Details, Jurisdiction, Trigger Title etc.

Notifications - Outlook

Outlook users can change the Popup Notification setting for each case. This will give the case event the same default Popup setting.

Categories: DocketCalendar will read your Linked Email Account's Calendar Categories and allow you to save a preference for a Category at the case level.

Notifications - Gmail

Gmail users can change one Popup notification and one email notification setting for each case. This will give the case events the same default Popup and email setting.

Event Color: Google Events have an Event Color option. You can store an event color preference at the case level.

Date Calculator: Calculate a date count in any Court

The Date Calculator tool allows you to calculation a deadline in a particular Jurisdiction, using that Jurisdiction's court observed holidays.

Click the Research Console button and then Click the Date Calculator Button

The Date Calculator Screen will be displayed.

1) Select a Court from the Holiday Set dropdown list.

2) Enter the Start Date in the Start Date field.

Just like a Trigger Date, this is the date upon which you will base your calculation: e.g., 30 days/weeks/months before or after the Start Date.  

3) Enter the number for your calculation either in days, weeks, months, etc.--in the # to Calculate field

4) Determine whether the time period is measured in calendar days, court days, weeks, months or years and select the applicable radio button on the screen.

5) Determine whether you are counting forward or backward and make the appropriate selection. Your choice depends upon the purpose of the date calculation.

  • Counting Forward. You are trying to calculate a deadline which will occur after the Start Date--e.g., the last day to file an answer after the date of the service of the complaint (Start Date); the last day to file a notice of appeal after the date of the entry of judgment (Start Date).
  • Counting Backwards. You are trying to calculate a deadline which will occur before the Start Date--e.g., the date of the last day to file proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law before the date of trial (the Start Date).

6) Determine whether you want the calculated deadline to "Roll Forward" or "Roll Backward", if it lands on a holiday or weekend day.

Roll Forward. If you select "Roll Forward", the Date Calculator will move a date to the next court day--a day that is neither an official holiday nor a weekend day.

Roll Backward. If you are calculating a deadline that must be met prior to the Trigger Event, such as filing a brief or other submission for the court, the procedural rules might specify that if the calculated date occurs on a weekend or holiday, the deadlines should be moved to the previous court day. If that is the case, then choose "Roll Backward".

No Roll.  If you are only interested in knowing the date of the deadline, regardless of holidays and weekends, then leave the default selection at "No Roll".

Click the Calculate button when ready to Calculate your Deadline

The Date Calculator will display the date and day of the week of the deadline.

Login with Gmail

When you log into DocketCalendar, you will need two sets of credentials. Your DocketCalendar account login and password, and your Linked email account login and password. (Note - The linked email account is not your personal work email. See Below - Check with your Firm Admin for your Linked Account login credentials)

The first time you log into DocketCalendar in a new browser, you will need both sets of credentials, but once you have logged in, you can save your credentials to your password manager or your browser, and then you'll be able to log in with just a click.

Login to DocketCalendar

In addition to the DocketCalendar website, we recommend you bookmark the Gmail Calendar that is Linked to your DocketCalendar account.

Step 1:  Enter your Login and Password,  Click the End User Agreement checkbox and then the login button.

Login: Provided by DocketCalendar

PW: Request from your firm Administrator

Step 2: You will be prompted to log into your Linked email account. This is not your email account, it is a different login that you will need in order to log into DocketCalendar.

Request your Linked email address and Password from your email Administrator

DocketCalendar and your Web Browsers

Multiple Sessions

DocketCalendar does not allow you to "Create" events, "Recalculate" events, or "Edit" events in the same browser session. In other words, you can't calculate and save to Trials simultaneously in the same browser, however, you can calculate and save events in different browsers. We recommend opening at least 2 sessions. Either Chrome and Firefox, or Chrome and Edge, or all three Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

Browser Tabs

Although you can't calculate more than one trigger at a time inside a browser, you can open multiple browser tabs for reference. This will come in handy if you are working on a trigger related to another event and you want to keep a copy of that event open in another screen. If you right-click on any of the left-panel navigation windows, you can keep your current screen and open another session in a new tab. (Remember, one calculation at a time in each browser, but having multiple screens may come in handy from time to time.

Here are a few links to help you get started with DocketCalendar

DocketCalendar User Guide

How To Create Your First Case

How To Calculated Deadlines And Save To Your Calendar

How to Edit a Trigger

How to Edit an Event

Service Type Offsets: By Mail, Hand, Electronic

The procedural rules for most courts add a specified number of days to respond to deadlines based upon service type. When service type is a consideration in a deadlines' calculation, DocketCalendar automatically factors this into the calculation. We refer to this as Service Type Offset. If you want to review what the Service Type Offset is for a particular court, Click the Docket Research button

  • Personal or In hand--Usually no offset
  • Electronic--Usually no offset
  • By Fax--Usually no offset
  • Service by Mail on a Party Outside the State--usually an offset.
  • Express or Overnight--Usually an offset
  • Regular Mail--Usually an offset

DC automatically takes these offsets into consideration when you perform docket calculations. The Service Types tool accessible from the Docket Research screen, allows you view the offsets prescribed in a particular Jurisdiction.

To view a list of Service Type Offsets:

  1. Click the Research Console Button and click on the Service Types tab.
  2. Choose a case with the Jurisdiction whose Service Type offsets you wish to view from the Jurisdiction dropdown box.
  3. Click the Get Service Types button

DocketCalendar will display a list of the Service Types for the Jurisdiction and the number of days, if any, of the applicable offsets.

Sharing a Google Calendar

Sharing a Google Calendar

If you want to be able to post events created through DocketCalendar on a Google calendar that belongs to another Google account, it must be shared with your linked email account.

Log into the Google account you want to share.

Open the Google calendar. Under the calendars section in the left panel, move your cursor over the name of calendar you wish to share until the Options menu shortcut (represented by three vertical dots) is displayed and then click it.

On the Options menu, click "Settings and Sharing".

The entire Settings menu will be displayed.

Scroll down to the heading "Share with specific people" and click "+Add people".

A list of people in your Google contacts will be displayed in a dropdown list.

Scroll down the list, or use type search, to locate the people with whom you want to be able to share the calendar and then click on a name.

The person you have selected will appear in the "Share with specific people" field.

Note:  Only people in the Google contacts listing for the account you have logged into will appear in the list.  

Click the arrow in the permissions field to display the list of sharing permission that are available for the selected person and choose "Make changes to events".  If you want to enable the selected person to be able to change sharing permissions for the calendar, select "Make changes and manage sharing".

When you are done, click the send button.

The Master Calendar will receive a notification.

Note: You If you use multiple Gmail accounts, you must be logged into the linked Gmail account before any other Gmail accounts or you can log out of all Gmail Accounts and login to the linked calendar to add the shared calendars.

If you forget and find that when you click on the link to add the new shared Calendar it does not add, this means you are not logged in to the linked calendar first. Google will simply not add the shared calendar until you log out of other accounts. The email can be re-used so you don't have to re-share the calendar. Just click the link again to add it.

IT Admin Consent for DocketCalendar

Depending on how your Outlook is configured, you may receive a request for approval for DocketCalendar, but if your user was given the option to Accept permissions, you will not receive and approval request and you will see DocketCalendar listed as an Enterprise Application.

Regardless of whether you approved a request, or the user has approved permissions, you will still need to click on the DocketCalendar Enterprise Application link and go to the permissions screen and "Grant" permissions.

User Approved Permissions Process

If you did not receive a request for approval for the DocketCalendar Application, and your user was given the option to Accept permissions follow these steps. See below for Admin Approval Process.

Log into the Azure Admin Portal and click on the Active Directory- SIGN IN HERE

From the Overview screen click Enterprise Applications

From the Enterprise Application screen click on the DocketCalendar application link.

From the DocketCalendar Overview screen click Permissions

From the DocketCalendar Permissions screen click the Grant admin consent for "Your firm's URL" Once you click the Grand admin consent button you will be prompted to login with your Firm's Admin credentials.

You will be prompted to login with Amin Credentials

Click Accept on the Permission request pop up window

You will see a confirmation pop-up in the top right side of your Permissions screen. Once you have completed this step DocketCalendar is fully permissioned and ready for use. There is no automatic notification to the users that the approval process has been completed so you may want to inform your users that they can now login.

Admin Approval Process

You should receive and email request to Grant permission for DocketCalendar

From the Admin Consent screen, click on the DocketCalendar link under "My Pending"

In the Details section, click the Review permissions and consent button. Note: you will be prompted to login with Admin Credentials and Accept permissions. Once you have completed this step, you will need to go back to the Enterprise Applications screen shown above, click on DocketCalendar, and go to the Permissions screen.
Then click the Grant permissions button. You will be prompted to login with Admin credentials a second time and you will be prompted to Accept permissions a second time.

Once you have completed this step DocketCalendar is fully permissioned and ready for use. Although the user will receive an email confirmation when you approve DocketCalendar through the Admin Consent Request Screen, there is no automatic notification to the users that the approval process has been completed after you Grant permission so you may want to inform your users that they can now login.

Secondary Outlook Calendars

How to Create a Secondary Outlook Calendar

You may choose the primary calendar of any Outlook account shared with you, or you can create a new calendar in an Outlook account to serve as the calendar folder.

Add a Calendar to an Outlook Profile from Outlook Desktop

Log into the Outlook account where you want to create the new calendar.

At the bottom of the screen, click on the three dots and select the folders icon.

Click the New Folder Option

In the Create New Folder Window, scroll up to select Folder Contains: Calendar Items.

Name your calendar and click save. Your calendar will be created. You can then share your calendar either with the Firm Calendar or if you creating a secondary calendar on the Firm Calendar, you can share it with users in the firm.

Add a Calendar to an Outlook Profile from Outlook Web

Log into the Outlook account where you want to create the new calendar.

Click the Add Calendar Button

In the new window click on the option to "Create blank calendar"

Name your Calendar and you can set the Calendar color and Icon as well. Press save to create your calendar.

Google Calendar Reminders & Colors

Google allows Up to 4 Reminders for each event and 1 color for each event.

DocketCalendar fully supports control of your reminders at the Case, Trigger and Event level. The latest update of DocketCalendar unlocks a new level of control of reminders. Now when you are calculating events you will see an option on each event that will allow you to edit the individual reminders, and  the ability to edit the reminder for each Trigger as well. Once events have been calendared, you can now edit the reminders by editing the Trigger or Event to change all your reminder settings!

DocketCalendar gives you two reminders at the Case and Trigger level, one pop up and one email reminder and 2 additional reminders at the Event level, one pop up and one email reminder.

Email reminders are sent to the email address assigned to the calendar.

Create Events: Reminders & Categories

To Edit a single line item, after you have calculated your deadlines on the Create Events screen and clicked the Next: Edit Events button, you'll see an Edit Pencil icon at the end of each deadlines. Click the Edit Pencil icon and you will see a dropdown option for setting the individual event Popup, and the individual event Category. When you have completed your line item edits, click save on each line item you edit. Your Trigger level settings will be saved when you add the events to your calendars.

Note: You can only set one Category at the line item level but you can select multiple Categories at the Trigger level.

Case Reminders & Color

Case reminders and Category settings are set when you create a new case and can be edited at anytime. When you change the Case settings, the changes will apply to new deadlines calculated. If you need to change Reminders or Categories for any deadlines already calendared, you will need to edit the Trigger or the Event.

Trigger Reminders & Color

When you are calculating a new Trigger you can set your Trigger Reminder. Once you have calendared your events, you can edit the reminder setting at the Trigger level by going to the edit Trigger screen. Go to your Case, click the view button for the Trigger you want to edit and then click the Edit Trigger button.

Note: If you have been using DocketCalendar prior to the availability of the new reminders edit features the Event and Trigger screen released 12/27 make sure to check your reminders if you edit an Event or a Trigger.

Event Reminders & Color

When you are creating new events you can set your Event level Reminder and one Category. Once you have calendared your events, you can edit the Reminder & Category settings at the Trigger level by going to the Edit event screen. You can access your events from the Case / Trigger view, or from the View all Case Events button on each case. You can also find your events on the View All Events Screen.

Note: If you have been using DocketCalendar prior to the availability of the new reminders edit features the Event and Trigger screen released 12/27 make sure to check your reminders if you edit an Event or a Trigger.

Outlook Calendar Reminders & Categories

Microsoft Outlook allows one Popup Reminder for each event and multiple Categories for each event.

DocketCalendar fully supports control of your reminders at the Case, Trigger and Event level. The latest update of DocketCalendar unlocks a new level of control of reminders. Now when you are calculating events you will see an option on each event that will allow you to edit the individual reminders, and  the ability to edit the reminder for each Trigger as well. Once events have been calendared, you can now edit the reminders by editing the Trigger or Event to change all your reminder settings!

Create Events: Reminders & Categories

To Edit a single line item, after you have calculated your deadlines on the Create Events screen and clicked the Next: Edit Events button, you'll see an Edit Pencil icon at the end of each deadlines. Click the Edit Pencil icon and you will see a dropdown option for setting the individual event Popup, and the individual event Category. When you have completed your line item edits, click save on each line item you edit. Your Trigger level settings will be saved when you add the events to your calendars.

Note: You can only set one Category at the line item level but you can select multiple Categories at the Trigger level.

Case Reminders & Categories

Case reminders and Category settings are set when you create a new case and can be edited at anytime. When you change the Case settings, the changes will apply to new deadlines calculated. If you need to change Reminders or Categories for any deadlines already calendared, you will need to edit the Trigger or the Event.

Trigger Reminders & Categories

When you are calculating a new Trigger you can set your Trigger Reminder. Once you have calendared your events, you can edit the reminder setting at the Trigger level by going to the edit Trigger screen. Go to your Case, click the view button for the Trigger you want to edit and then click the Edit Trigger button.

Note: If you have been using DocketCalendar prior to the availability of the new reminders edit features the Event and Trigger screen released 12/27 make sure to check your reminders if you edit an Event or a Trigger.

Event Reminders & Categories

When you are creating new events you can set your Event level Reminder and one Category. Once you have calendared your events, you can edit the Reminder & Category settings at the Trigger level by going to the Edit event screen. You can access your events from the Case / Trigger view, or from the View all Case Events button on each case. You can also find your events on the View All Events Screen.

Note: If you have been using DocketCalendar prior to the availability of the new reminders edit features the Event and Trigger screen released 12/27 make sure to check your reminders if you edit an Event or a Trigger.

Adding Calendars to Your Cases & Triggers & Events

Now that you have connected your linked email account and assigned your calendars you can begin adding calendars to your cases, triggers and events.

Add Calendars to your Case

Click on "All Cases" to view your cases. You will notice a prompt at the top of the screen to add a calendar to your case. This message will disappear after you add your first calendar.

Click "View" on the case you would like to modify and click the "Edit Case" button.

You will notice there is now a new field where you can add your assigned calendars.

Click in the box under the Assigned Calendars label to open the list of available calendars. Select the calendars you want to add to your Case (Note: Click anywhere on the screen to close the Calendar Dropdown menu).

Once you have selected your calendar, click the "Save Case" button at the bottom of the Edit Case screen.

You will now see your calendar listed on your View Case screen as well as the All Cases list view.

DocketCalendar will now add events for your case directly to your Outlook or Google Calendar the next time you calculate deadlines.

Add Calendars to your Triggers

To add the triggers you have already calculated to your calendar, you will need to add your desired calendars to each trigger.

From the View Case screen. Click the "View" button for the first trigger you want to add to your Outlook or Gmail calendar.

Click "Edit Trigger" and on the Edit Trigger screen you will now see an option to add calendars. Click in the box under the Assigned Calendar(s) label to open the list of available calendars. Select the calendar(s) you want to add to your trigger (Note: Click anywhere on the screen to close the Calendar Dropdown menu)

Next, click the "Update Assigned Calendars" button and DocketCalendar will begin adding the trigger's events to your Outlook or Gmail Calendars.

If you don't have all of your calendars set up, don't worry, you can go back anytime and add and remove calendars from any trigger or event.

When you return to the View Case Screen, you will now see the calendars for each trigger.

Add Calendars to your Events

You may, at times, want to add a single event to a calendar. For Example: The paralegal has all of the last day deadlines for the Deposition on their calendar, but the Attorney only wants the "Appearance" deadline on his or her calendar.

Click on the "View" button for the trigger you want to edit and then click on the "View" button for the event you want to edit.

On the Edit Event screen, scroll to the bottom of the screen. Click in the box under the Assigned Calendar(s) label to open the list of available calendars. Select the calendars you want to add to your event and then click the "Add/Remove Calendars" button. (Note: Click anywhere on the screen to close the Calendar Dropdown menu)

Add an Internet Calendar to Outlook

Step 1 Right-click  on your Calendar and select Add New Calendar

Step 2 - Select Add Calendar From Internet

Step 3 - In the Pop up window - Paste the Link that was emailed to you

Step 4 - Click Yes on the 2 Outlook prompts

Your New Calendar will be visible

Quick Print your DocketCalendar Deadlines

Once you have done a search of your Outlook Calendar for DocketCalendar Deadlines, you can quickly print out your deadlines by using Outlook's print option.

Click Control "P" to print

Change your print to Landscape

Viewing DocketCalendar Events

When you view a DocketCalendar event on the Outlook calendar, depending upon options set in DocketCalendar options you will see information about the event, including the trigger, the court rule and date calculation rules.

Deadlines are displayed as all-day events, which places them at the top of the calendar. 

What Information They Can View

The information included in an Outlook record you open includes:

  • Details of the Event. The details of the event inserted in Outlook's standard fields, including the date and time of the event, case name (unless suppressed by option settings), event description (sometime called activity) and location, if inserted by the user. The event description is also inserted into the body of the appointment.
  • List of Events. A list of all related events to the trigger.
  • Trigger Information. On the form, information regarding the trigger event, including the date, description, jurisdiction and, if applicable, the type of service of process involved.
  • Controls for Updating the Trigger. On the added form, controls for updating the events by changing the trigger date and recalculating the date of the events, as well as a control for deleting all of the events related to the trigger.

DocketCalendar Terminology

The CalendarRules rules-based scheduling engine, which DocketCalendar uses to perform date calculations, relies upon two factors that apply in virtually every case. First, the deadlines are almost always based upon–or triggered by–events described by a court's procedural rules. Second, the procedural rules normally specify the length of time before or after that event that a deadline expires and the formula to be used to calculate that date.  

CalendarRules attorneys have identified the procedural rules that apply to a large percentage of the Federal and State courts and other tribunals that decide cases in the United States. From their review of those procedural rules, they have extracted the information that is is stored in the CalendarRules database and then utilized by DocketCalendar to perform deadline calculations:

  • Court Rules: All of the rules of procedure that apply in a case pending before a particular court or tribunal, or if available, a particular judge, are consolidated into a single set of rules applicable to a particular Jurisdiction.
  • List of Triggers for Each Jurisdiction: A comprehensive list of the trigger events–the events upon which deadlines are based–contained in all procedural rules applicable to the jurisdiction.
  • Related Events: A comprehensive list of the related events–deadlines–that are expressly calculated in reference to each trigger event and for each related event, the time period allowed by the procedural rules to comply with it.
  • Holiday List: A list of the official holidays applicable to the rule set for each jurisdiction.
  • Service Types: The types of service of court papers recognized under the applicable procedural rules for each jurisdiction.
  • Date Rule: For each related event, the formulas specified in the procedural rules that describe how to calculate the deadline, including how the time period is affected by service types and when the deadline falls on a weekend or legal holiday.
  • Rule Text: For each related Event, an ID and snippet of text for each provision of the procedural rules that describes the event and its relation to the trigger event and prescribes the time period for compliance.
  • Calendar Folder: Events created by a rules calculation will be placed automatically on the default calendar. You can change the default calendar folder for the DocketCalendar add-in installed on your computer workstation in options.
  • Jurisdiction: DocketCalendar uses the term jurisdiction as a shorthand to refer to all of the procedural rules that govern rule calculation for a case. Each jurisdiction on the use rules screen will automatically apply the federal rules of civil procedure, the local rules for that district.
  • Trigger, Trigger Event or Trigger Item: Virtually every deadline in a case is based upon and relates to an event spelled out in the procedural rules. In DocketCalendar, these events are called trigger events, trigger items or simply triggers. For example, summons and complaint served is the trigger.
  • Trigger Date: This is simply the date of the trigger event. Depending upon the trigger, it may be a date in the past or future, or today’s date—for example, the date of an upcoming trial or the date when a motion was served.
  • Related Events: This term refers to the deadlines and court appointments produced by a rules calculation based upon a trigger.  Most related events are deadlines, but where a trigger itself is a case-related court appointment that should appear on your calendar—e.g., deposition, hearing, trial, etc.—DocketCalendar will include it in the list as a Related Event.
  • Court Days; Holiday List; Rolling–Backward or Forward: When a deadline falls on a weekend or legal holiday. Each court has unique rules for how to address what to do with deadlines that land on a weekend or holiday. When court rules specify that a deadline is to be moved to the next court day, DocketCalendar refers to it as rolling forward; when court rules specify that the deadlines is to be moved to the previous court day, DocketCalendar refers to it as rolling backward.  
  • Service Type: Where a trigger is the service of a case filing, procedural rules in many courts add a period of time to the calculation of the related deadlines, depending upon the method of service or service type–for example, personal service, electronic service, service by mail, etc. DocketCalendar calls the addition of time to a deadline based upon the service type a service type offset.
  • Date Rule: When related events are calculated, DocketCalendar will allow you to view an abbreviated summary of the formula it used to calculate the deadline.  This is known as the date rule. DocketCalendar will also give you the option to include the date rule on the Outlook calendar entry for each of the related events.
  • Court Rule: DocketCalendar also allows you to view the text of the procedural rules which were used to formulate the date rule on which a deadline is based and the option to include the text in the body of the calendar entry for the deadline on the Outlook calendar. The court rule consists of two components:
  • Rule Text: One or more excerpts from the rules of procedural applicable to the case.
  • Rule ID: An abbreviation for the name of the applicable rules of civil procedure followed by the paragraph or section number for each rule text excerpt. For example, CCP 412.20(a)(3); 430.40(a), referring to two sections of the California Rules of Civil Procedure.

Secondary Calendars

How to Create a Secondary Google Calendar

  1. Open the Google calendar associated with your Google account. If you have not created a shortcut to access your calendar, type "calendar.google.com" in your browser's address bar and press the Enter key.
  1. On the bottom portion of the Calendar sidebar, click "+" to the right of the words "Other calendars" to display a menu.
  1. On that menu, choose "Create new calendar".

The Settings page for the new calendar will be displayed.

  1. Enter a name for your secondary calendar and click Create calendar.

A gray banner at the bottom of the page will indicate that the new calendar is being created.

  1. After the banner disappears from the page, click the arrow to the left of Settings at the top of the page to return to the list of your calendars.

The secondary calendar will appear in the list of calendars on the left side of the page. The new calendar will now appear in the dropdown list of Calendars to which you can post calculated events.

Modify Search Result View

This topic will show you how to configure the Outlook Instant Search so that you can use it to find calendar events created using DCO. From the list of search results, you will be able open, update, delete or apply one or more Categories to DCO events. To enable the Instant Search to search the information DCO adds to an Outlook appointment, you must modify Outlook's default Table View to include DCO fields--Trigger, Case and Event--as additional columns. This topic will also show you how to add a "filter" to the modified Table View to limit the Instant Search to DCO events occurring in the future. In this article, we will cover:

  • Modify a Table View to Include DCO Fields
  • Add a Filter To the Table View to Select Future Events

Modify a Table View to Include DocketCalendar Fields

To be able to search for events by the data in DocketCalendar-specific fields, such as Case Name, Trigger and Jurisdiction, you must add them as columns to the table that is displayed when you conduct a search, using the Instant Search. See, for example, Figure 1, where a search for the keyword "Return Day" yielded all of the CRO events based upon that Trigger.

Figure 1--Search for Trigger "Return Day" with DCO Fields Added to Table View

Create a New Table View by Copying the Default Table View

When you first install Outlook, it includes a single default Table View. Rather than modifying that view, it is preferable to copy it and then modify its settings.  

  1. Log into the Outlook account where the view will be copied.
  2. Open the Outlook calendar if it is not already open.
  3. Click on the View tab of the Ribbon menu at the top of the screen.
  4. Click on the Change Views button to display the Change Views menu screen.
  5. Click on Manage Views.

The Manage All Views screen will be displayed, showing a list of all existing views applicable to the current user

  1. Select the List view from the list and click the copy button.

The Copy View screen will be displayed.

  1. Enter a descriptive name for your copy of the Table view, such as CRO Search--Future Events.
  2. Click the OK button.

The Advanced View Settings will be displayed.

From this menu, you have access to all of the configuration settings for the view, including the placement of columns and creation of filters.

  1. If you know how to use the configuration settings, proceed to add the DCO columns to the view and, if you wish to do so, create one or more filters to limit the records you will display.
  2. If you want to wait to configure the columns, click the OK button to return you to the Manage All Views screen.

You will see the new Table View selected in the in the list.  You can click Apply if you want to immediately view your current calendar as a list.  Otherwise, click the OK button to return to the Calendar view.

Add the DCO Columns to the Table View

You will not be able to perform an Instant Search using DCO event information, such as Triggers and Jurisdiction, unless they are added to the columns of the Table view.  The DCO event description and the case name are exceptions, because DCO places these fields into the Outlook subject field by default.

Note:  In Configuring Options--Appointment Tab, you can change the default setting to remove the case name from the Outlook subject.  

  1. If the new Table view has been applied and is visible on your screen, click the View Setting button on the Current View section of the View menu. Otherwise, you will need to Open the Advanced View Settings Menu as follows:
  • After logging into Outlook, open the Outlook calendar.
  • Click on the View tab of the Ribbon menu at the top of the screen.
  • Click on the Change Views button to display the Change Views menu screen and then click on Manage Views.
  • Select the new Table view from the list and then click Modify.

The Advanced View Setting Menu will be displayed.

  1. Click Columns on the Advanced View Setting screen.

The Show Columns Screen will be displayed.

  1. Determine what DCO specific information fields you want to appear on the columns in addition to the fields Outlook places on a Table view by default.

The most useful fields for use with the Instant Search in conjunction with the standard Outlook fields are:

  • TriggerItemDescription. Meaning: Trigger. Useful to find all events related to a Trigger
  • JurisdictionDescription. Meaning: Rules Set Description. Useful to see all events relating to a particular Rule Set (Jurisdiction.
  • JurisdictionCode. Meaning: Abbreviation for Jurisdiction. If you recognize it, use it to conserve space on the Table columns.
  • CaseName. Meaning: Case Name. Not needed if Subject contains case name.
  • Text. Meaning: Variable. It could contain Key Words, but Categories are more useful.
  1. Determine which of the Outlook standard fields you want to include. We recommend that you retain the following Outlook fields:
  • Start: this is the date and time field.
  • Subject: by default this includes the case name and event description.
  • Location: this contains the content of the DCO location field; remove it if you do not use that field
  • Categories: leave it, particularly if you decide to use Categories to classify your events.
  1. Select the columns in the right panel that you want to remove (suggested: Attachment and In Folder).
  1. Click Remove.
  2. Repeat for each column you wish to remove.
  3. Next, add the DCO fields you decide to use for columns in the Table view from the left panel.
  • To find the DCO fields, select "User-defined fields" from the filter drop-down list above the Available columns panel on the left side of the screen to display the list of CRO fields.
  • Select a field and click Add to move it to the right panel.
  • Repeat until all of the fields have been selected.
  1. Then, move the fields up and down in the right panel using the Move Up and Move Down buttons until they are in the correct order.
  2. Click OK to return to the Advanced View Settings List and then click OK again to close the screen.
  3. You should now see the Table view with the columns you added on the screen.
  • Adjusting Column Sizes. You can adjust the width of the columns by dragging the vertical line that marks the border between two column to the left or right.
  • Re-ordering the Columns. You can re-order the fields by dragging them from one location to another. Adjust the column sizes so that the information for each column fits on the screen.

Add a Filter To the Table View to Select Future Events

You can install a filter on the Table view to remove past events from Instant Search results. You will find detailed information on creating filters, in Using Filters.

To create a filter that limits the Instant Search to future events, including today:

  1. Open the Advanced View Settings Menu for the Table View you created.
  2. Click the Filter button.

The Filter screen will open

  1. On the Advanced tab, click on the Field button to display the field group list and select the Start field from the Date/Time fields grouping.
  2. Select  "on or after" from the Conditions drop-down .
  3. Enter the word "Today" in the Value field.
  1. Click OK to return to the Advanced View Settings screen and then OK again to close it.

The filter has been added to the Table view.

Adding a Calendar to Outlook

You may choose the primary calendar of any Outlook account shared with you, or you can create a new calendar in an Outlook account to serve as the calendar folder. You must follow this procedure, or the new calendar will not work correctly as a calendar folder with DocketCalendar.

Add a Calendar to an Outlook Profile

Log into the Outlook account where you want to create the new calendar.

At the bottom of the screen, click on the three dots and select the folders icon.

Click on the email address and choose new folder from the context menu.

Display the dropdown list in the folder contains the field and select calendar items.

Press the OK button

Name the calendar.

Display the dropdown list in the folder contains the field and select calendar items.

Press the OK button

Manually Adding the Firmwide Calendar to the Shared Calendars List

  • Open the Outlook account of the staff member and navigate to the calendars page.
  • From the manage calendars section of the main menu at the top of the screen, select add calendar.
  • To add the firmwide calendar from the Address Book, click the from address book menu item.
  • To add the firmwide calendar by opening it, click the open shared calendar menu item. Enter the email address of the Outlook account where the calendar to be shared is located.
  • Click the OK button.
  • The shared firmwide calendar will appear in the list of Shared Calendars under the name or display name of the Outlook account where the firmwide calendar is located.

DocketCalendar Add-In Vanished

DocketCalendar should appear on a separate Add-In Tab in Outlook. If it is missing, most likely Outlook has disabled it.

This happens at start up. Outlook will display a colored bar across the top of the Outlook window that says something like "Outlook encountered a delay at start up and has disabled some items. It does not show the details unless you click into the message to view the details. 


If you click "OK" it will disable DocketCalendar until you re-enable it, but if you click into the details you will see that there is an option to enable the Add-In called "Always Enable" that will prevent Outlook from disabling DocketCalendar. On some versions of Outlook it will give you the option to ignore the warning for 30 days. Either of these will prevent Outlook from disabling DocketCalendar.


Check to see if your Add-In is disabled. 

Click on the File Menu in Outlook and select Add-Ins

If it's listed as Disabled you can change the dropdown at the bottom, it says “Comm Add-Ins” to “Disabled” Items and Click Go


If it's listed as Disabled you can change the dropdown at the bottom, it says “Com Add-Ins” to “Disabled” Items and Click Go

You will see DocketCalendarForOutlook listed in Dissabled Items. Highlight it and click “Enable.” Close and Restart Outlook.

If you still don’t see it, go back to Add-Ins and click the “Com Add-Ins” button.

Make Sure that DocketCalendarForOutlook is “Checked” If it is click ok and restart Outlook. If it is not checked, check it, click OK and restart Outlook.

Recalculate Discovery

When a trial date changes, changing (postponing) Trial dates in CA courts, where CCP 2024.020 (b) provides that a continuance or postponement of a trial date does not operate to reopen discovery proceedings.

This means that if a trial date is changed, several child events, and their sub-events, should not be updated. Namely Discovery Cutoff, Discovery Motion Cutoff, Expert Witness Discovery Cutoff, and Expert Witness Motion Cutoff, and their respective sub events.

When you recalculate at trial you will be prompted to chose to move Discovery Cutoff to the new Trial date or to keep Discovery Cutoff tied to the original date.

If you need to change a Discovery Cutoff Date separately from the Trial date, you can do this by opening the Discovery Cutoff event and then Clicking on the Related Events Tab Change the Start Time date and press the recalculate button.

Add or Remove Attendees

DocketCalendar search and update allows you to add or remove attendees from selected events across one or more triggers in a case.
  • Click on the search and update icon on the DocketCalendar toolbar.
  • Select the calendar from the calendar folder dropdown (Unless you calendar in multiple calendars, you should not need to change this setting)
  • Select a case from the case name dropdown.
  • Select a date from the cutoff date field. (The cutoff date defaults to today. If you want to leave deadlines that have already passed on you calendar, you will not need to change this setting. If you want to remove all of the events related to the case you are editing, back date to the first date in the series your are working on)
  • Click the Find button on the search and update toolbar. (To view events dependent upon other events, click hierarchy in the view dropdown box.)
  • Uncheck the events you do not want to modify, or use the checkbox in the header to uncheck all events and then check the events you want to modify.
  • To add an attendee, double-click on the attendees to add panel. To remove events, click on the attendees to remove panel.
  • Click Update Events.

Firm Calendar

DocketCalendar adds events to any Calendar you own or have shared access to. When you first install DocketCalendar it defaults to adding events to your Primary Calendar. Regardless of the size of your firm, we consider it a best practice to create an extra email account specifically dedicated to deadlines. Although you can call this Calendar anything, we generally recommend you simply give it the first name "Firm" and last name "Calendar" The Firm Calendar becomes the central place where all of your deadlines will be located.

There are several compelling reasons for this approach.

Changes to Personnel - Calendaring may be one person's responsibility today, and another person's responsibility next year. Having a central Firm Calendar means you simply assign the new person access to the Firm Calendar. You don't have to consider moving events from one Calendar to another and you'll always have total control over who has access to this calendar.

Coverage - When someone is out of the office or on vacation, having a Firm Calendar means that any individual with appropriate access to the Firm Calendar can handle routine management of deadlines.

Access - Having a Firm Calendar makes it easy to provide any person in the firm who may need to see deadlines access without having to rely on individuals to share their calendars.

Reporting - If you have multiple people calendaring separately each on their own calendar, in order to produce a firmwide report of deadlines, you would need to have access to all of the calendars where deadlines have been created and you would need to search them all to produce a report. With a central Firm Calendar, reports are easy to produce.

The Firm Calendar contains all deadlines. Each Attorney only gets the deadlines related to their matters.

Reporting - If you have multiple people calendaring for different Attorneys in the firm and each person is using their Calendar you will have the firm's deadlines spread throughout your users Outlook Calendars. If you wish to pull a report of deadlines, you would need to get each person who has created deadlines to produce a report and then compile that data into a single firmwide report.

Sample Report using Outlook Quick Search and the Firm Calendar

Outlook Mobile App

We strongly urge you to install the Outlook Mobile App on the mobile phones of staff members who will receive meeting invitations through DCO. There are several reasons for our recommendation.

Your Mobile Phone's Native Apps Can't Block DocketCalendar Meeting Invitations

When DocketCalendar events are sent to your calendar using meeting invitations, event notifications cannot be avoided, if you are using your smartphone's email and calendar applications to receive them. With the Outlook application installed on your desktop, an Outlook rule can be configured to suppress the appointment invitations DocketCalendar sends out to "attendees". But Outlook Rules won't work on your mobile phone's native email and calendar applications. When Outlook interacts with your mobile phone, your emails go to the phone's email app, and your appointments go to its calendar app. Both Android and iPhone standard applications will receive the DocketCalendar meeting invitations in their inboxes. But the Outlook Rule you configured for your Outlook desktop application will not stop the meeting invitations from showing up on your mobile phone. Consequently each time a DocketCalendar meeting invitation is received in your phone's calendar application, your phone will buzz, you will see a banner notification and, if you have an iPhone, the mobile phone's calendar app will display a red dot. On the iPhone you can disable the Invitation specifically but you cannot disable the red dot on the Calendar App unless you turn off all Notifications. If you turn off all Notifications, your phone will not notify you when you have an appointment on your calendar. The only option for the standard phone app to work without buzzing when you receive invites but to notify you when appointments are about to begin, is to leave Allow Notifications turned on, but Invitation notifications turned off. You will either need to ignore the red dots on the Calendar App, or you will need to accept them on the phone.

Using the Outlook Mobile App Will Honor Outlook Rules and Eliminate Unnecessary Notifications

To eliminate DocketCalendar meeting invitations and notifications, the simple solution is to replace your phone's standard mail and calendar applications with the Microsoft Outlook Phone App. The Outlook Mobile App consolidates both email and calendar in a single app. Mail and Calendar both support multiple email accounts so you can keep your business and personal account accessible within the same application or you can just use Outlook’s Phone App for firm related activities. In addition to having access to multiple accounts, the phone app allows you to view shared exchange calendars. This is a feature the standard phone calendars do not support. In addition, DocketCalendar meeting invitations will not show up in the Outlook Phone App. The events will flow directly to the calendar and, because of the Outlook Rule, the invitations will be deleted as they arrive in the user’s email account. This creates a seamless handoff of the events from DocketCalendar to Outlook to the Outlook Mobile App. As with any program, it has subtle differences but the functionality is improved in almost every way with the Microsoft Outlook Phone App.

User Guide Home Page

Related Events Report

  1. Locate an appointment record for an event that is one of a series created using a particular Trigger.
  • If you can find an appointment record on your calendar, double click on the appointment to display the list.
  • If you need to search for one of the events, or for an appointment with the particular Trigger, you can use Outlook's Instant Search to find it.
  • Open the appointment by double-clicking on it, either on the Outlook calendar or in the Table View.

You will see the list of events in the appointment record.

  1. On the All Events list, click the Export Events button.

From the dropdown list, choose either Event Report or Event List, depending upon the type of report you want to export.

The Event Report groups the Trigger information in a heading at the top.

The Event List report displays a list of all events relating to a Trigger with the Trigger, Case and Jurisdiction details repeated on each line of the report.

As soon as you click the button, the details of the events on the All Events list will be exported to an Excel spreadsheet, which will open immediately. You will see it in your Taskbar, represented by the Excel icon on an orange background.

  1. Click on the Excel icon to view the report.
  2. Adjust the width of the columns by dragging or double clicking the top of the column.
  3. Save the Report to your file system.

Outlook Instant Search

Outlook's Instant Search uses keywords to simultaneously search all of the fields in your event deadlines.

Using a few simple Outlook search options, you can conduct very quick and detailed reports. By searching the Start date field, Category and Required Attendees fields you can create reports by, Attorney, Case or Category type and Date Range.

Depending on which version of Outlook you have, you may see one of the following two search options

In  older versions of Outlook, search is contained on the top right side of the Calendar

When you click into the Search box, the toolbar will convert to search tools

Click + More to access additional fields to add to your search

In the newest version of Outlook the search box will be contained in the blue bar at the top of your Outlook window.

Click on the Arrow pointing down in the right side of the box.

You will see a dropdown with search options. Click + Add more options

In Advanced Options window opens to allow you to select additional fields for your search

Normally, it will be sufficient to enter a single "keyword" in the search box that you believe might be unique to the event you are looking for--for example, "dismiss" or "summary", etc. The Instant Search will find all events that contain the letters you type. If there are multiple record containing the same keyword, you will likely be able to see the case name or other information that will distinguish it from other similar events.

To narrow your search, you can enter a second keyword, such as a portion of the case name. Outlook automatically assumes you are looking for events that contain all of the keyword search terms--in other words, that contain the first word AND the second word, etc.

If you are still having difficulty finding the record in the list, try one of these techniques:

To look for an exact match, place quotes around the keyword search term, e.g., "motion for more definite statement" or "deposition of John Jason". 

 Use an "operator", such as AND, OR or NOT to limit the records--e.g., motion NOT dismiss--which will find all motions, except motions to dismiss.

To activate the search, hit the Enter key or the arrow in the right corner of the search box.

To open the record, double click on it.

Quick Start Guide

Once you have installed DocketCalendar, close and restart Outlook. You will now see an Add-Ins tab. Click the Add-Ins tab and then click the DocketCalendar button to launch DocketCalendar

The first time you lunch DocketCalendar, you will be prompted to enter your login credentials. Once you have entered your login credentials, you will not need to use a login and password again unless you logout.

When DocketCalendar first launches, it will set itself to add events to your personal default Outlook Calendar. You can change this setting later but for now we want try a test so begin by using the default settings.

Follow the red arrows. Select a court from the Jurisdiction dropdown menu. Then select a trigger from the Trigger menu. (If you select a service trigger, the service dropdown will become active. If you select a trigger with a time, trial or hearing for example, you will need to select a time ) Add a Case Name. (Your case name will be automatically saved when you add the events to your calendar)

Next follow the highlighted green boxes, click Calculate Events, you can uncheck any events you do not want to add to your calendar.

When you are ready to add your events to your calendar, follow the highlighted blue box, click Add Checked Events.

You will see a confirmation popup screen. (Check all your trigger details before you proceed) When you are ready, click create events.

You should now see your events on your calendar.

Click on any event in the group you have just added. You should see the DocketCalendar Events window covering the bottom half of the event screen. If you do not see it, look at the bottom of the event window for the DocketCalendar icon with the plus button. (Second screen shot below)

To move the DocketCalendar Events window up and down, follow the red arrow in the screen shot and click and drag the double line up or down. To delete all of the events in the series that you have just added, click the Delete All Events button highlighted in the green box. To collapse the Docket Calendar Event window, click the minus sign in the blue box.

To expand the Docket Calendar Events window, click the Plus sign highlighted in the blue box.

Outlook Reports Overview

Using DocketCalendar for Outlook and leveraging Microsoft Outlook's Calendar Search with some advance considerations can create detailed on the fly reports for all your clients and matters. Combine Outlook with Microsoft excel and you can easily create a report that can be used to show all client matters and all events calendared leveraging the power of Microsoft Excel’s filters.

This tutorial will walk you through the steps of setting up your Outlook with a few simple customizations that will not require technical computer understanding or IT support. Anyone who follows these instructions should be able to produce detailed litigation reports using DocketCalendar for Outlook, Microsoft Outlook search, and Microsoft Excel.

Searching for events in your Outlook Calendar will produce a list of all events meeting your search criteria. Outlooks out of the box will create a list report that includes the Subject, Location, Start, End Recurrence Pattern & Categories.

Outlook Default Search View:

For deadline reports, you will not need End and Recurrence Patter so you can right click on their names in the List View Header and select "Remove this Column" You can also remove the two Icons a the far left of the Report View. The Calendar Icon and the File Icon can also be removed.

You may or may not use Location and Categories but if you don't need them, if you remove them, the base report will have the Subject and Start Date. If you drag the Start date to the left of the Subject and widen the Subject field , this view can be printed right from Outlook using the Print function in your Calendar.

DocketCalendar populates all deadlines with a unique text string "DocketCalendarEvent" You can type this in to the Search box in the Body field and you will get a list of all events on the calendar created y DocketCalendar

Standard Deadline searches would typically be, All Deadlines, All Deadlines for a Date Range (This Week, Next Week), All Deadlines for a specific Case, All of a Type of Deadlines ( Deposition Days)

You can add Search Options by clicking on the "Add more options" button. Two important search options are Categories, and Start (which is your event start time)

With the Categories Option you can search for the default category "Court Rules" or you can create any category and use it to produce reports.

With the Start Option you can select This week or Next Week or any of the typical quick date range searches required for typical reports.

You can customize your search results to include DocketCalendar fields

Right Click on the header of your search results and select Field Chooser

Click on the Dropdown Arrow next to "Frequently used fields" and select "User defined fields in folder" Drag and Drop Trigger Item Description and Event Type Onto your Search Result Header.

To get the best report, you will want to select all of the items in the Results. Control A or you can Click on the first line item, hold your shift key down and then click on the last item. Right click and copy or Control C.

Next Open a new Microsoft Excel Document. Right Click and Past the text in Cell A1

Click in cell A1 again and the Ctrl A to select only the pasted fields. Then right click and select "Format Cells"

On the Alignment Tab, Select "Vertical -Top" & "Wrap Text"

On the Border Tab, Select the Border button second down that creates a single line separator.

Press Ok - You will have an easy to ready report of your Deadlines

Press Ctrl P to Print - You will need to set the page orientation to Landscape and select Custom Scaling. If you follow the format of this guide, 90% should give you a good print result. If you add more fields to your report, you may need to experiment with settings to get a good print result.

Once you have printed your report Save a copy and then Set up a template copy for future reports. You can select, in this example, from A2 to D2, click and drag down to the bottom row. Right Click and Delete. You will be left with only the first Row (The Header). The next time you need to produce a report, use this template and you will not have to format your document to print. You will only have to past your data ( Note: You may need to remove the additional header row) and a quick format of the cells, Wrap Text, Align to Top, and Line Separator and you are ready to print.

Report Template

Groupings in Reports

If you want to display all events for a particular day, jurisdiction or a location in a DCO Report, you can use groupings. Grouping can give you more room to display lengthy event descriptions in reports in columns, because grouping names are displayed in rows above the list of events displayed in each group rather than in columns.

Sample Report Showing Columns, Grouping and Date Formatting

Useful Groupings for DocketCalendar Reports

You are permitted up to four levels of groupings and groupings can be sorted. For instance you may choose to group your firmwide calendar by date in ascending order and then by jurisdiction or location. This would allow you to see all of the events in a particular court on each day of the week.

First Level Grouping

First level grouping can be Start, Jurisdiction Description and Location. Using Start for grouping results in the day, date and time showing up in rows. The advantage is that the date stands out and saves space on the columns. But grouping by the Start field will result in a grouping for each separate date and time combination, because Outlook does not allow you to group by time separately from date. If you combine grouping by Start with a Filter that displays only All Day events, your report will show all deadlines grouped by date–a useful report.

  • You will find Start and other fields used in an Outlook appointment in the “Frequently-used fields” and “All Appointment fields” groups.
  • Fields specific to DCO–Jurisdiction Description and Location– will display when you select “User-defined fields”.

Other Groupings

If appropriate, you can choose a field for your second grouping.

  • If you choose Jurisdiction Description for your first grouping and Start for your second, the result will be a separate breakdown for each  jurisdiction, showing all events in date order during the date range in question.
  • If you consistently use Location to refer to the venue or the location of the court house, your events will be organized by court.
  • If you use grouping by All Day Event, your deadlines and court appointments will be separated.

Creating a Grouping

To create Grouping:

  • Open the Report and click the View Settings Menu.
  • You can also open Advanced View Settings for the report without opening the report.
  • Click the Group by button.
  • The Group by Screen will open.  You will see that there are fields that allow you to create four levels of groupings.
  • Choose a field to use for the first grouping from the first drop down list under the caption “Group items by”.
  • To find the fields you want to use for groupings, use the filters at the bottom of the left panel of the screen to display the appropriate fields:
  • Select one of the groupings from the list at the bottom of the screen. The fields in that group will now be available in the dropdown list for the group you are working on.
  • Repeat for each level of grouping you want to create.
  • Click OK when you are done.
  • You will be returned to the Advanced View Settings screen.
  • Click OK again to close the screen.

Filtering and Sorting Reports

Open the Report and click the View Settings Menu.

You can also. Click the Filter button. The Filter screen will open.

Date Range Example:

Follow these steps when you create a filter.

  1. To create a Filter for a date range of two weeks:
  2. Click on the Advanced tab of the Filter Screen.
  3. Click on the Field button.
  4. Select Date and Time Fields and then select the Start field on the drop-down list that will be displayed.
  5. In the Condition drop-down box, select “between”.
  6. In the value box, enter “today and 15 days” (without quotes).
  1. Click the Add to List button

Click OK when you are done to return to the Advanced View Settings menu done and then OK again to close the screen.

Using Categories in Filters

If you use Categories with DocketCalendar events on your calendar, Category filters can provide a powerful mechanism for generating reports that deal with special classes events.  You can choose a single Category or several Categories at the same time.

To configure a filter to apply Categories to a Table View:

  • Open the Filter screen, as described above.
  • Click on the More Choices tab.
  • Click on the Categories button.

The Color Categories screen will be displayed with a complete list of the available Categories.

  • Click the check boxes next to each Category you want to include in the Filter.
  • Click the OK button when you are done.

You will be taken back to the  Filter screen.  You will see the selected Categories in the box next to the Categories button.

  • Click the OK button on the Filter screen and then click the OK button to close the Advanced View Settings

The Categories selected will be applied as separate filters. DCO events that belong to any of the selected Categories will be displayed on the screen. To remove the Categories as filters, you can delete them from the Categories box, or open the Color Categories screen and uncheck them.

Other Useful Filters

Most other filters will also be defined on the Advanced tab of the Filter screen. How to configure these filters is set forth on Figure 2 below.

  • Filter to identify DocketCalendar events.  A straight forward way to limit a report exclusively to DCO events is to include the DCO “DocketCalendarEvent” tag in the Message portion of appointments. You can also use the default Category "Court Rules" that DocketCalendar automatically adds to events in a filter to identify your deadlines.
  •  
  • Filter to Identify Particular Staff Members. If you are applying a Table Report view to the firmwide calendar, you can create filter that identifies DCO events for a single staff member  based upon meeting requests received.

Outlook Table Reports

You create a new Table View–either from scratch or by copying an existing View–from the Manage All Views screen.

  1. Click on the View tab on the Ribbon menu at the top of the screen.
  2. Click on the Change Views button to display the Change Views menu screen.
  3. Click on Manage Views.

The Manage All Views screen will be displayed, showing a list of all existing views. From that screen you can create a new View, copy and modify an existing view or configure an existing view (by clicking the Modify button).

Opening and Switching a View

You can change views quickly by clicking the View Icons that appear when you click the change view button.

Locating Advanced View Settings: Accessing Configuration Settings

Once you created your report, if you want to make changes, click the Modify button to open the Advanced View Settings Screen.

Creating and Saving a New Calendar View

As a first step, you will create a new Calendar view, called a Table view. You have two ways to create a new Table View report:  

  1. Create a Table View from scratch based upon the Table view template included with Outlook.
  2. Copy an existing table view report and change its configuration settings.

Create and Name a New View

  1. Open the Manage All Views screen by selecting Manage Views from Change View dropdown list.
  2. Click the New button to display the Create a New View dialog.
  3. Make sure Table is selected in the Type of view list and enter a descriptive name for the view, such as Two Week Firmwide Calendar.
  4. Click OK when you are done.

The Advanced View Setting screen will appear. Click OK. You will be returned to the Manage all Views screen, where you will see your report displayed in the list of all views that have been defined.

Choose, Order and Size Columns for the Your New Table View

A Table Report consists of a table with columns and rows. A column displays a portion of the information relating to an event, such as the date or event description. You will need to choose columns representing the information you want to see and adjust the size of the columns so that you can see enough of each piece of information.  

  • Which Columns You Should Choose for Your Report. A list of the columns that display DCO event information.
  • Selecting the Columns to Place on the Table Report. The mechanics of placing event information on the columns of the table on which the report is based.
  • Adjusting the Width and Re-ordering Columns. How to change the width of a column so that event information is fully displayed.

Which Columns Should You Choose

Once you have created and named your Table View report, you will need to select the columns of data that will be displayed in the report in columns.

Select the Columns to Place on the Table Report

  1. Open Advanced View Settings for the Report.
  2. To Add and Remove Columns, select the field you wish to add from the left or remove from the right and then click the Add or Remove button accordingly.

The Subject column should be in the list by default and need not be removed, unless you are replacing it with a combination of the CaseName and JurisdictionDescription fields.

Adding CalendarRules columns to your report. To locate fields specific to DCO, select “User-defined fields” from the filter drop-down list. Once selected, you will see JurisdictionDescription and ShortName, as well as other fields specific to DCO, in the list of available columns in the left panel.

Other relevant fields that are not already displayed may be found by choosing the All Appointment fields filter. If your report was opened at the time you made these changes, you will see the changes on the screen.

Adjusting the Width and Re-ordering Columns

You can use your mouse pointer to “drag” columns to the correct width and to drag them into a different position.

How To Configure the Width of the Columns in Your Table Report

  1. On the column heading row, move slowly and carefully to the right border of the field you want to resize until you see the field grab-bar appear.
  2. At that point, click and hold the left mouse button until you see vertical lines appear marking the right and left margins of the column. Then, while still holding down the mouse button, drag the column marker to the right or left until the column is the desired width and release the mouse button.
How to Switch Columns Already on the Column Heading Bar

If you need to switch the columns that you selected for the Table, you can move them around by dragging them to a different position on the column heading bar.

  1. On the column heading row, move your mouse pointer anywhere on the header for the column you want to move, then click on it using your left mouse button and hold it down. The column with turn a darker shade of the gray, indicating the you have selected it.
  2. While still holding down the mouse button, drag the column heading to the location where you want to move it. When you drag the column heading, it will turn black. As you move along the heading bar, you will see two opposing red arrows appear at the border between the columns.
  1. When the pointer appears where you want to re-locate the column, release the mouse button. The column will move and the left side of the column heading will be lined up to where the arrow was pointing.

Recalculate Deadlines

Sometimes you need to recalculate all of the events previously created, because the Trigger Date changed. You may have put in the wrong date, when you originally performed the date calculation. Or the trial, deposition or hearing may have been postponed. You can recalculate these events by changing the date of the original Trigger and DC will update the dates of all events that were originally calculated. To do this, find one of the events on the Outlook calendar selected as the "Calendar Folder," open it and use the recalculation controls “inside” the calendar record to perform the recalculation.

How to Recalculate Events:

  1. On the Outlook calendar selected as the Calendar Folder for the original calculation, find one of the events that DocketCalendar created.

If you follow our recommendation, the event will be located on the firmwide calendar. If the same person performs the recalculation, display the firmwide calendar, which will have been shared, and find one of the events.

  1. Double-click the event to open the Outlook appointment.

You will see a list of all events created using the Trigger Event with the event you opened highlighted in the list. At the top of the list you will see controls used to perform the recalculation.

  1. Click into the the Trigger Date control.

The date will be put into edit mode and you will see a drop-down arrow on the left side of the date.

  1. Either type in a new date, separating the month, day and year by a “/” or click on the drop-down arrow and choose a date from the date control.
  2. Click the Re-Calculate Events button in the toolbar above the list of events.

All of the events will be recalculated using the new Trigger Date. The original date will be shown in the first column; the recalculated date will be shown in the “New Event Date” column.

  1. If you do not want the date of a particular event to be changed, uncheck the checkbox in the Apt column next to the event description.
  2. When you are done, click the Update Checked Event button.
  1. When you see the message, asking whether you want to proceed with the update, click the Yes button.

Each event that remained checked will be moved to the new date on all of the calendars where they were originally placed. The date of any event that was unchecked will remain unchanged.

Search Tab--Research Tools

The Search tab provides access to a collection of tools designed to help you in performing docket calculations using DCO. From the Search you can:

  • Trigger Search–obtain help in locating the correct Trigger for a rules calculation by performing a keyword search of Triggers, Events and court rules in a particular Jurisdiction.
  • View Jurisdiction Holidays–view the official holidays used by DCO for date calculations using the procedural rules of a particular Jurisdiction.
  • Service Type Offsets–view the recognized types of service of process and the number of days that are added for each type when calculating deadlines under the procedural rules of a particular Jurisdiction.

Trigger Search

Purpose of Trigger Search

A keyword search in Trigger Search provides you a list of relevant Triggers, the provisions of the applicable procedural rules and the method used by DocketCalendar to calculate the deadlines in question.

Trigger Search is particularly helpful in two situations you will encounter frequently:

  • Locate the Trigger for a Case Event. Where a case event has occurred–for example, the receipt of the summons and complaint–and you are not certain whether a Trigger is involved and the exact terminology used to describe it in the list of Triggers on the Use Rules screen in DocketCalendar. In this case, you can use the Trigger Research tool to search for the keywords–in this example “summons” or “complaint” –in the Jurisdiction’s list of Triggers or its procedural rules to disclose all relevant Triggers.
  • Locate the Trigger Applicable to a Deadline You Wish to Calculate. Where you know the deadline you want to calculate but you don’t know what Triggers it relates to, you can search the Jurisdiction’s list of “events” to determine the Trigger used to calculate the deadline in question.

How to Search for a Trigger Using Trigger Research

To search for a Trigger:  

Open the DocketCalendar Add-In and click on the Search tab at the top of the screen.

The Search Tools screen will be displayed, opened to the Trigger Search tab.

To perform a search:

  • Select the Jurisdiction of the case in question from the dropdown list.
  • Enter a keyword or phrase.

Use as few words as possible, or the root of words, remembering that DCO will be looking for an exact match. For instance, if you type “appeal”, you will find “appealable”, but if you type “appealable”, you will not find “appeal”.

Choose whether you want to search any Triggers, Events or Rules within the Jurisdiction by clicking on the applicable checkboxes.

Trigger: This option will search for all Triggers in the Jurisdiction that include the keywords.

Event: This option will search through all events–deadlines and court events–in the Jurisdiction that include the keywords and find the Triggers used to calculate them.

Rules: This option will search for the keywords in all excerpts of procedural rules in the Jurisdiction that relate to events that are calculated using Triggers

Click the Find button.

DCO will search through the information you have selected and display a list of Triggers.

View Jurisdiction’s Holidays

What holidays are recognized for the purpose of rules calculations varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and when certain holidays are observed may vary from year to year, if they fall on a weekend. DocketCalendar automatically takes these holidays into account when calculating a deadline, but there will be times when you might want to view the actual list of holidays used by DocketCalendar and when they are observed, particularly if you practice before multiple courts. The Holiday tool allows you to do this.

To view a list of Holidays for  a Jurisdiction in your subscription:

Open the DCO Add-In, click on the Search tab at the top of the screen and then click on the Holidays.

Choose the Jurisdiction whose holidays you wish to view from the Jurisdiction dropdown box.

Specify a date range by inserting a Start Date and End Date in the date fields, or accept the default date range of one year from the beginning of the current date.

Click the Find button.

DocketCalendar will display a list of the holidays for the Jurisdiction and the dates on which they fall or are observed.

Service Type Offsets

The procedural rules for most courts add a specified number of days to respond to deadlines based upon service of pleadings and other case documents, utilizing certain methods of service, on the opposing party. DocketCalendar refers to this additional period of time, measured in days, as the “offset”. The offset takes into account that there may be a delay in receiving court papers served using certain methods of service, justifying adding more time to a deadline to respond. DCO recognizes six methods of service:

  • Personal or In hand–Usually no offset
  • Electronic–Usually no offset
  • By Fax–Usually no offset
  • Service by Mail on a Party Outside the State–usually an offset.
  • Express or Overnight–Usually an offset
  • Regular Mail–Usually an offset

DocketCalendar automatically takes these offsets into consideration when you perform docket calculations. The Service Types tool accessible from the Service Types tab of the Search screen, allows you view the offsets prescribed in a particular Jurisdiction.

To view a list of Service Type Offsets:

  1. Open the DocketCalendar  Add-In, click on the Search tab and then click on the Service Types tab.
  2. Choose the Jurisdiction whose Service Type offsets you wish to view from the Jurisdiction dropdown box.

Only the Jurisdictions in your DocketCalendar  subscription will appear in the list.

  1. Click the Find button.

DocketCalendar will display a list of the Service Types for the Jurisdiction and the number of days, if any, of the applicable offsets.

Exclude Deadlines from a Trigger

The Excluded Events tab provides advanced functionality that allows individual users to exclude events from being created during rules calculations. On the Excluded Events tab, you can:

  • Exclude events for individual Triggers from a selected Jurisdiction.
  • View the excluded events.
  • Restore the excluded events if they were excluded by mistake or need to be included for any other reason

To excluded events for a Trigger:

  1. Display the DCO Add-In, click on the Options tab and then click on the Excluded Events tab.

The Excluded Events screen will be displayed, showing the jurisdictions and Triggers, where events have been excluded. Clicking on the

(plus) sign before a Trigger discloses the list of excluded events.

  1. Click the Add button.

The Jurisdiction and Trigger dropdown fields will be displayed.

  1. Choose a Jurisdiction in your subscription from the Jurisdiction dropdown list.
  2. Choose a Trigger whose list of related events includes the events you want to exclude.
  3. Click the Preview Events button.

The list of events for the selected Jurisdiction and Trigger will be displayed.

  1. Check off the events you wish to exclude.
  2. Click the Save button when you are done.

A menu will be displaying with two choices (above).

  1. Choose whether you want to apply the exclusions only to the selected jurisdiction or to all related jurisdictions that contain the same Trigger.
  • Selecting “Apply To Selected Jurisdiction” will exclude the checked events for the single jurisdiction chosen.
  • Selecting “Apply To All Jurisdictions” will excluded the checked events in every jurisdiction in your subscription with the same Trigger and events as selected on the screen.

Note:  Use this feature where several jurisdictions include the same trigger and related events. This will generally apply where two or more jurisdictions employ the same procedural rules—for instance, if your subscription includes several federal bankruptcy courts or district courts.

A dialog will be displayed confirming that the Excluded Events List was successfully updated.

To view Excluded Events:

  1. Display the DCO Add-In, click on the Options tab and then click on the Excluded Events tab.
  2. Display the list of Jurisdictions and Triggers where events have been excluded.
  • If you have not added events to the the Excluded Events list during the current session, you will see the list of Jurisdictions and Triggers on the screen.
  • If you have added events to the list during the current session, or you only see a partial list of Jurisdictions and Triggers, click the View All button which will be present on the screen.
  1. To view the excluded events, click the plus sign next to the Trigger where the events are listed.

The plus sign next to the Trigger will change to a minus sign.  

The list of events that have been excluded will be displayed below the Trigger preceded by a checked check.

To restore Excluded Events:

  1. View the excluded events on the Excluded Events Screen.
  2. Uncheck the events you wish to remove from the list of Excluded Events.
  • If you uncheck a Jurisdiction, all excluded events for that Jurisdiction will be restored.
  • If you uncheck a Trigger, all excluded events for that Trigger will be restored.
  • If you uncheck an excluded event, only that event will be restored.

3. Click the Save button

  • Selecting “Apply To Selected Jurisdiction” will restore the checked events for the single jurisdiction chosen.
  • Selecting “Apply To All Jurisdictions” will restore the checked events in every jurisdiction in your subscription with the same Trigger and events as selected on the screen.

The confirmation dialog will be displayed confirming that the Excluded Events List was successfully updated.

Options--Tasks Tab

The options on the Tasks tab under the Options tab allow you to configure certain settings that affect how deadlines or appointments are displayed on Outlook’s To-Do task list, differently from when they are displayed as appointments on Outlook Calendars. As noted previously, we do not recommend that you configure DocketCalendar display events and deadlines as tasks, because of limitations in Outlook functionality.

Access Tasks Options. To access the settings relating to Tasks, click on the Options tab on DocketCalendar main screen and then click on the Tasks tab.

Task Folder. If you have chosen to treat deadlines or appointments as Tasks, they are stored by default in Outlook’s Task list. The Task Folder option gives you the ability to store them in a separate Task folder, so that they can be segregated from other tasks created using Outlook. To use this option, you will need to create a new Task list in your Outlook folders. Once it is created, it will appear in the Task Folder dropdown list, where it can be selected.

Case Name Location. (Default and Recommended setting: Prepend to Subject) This setting, like the setting for Appointments, determines the location of the case name either on the Subject line or in the body of the task. See Case Name Location in Appointment Options for the available choices.

Custom Text Location. (Default and Recommended setting: Prepend to Body) Similarly, if you use the Custom Text field, this setting determines it's location on the body of a Task. To understand the choices, see Custom Text Location in Appointment Options.

Options--Appointments Tab

The Appointments tab allows you to adjust setting related to DCO events that are placed on an Outlook calendar as appointments.

Access Appointments Options. To access the settings relating to Appointments, click on the Options tab on the DCO main screen and then click on the Appointments tab.

Default Calendar Folder. This field allows you to select a single calendar as the default calendar folder where DocketCalendar date calculations will be directly added. Calendars in the dropdown list will include your personal calendar, any additional calendars you create in your Outlook account and any calendars which have been shared with you. If you accept the default setting for this field, both deadlines and appointments will be placed on your default Outlook calendar–the single calendar Outlook automatically creates when it is installed. If you follow our recommendation, you should choose your firm’s firmwide calendar as the Default Calendar Folder. This will result in all date calculations for all cases handled by your firm being placed on a single calendar.   For the firmwide calendar, we recommend for a solo practice using the primary calendar of the solo practitioner and in a larger firm using the primary calendar of a separate Outlook account set up specifically for that purpose. Once created, your firm’s firmwide calendar will not appear in the list of the Default Calendar Folder field and will not be available to select until it has been shared with you.

You Can Ignore These Settings:

The following settings can generally be ignored:

  • Public Folders Scan/Public Folders Autoscan.  Default:  All folders.
  • Public Calendar “Favorites” Folder.  Default: Favorites.
  • Additional Shared Calendar Folder. Typically, when another staff member’s calendar has been shared with a staff member using the DocketCalendar Add-In, it will automatically appear in the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder. But if a shared calendar is not present–it may have been deleted or not correctly “accepted”–this option provides an alternate way to add it to the Calendar Folder. You do so by entering the email address of the staff member who shared the calendar and clicking Add.
  • Cache Calendar/Task Folders.  Default: Yes. This setting determines whether the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder is retained from session to session or retrieved from the Exchange Server when the DocketCalendar Add-In is started. It may affect how long it takes for the DocketCalendar Add-In to load. You should accept the default.  If recently added shared calendars fail to appear in the Calendar Folder list, temporarily changing the default from Yes to No and restarting the Add-In may solve the problem. If it persists, you should contact customer support.

Show Calendar Folder on “Use Rules Tab”. Default: Unchecked. If checked, the list of calendars to which you have access will appear in a dropdown list on the Use Rules tab. When you perform a rules calculation, you will have the option to choose any calendar in the list and the events you create will be placed on that calendar.

Appointment Length.  This setting determines the length of time that will be reserved on your calendar, when a rules calculation places an appointment event on your calendar that takes place at a specified time. The default is 60 minutes. If the Appointment w/Time Status setting is set to “busy”, your calendar will show that you are busy for the period of time selected.

Reminder For Appointments (minutes). The default amount of time before an appointment that you will receive a pop-up reminder in Outlook. The default reminder is 15 minutes.

Default Category for Appointments. If you use Outlook categories, you can select the one you want assigned to appointments by default. We recommend that you select Category “Z CRO”. You will need to create that Category in Outlook before it can be selected here. 

All Day Appointment Status. Default: “free”When you choose to display deadlines on your Outlook calendar as appointments, they are configured as all day events, so that they will appear at the top of the calendar, separated from other appointments scheduled for a particular time. Since normally Outlook will show you as “busy” during appointments, people looking at your calendar would not be able to tell when you were free to schedule a standard appointment on any day when at least one deadline appeared on your calendar. This setting is used to show your appointment status as “free” for these all day “appointments”.

Appointment w/Time Status.  Default:  “busy”.  This setting determines whether a calculated event that is a court appearance or appointment will show the time slot when it takes place as “busy” on your Outlook calendar, so that other people will not try to schedule other appointment at that time. The default is “busy”.

Case Name Location.  Default Setting: Prepend to subject. This option determines where the case name will be placed in the subject or the body of an Outlook calendar entry or Task list. For help on how to view the body of a deadline or appointment placed on your Outlook calendar. If you do not want to accept the default setting, select one of the other options from the dropdown list:

  • Prepend to subject. Puts the case name first on the subject line, before the event description. (Default and recommended setting)
  • Append to subject. Puts the case name after the event description in the subject line. If the event has a lengthy description, the case name may be cut off when you view the subject line on the Outlook calendar.
  • Prepend to body. Puts the case name in the body of the calendar entry, before the rule snippet or rule ID.
  • Append to body. Puts the case name in the body of the event after the location of the rule snippet or rule ID.
  • Don’t add. Removes the case name from the subject and body. This option is not recommended, because you may not be able to identify the case without the case name.

Custom Text Location. Default setting: Prepend to body. This option determines the location of custom text entered during docket calculations in the calendar entry on the Outlook calendar. It can be put at the beginning or end of the subject line or body of the calendar entry using the following selections:

  • Don’t add. Custom text not displayed.
  • Prepend to subject. Displayed at the beginning of the subject.
  • Append to subject. Displayed at the end of the subject.
  • Prepend to body. Displayed at the beginning of the body.
  • Append to body. Displayed at the end of the body.

Add “DocketCalendarEvent” Tag. Default setting: No. If enabled, this setting will configure DocketCalendar to automatically insert the text string “DocketCalendarEvent” into the body of each Outlook appointment and meeting invitation generated by DocketCalendar when deadlines and events are created. These text characters can be used to uniquely identify DocketCalendar appointments on the calendar of staff members as well as the meeting invitations for these events appearing in the Outlook inboxes of staff members. Using this identifier, staff members can search for DocketCalendar events among others on their calendars, create filters to only display these events on calendars or create Outlook “Rules” to remove automatically meeting invitations from their Outlook inboxes. Since we recommend that you set up an Outlook Rule to suppress meeting invitations and cancellations, this setting should be changed to “Yes”.

Options--General Tab

General Options

Default Jurisdiction.  If there is more than one court in your subscription, you can pick one as your default and it will appear on the screen every time you perform a rules calculation.

Appointment & Task.  Default:  All rules events are appointments. DocketCalendar has the ability to treat events as either Outlook appointments or tasks. We recommend keeping this set to the default value.

Add Court Rule to Body. Default: Rule Text. By default, the system adds the text from the rule underlying a date calculation to the body of the appointments or deadlines created on the Outlook calendar.

  • Don’t add: Rule text will not be added.
  • Rule Text: the default—rule text will be added.
  • Rule ID only. An identification code, frequently the official abbreviation used to refer to the applicable procedural rules, will be added

Add Date Rule to Body. Default: Yes. The Date Rule is an abbreviated summary of the calculation used to calculate the event date. 

Add Activity to BodyDefault: Yes. Each Event title or “Activity” is limited to the character length of Outlook’s Subject Line. If you are adding your Case Name to the Subject as well, in some cases the last few words of the Activity may become truncated. To overcome this limitation, this setting allows you to see the full text of each Activity repeated in the Body of the appointment.

Save Case Name. Default: “Yes”. By default, the system will save case names entered, so they can be re-used later. Change this option to No if you do not want to store case names.

Preload Related Events. Default: “Yes”. By default, when you open an event on your Outlook calendar, all of the related events created by the Trigger are displayed in a list with the event you opened highlighted in light red. This allows you to open any of these other events, but the process of loading the related events can cause older computers to slow down to an unacceptable level.  If you change the option to “No”, this will prevent the related events from loading when you open the event and speed things up. To view the other events, you can click the Load button, which will load the events on to the form on demand.

Recalculated Events. Default: When a trigger date gets changed, and the events are recalculated, there are two choices. One choice is to leave the event content alone (subject and body), and just update the date (default). The other choice is to replace the existing events with new events from the latest version of the rules. If you change the default, any changes to the description you may have made during the first calculation will be overwritten.

Check for Updates. Default: “Yes”. If yes, when the Add-In opens, it checks for rules updates and presents a notification if any are found.

Show Excluded Events. Default: “No”. You have the option of preventing certain related events from appearing when they create deadlines during rules calculations, using the Excluded Events tab. 

Show Trigger on Calendar. Default: If changed to yes, a check box will be shown on the Use Rules tab, and if checked during event creation process, the Trigger itself will be created as an appointment. For example, if you select Interrogatories Served and enter last Friday as the trigger date, an event called Interrogatories Served, dated last Friday, will be placed on the calendar if a user selects the checkbox “Trigger on Calendar”.  This option shows and hides that check box. DocketCalendar already creates these types of events for Triggers like Trial, or Hearing on Motion, where we know the trigger itself belongs on the calendar. Most users will not want to turn this option on.

Request Response. Default: Yes. We recommend switching this to no as most attendees will not accept the invites and simply delete them.

Show Confirmation Screen. Default: Yes. The confirmation screen appears after you have completed a calculation by clicking on Add Checked Items on the Use Rules Screen. It shows you the selections you have made during a rules calculation and gives you an opportunity (by clicking the Cancel button) to enter information you may have omitted.  Clicking Create Events completes the event creation process.

Remove Events from Calendars

There are three methods of removing and managing events with CalendarRules. Remove All Events Relating to a Trigger from All Calendars. You can delete all events relating to a single Trigger at the same time. The events will be removed from the firmwide calendar and marked “Canceled” on the calendars of staff members who received meeting invitations. The canceled events can be removed from those calendars by searching for keyword "canceled" and then selecting all events you wish to remove from calendar. To delete all events relating to a Trigger locate one of the events, double-click on it in the calendar.

Figure 2–Opening a Calendar Event.

The calendar entry will open to a screen that will show you all of the events that were created using the same Trigger Event. The event you opened will be highlighted.

  1. Click the Delete All Events button located above the list.
  • All events listed on the screen will be eliminated from the firmwide calendar or other Calendar Folder where they were posted directly.
  • Where the events were placed on a staff member’s calendar using meeting requests, a cancellation notice will appear in their Outlook inboxes and the event will be marked “Cancelled:”.

Remove Canceled Events from Staff Member Calendars

To remove these events from staff members calendars, the deletion process can be performed on the calendars of each of these staff members.  This task can be performed by the staff members themselves, or any other staff member with the DocketCalendar Add-In installed who has been granted the right to share these calendars.  The procedure is the same as deleting events on the firmwide calendar.

  1. In the calendar view of Outlook account, access the calendar whose events have been marked canceled.

Unless this is your own calendar, you will need to be granted sharing rights and display the calendar on your calendar screen. See the discussion in the previous section displaying shared calendars.

  1. Locate one of the events that was created using DocketCalendar.
  2. You can look at the calendar in day, week or month view to make it easier to see the event.
  3. If you don’t know the date of one of  the events, you can search for it by typing in some of the letters of the event in the search box.
  4. After you locate one of the events, double-click on it in the calendar.
  5. Click the Delete All Events button located on the menu at the top of the event listing.

Removing All Case Events Using  the Search and Update Tool. Using the Search and Update tool, the staff member who created events using DocketCalendar can locate all of the events created in a particular case and remove all events across all Triggers or selectively remove individual events within a specified time frame.  

To Use the Search and Update Tool to Delete Events:

  1. Click on the Search and Update icon located on the right side of the DocketCalendar Add-In Toolbar.

The Search and Update screen will be displayed.

  1. Select the Calendar from the Calendar Folder dropdown list where the events were posted when they were created.
  1. Select a case from Case Name dropdown list where the events were created.

You can only display events for a single case. If you need to remove events from more than one case, you will need to repeat the process for each case.

  1. Select a date from the Cutoff date field.
  1. Click the Find button on the Search and Update tool bar.
  • Search and Update will display all events for the selected case with a date on or after the Cutoff date. You will see a list of events, showing the Trigger used for calculating them.
  • If you want to see whether any of the events are dependent upon other events, select Hierarchy from the View dropdown box.
  1. Check the checkbox next to the events you wish to remove from the calendars.

All events will be checked by default. Uncheck the events you do not want to delete. You can remove all events for a single Trigger or all of the Triggers displayed.

  1. Click the Delete Events button on the toolbar.

All of the selected events will be removed from the selected calendar. Cancellation notices will be sent out for each event to the staff members who originally received the meeting invitations which placed these events on their calendars.

Deleting Individual Events From Calendars. You may simply want to delete one or two items from the firmwide calendar or an individual’s calendar. Staff members can delete individual events from their own calendar or shared calendars, provided they have deletion rights. When you delete a single event or deadline from the firmwide calendar or Calendar Folder, it is removed from that calendar and the event is marked canceled on the calendars of staff members who previously receive meeting requests. 

To delete individual calendar events on a staff member’s Outlook calendar:

  1. Open Outlook to the Calendar page.
  2. Display the calendar on which the events you wish to delete have been placed.

In addition to your own calendar, you can display the calendar belonging to any staff member who has granted you permission to share the calendar with them, including your firm’s firmwide calendar, by clicking the checkbox next to the name of the calendar in your list of shared calendars.

  1. Locate the event you wish to delete on the calendar.
  1. Double-click the event on the calendar you wish to delete.

The calendar event screen will open.

  1. Delete the event.
  • Deleting Event from Firmwide Calendar. If you are deleting an event on the firmwide calendar or other calendar on which the event was placed directly, click the Cancel Meeting button on the left side of the toolbar.

If the event has been placed on the calendars of other staff members through meeting requests, click the Send Cancellation button that will appear after you click on the Cancel Meeting button.

The event will be removed from the firmwide calendar completely, but for the staff members who received meeting invitations, the event will be marked “Canceled” (by adding the word to the Subject of the appointment), but will otherwise remain on their calendars. Note: To remove the canceled events, you will need to search for and locate them on the calendar where they are present and then delete them.

  • Deleting Events from Calendars Created Through Meeting Requests.  If the event was placed on a calendar through a meeting request, click the Delete button on the left side of the toolbar.

A small dialog will appear asking you whether you want to respond to the meeting organizer. Although it is not necessary to respond to the meeting organizer, you can choose either Yes or No, but not Cancel.

The event will be removed from the calendar where the deletion occurred, but will not affect any other calendar where the event has been placed.

Court-Observed Holidays

Each court has holidays defined through the year 2049. All calculations can exclude holidays, or roll, based on court-specific holidays and rule definitions.

Updates to Calendared Events

As part of your subscription, we record the triggers you apply to your calendar so that we can track updates against CalendarRules rules updates.  If a rule is updated that relates to a trigger or event you have used, we set a flag on your account indicating such. DocketCalendar for Outlook will check this flag every night, and if true, provide you with a notification so you can easily recalculate the event, delete the event, or in some cases add a new event under the trigger in question. Most rule updates are effective moving forward, and only apply retroactively where “just and practicable”, which is rarely the case. Attorneys need to make this decision on a case by case basis.

Rules Updates

Subscribers do not have to download or apply anything to update the rules. Our system is designed so that you are always automatically using the latest version of the rules. For example, let’s say as of December 1 the rule adding 3 days for electronic service changes from adding 3 days to not adding any days.  

As soon as we update the 3 to a 0 on our production server, all subscribers are automatically up to date, without doing a thing, it’s that simple. The next time an event is calculated with an electronic service type selected, the calculation will not add 3 days.

Court Rules Updates

DocketCalendar uses the CalendarRules engine and their proprietary technology and legal staff to build and maintain all rule sets. Because DocketCalendar is cloud-based, it can provide updates to customers in real-time, without any interaction required by end users.

  • Updates are released to the CalendarRules team in advance of publication and added to our system on the effective date. Any subscriber to that court is automatically in compliance with the new rules.
  • Sometimes a court will publish rule changes with an immediate effective date or for the next day. DocketCalendar is positioned to make these changes effective immediately so the end user does not have to apply any updates.

Don't See Your Court?

Just ask! DocketCalendar continues to build their library through feedback and customer demand. Once they build a rule set, it is monitored and kept it up to date, so generally new rules are not built until they have been requested. For most standard litigation related rule sets in State or Federal court, rules are built for free if there is at least one subscriber. Send requests for courts to support@docketcalendar.com

Can we customize the rules?

You cannot modify existing events or calculations. You can manually customize the event details and you can exclude events that you may not want to add to your Calendar. If you need further customization, contact us about building new rules for you.

Delete a Group of Events

Is there a way to delete a group of events, like when a trial settles, can I delete all the pre-trial dates at once, or do I have to delete them one at a time? Open any of the events related to trial, and you will see the related events in the bottom of the form. Simply click the delete all events button highlighted below. This will delete the trigger and all related events.

Categories

DocketCalendar works with you Microsoft Outlook Categories. This feature provides users with very powerful search and reporting capabilities.

In order to leverage this feature, you will need to set up Categories on each Outlook Calendar that will be writing events to the master Calendar. DocketCalendar gets its list of available Categories from your Primary Calendar. If you want to use for example a category called "Important" that category would need to be created on your calendar and a matching category would need to be created on the Firm Calendar or target calendar for your events.  (This functionality is part of Microsoft Outlook. DocketCalendar does not change this functionality. It works with the existing functionality)

Outlook does not send categories to attendees so this feature is most valuable for a central Calendar for the purpose of reporting or quickly finding a group of events like Deposition Days or Motions for Summary Cutoff Deadlines.

Default DocketCalendar Category

DocketCalendar, comes with a default category "Court Rules." You can change this to another category but we recommend leaving it set to "Court Rules." All other categories are subject to being placed in alphabetical order, however the "Court Rules" category is programmed to be subordinate to all other categories so that you can choose any category along with the default "Court Rules" category and on your calendar, you will see the color of the category you choose over "Court Rules"

The Default Category is used to assign a consistent variable to all DocketCalendar events. This makes it possible to produce a Quick Search report of all event deadlines on your calendar with a single search criteria.

To Create New Categories

Open an appointment screen by double-clicking on an existing appointment, or a blank calendar cell on your Primary Calendar first, then after following these steps repeat this process on your Firm Calendar.

The existing or blank appointment will open on the screen.

On the the ribbon menu, click the Categorize dropdown arrow and then click All Categories in the dropdown list.

To create a new category:

Click the New button to display the Add New Category screen.

Enter a name for the Category in the Name field.

Click the Color dropdown arrow and select a color for the Category or the accept the color already present in the color field.

Click the OK button when you are done.

The new Category will appear in the list.

Click OK when you are done.

Restart the DocketCalendar Add-In and the new Categories will appear in the Categories dropdown list.

To rename a Category:

Open the Color Categories screen as described above.

Click the checkbox next to the Category you wish to change.

The name of the checked Category will be highlighted.

Make changes to the name by typing over the highlighted text.

Optionally, change the color of the Category by choosing a different color from the Color dropdown panel.

Click OK when you are done.

The Color Category screen will close. The name of the Category will be changed.

Manually Adding a Shared Calendar

If you deleted or did not receive the email invitation to share the firmwide calendar, you can manually add it to the shared calendars list of any staff member. For this method to work, the owner of the shared calendar must have already sent you a sharing invitation. 

Manually add the firmwide calendar to the Shared Calendars list of a staff member:

  • Open the Outlook account of the staff member and navigate to the calendars page.
  • From the manage calendars section of the main menu at the top of the screen, select add calendar.
  • A menu will be displayed, giving you several options to add a calendar to the calendar page. From address book or open shared calendar can be used to manually add the firmwide calendar once it has been shared.
To add the firmwide calendar from the Address Book:
  • Click the from address book menu item.
  • Select the Outlook account where the calendar to be shared is located and click the add button.
  • Click the OK button.
To add the firmwide calendar by opening it:
  • Click the open shared calendar menu item.
  • Enter the email address of the Outlook account where the calendar to be shared is located.
  • Click the OK button.

Calculate Deadlines

  • Calendar Folder: Events created by a rules calculation are placed on the default calendar. You can change the default calendar folder in options. There is a setting to display the calendar folder on the use rules tab.
  • Jurisdiction: Choose a jurisdiction to calculate deadlines.
  • Trigger: Select a trigger from the trigger field dropdown list.
  • Trigger Date: Enter the date of the trigger in the date field.
  • Trigger Time: If the trigger is the type of event that will occur at a specific time, such as a hearing or court conference, enter the time of the event in the time control.
  • Service Type: If the selected trigger is the type of event that requires the service of a pleading or other document, the service type field will become visible on the screen. Select how the document was served from the dropdown list.
  • Show Trigger on Calendar: If you check this option, the selected trigger will appear on your calendar. (Note: This checkbox will only appear if you select show trigger on calendar in general options. Do not check if the trigger is a trial, deposition, hearing, or another event where the triggering event will already be placed on your calendar, or you will see a duplicate event.)
  • Location: Whatever you type in the location field will appear in the location field of events placed on your Outlook calendar as appointments.
  • Category: DocketCalendar will automatically assign the default Outlook category you selected in appointment options. 
  • Case Name: Enter a new case name, or select one from the dropdown list.
  • Text (called custom text in options): Any text you enter into this field will appear at the beginning of the body of each appointment you create using a particular trigger. You can change the default so that it appears at the beginning or end of the subject.

Cases Button

Any case you enter in the case name field will be automatically added to your list of cases. You can use the cases button to control which cases appear in the case name dropdown list.

When you click the cases button, you will see a list of the cases you entered in the case name field. The case names that were automatically saved are listed with the dropdown checkbox checked. 

 

Removing Cases
  • To remove a case name from the dropdown list, uncheck the checkbox. 
  • To delete a case from the list of case names permanently, click the delete button next to the name of the case. 
  • Click the save button when you are done. 
  • Click the X to close the case name window. 

 (Note: The case names entered, saved, and accessed using the cases button are only stored locally in the Outlook account of the local computer used for the calculation. If another person performs a date calculation for the same case, they will need to enter the case name once on their computer.)

Add Attendees

  • Select the attorneys and other staff members that you wish to post the events being calculated to their individual Outlook calendars by clicking on the add attendee button or double-clicking on the add attendees panel.
  • Select their names from the Outlook address book.
  • The names of the selected staff members will now be listed in the other attendees panel.

Add Attachments 

  • If you want to link one or more documents to the trigger and calculated events, click on the add attachments button or double-click on the add attachments panel.

Calculate Events 

  • Click calculate events button on the toolbar at the top of the screen to create events based on the trigger and trigger date.
  • The list of events will appear in a panel at the bottom of the use rules screen.

Modify or View Details of Calculated Events 

  • Select Events; Task v. Appointment: If you do not want to include an event, uncheck its checkbox. By default, all rules events are treated as appointments (Note: We discourage treating DocketCalendar events as tasks because of limitations in Outlook functionality.)  
  • Change Activity Description: You can change the description of individual events created by DocketCalendar.
  • Change Reminder: You can change the reminder for each event and the time before the event that you will receive a pop-up reminder in Outlook. The default reminder can be changed on the appointment options tab. Use the dropdown list to choose a different time period for the reminder.
  • View Court or Date Rule: You can view the text of the procedural rules that determine the date of the event and the method used to calculate the date. Click the view button next to each event in the court rule or date rule column to display this information in a pop-up window.

  • Add Checked Items: When you are done reviewing the calculated events, click the add checked items button.

  • By default, DocketCalendar will display a verification screen where you can review the information you entered.

  • Click the cancel button if you need to make corrections. Otherwise, click the create events button.
  • DocketCalendar will create the calculated events, and you will get a pop-up confirmation.

  • You can perform another rules calculation by clicking the new button at the top of the screen to clear the calculator screen, but you can retain all of the details and change or re-use the trigger. For example: when doing multiple depositions, change the date and press the calculate events button. This will prevent you from having to re-enter the attendees, case name, text, and other changes you have entered.

Event Reports

Creating  Event Reports from the Use Rules Screen

Exporting events to Excel from the Use Rules screen takes place after you create and post events to Outlook calendars, but before you perform your next date calculation or close the User Rules screen.

To create an Event reports from the Use Rules screen:

  1. Open the DCO Add-In.
  2. Fill out the fields on the Use Rules screen and perform a date calculation using the selected Trigger.
  3. Click the Calculate Events button to display a list of the events related to the Trigger Event.
  4. Make any changes you want to the listed events, such as entering the name of a deponent or the subject of a motion or a hearing.
  5. Click the Add Checked Events button.

This step is necessary if you want the changes you made to the events on the screen to be exported to Excel.

  1. Before you start a new date calculation or close the Use Rules screen, click the Export Events button on the main menu.
  2. From the dropdown list, choose either Event Report or Event List, depending upon the type of report you want to export.

As soon as you click the button, the details on the Use Rules screen will be exported to an Excel spreadsheet, which will open immediately. You will see it in your Taskbar, represented by the Excel icon on an orange background.

  1. Click on the Excel icon to view the report.
  2. Adjust the width of the columns as by double clicking or dragging the top of the column.
  3. Save the Report to your file system.

Export a Trigger List to Excel

You can export a list of all events relating to a Trigger Event to an Excel spreadsheet. You can export the list from two locations within DC: (1) the Use Rules screen; and (2) the Events list in an appointment record. The export is available in two formats: (1) the Event Report format, and (2) the Event List. The Event Report recites the Trigger, Jurisdiction and case information as a heading at the top of the report, followed by a list of the events. In the Event List, this information is repeated on each line of the report. The layout of the Event List is more amenable to further sorting, grouping and filtering using Excel tools than the Event Report format.

The Report Formats

The Event Report groups the Trigger information in a heading at the top.

Event Report Format

The Event List report displays a list of all events relating to a Trigger with the Trigger, Case and Jurisdiction details repeated on each line of the report.

Event List Format

Remove DocketCalendar Invites

When DCO posts events on an Outlook calendar, meeting invitations are sent to the staff member's email inbox; when events are removed, cancellation notices are sent out. Using an Outlook Rule, you can remove these notices and either move them to an Outlook folder or delete them entirely without affecting the functionality of DCO.

Enable DCO Search Tag

The Outlook Filter will use the DCO text string,"DocketCalendarEvent", which DCO can automatically inserts into every event and notification, to locate the text string. To De-activate this feature click on the Options tab and then click on the Appointments tab. At the bottom of the Appointments tab change the setting for Add “DocketCalendarEvent” Tag to No and then click the Save Button

Create an Outlook Rule to Move Meeting Invitations to a Folder

The Outlook Rule must be configured for the inbox of each staff member who receives DCO meeting invitations.

  1. Open Outlook for the staff member who wishes to suppress DCO meeting invitations and access the Outlook Mail application, if it is not already open.
  2. On the Quick Steps section of the Home tab, click on the Rules arrow, select Create Rule from the menu and when the Create Rule screen appears, click on the Advanced Options button .

The Rules Wizard screen will be displayed.

3. With the Rules Wizard screen open, check the option "with specific words in the body".

Scroll up the list; it is usually located near the top. When you make the selection, this option will appear in the Step 2 window.

4. In the Step 2 window, click on the "specific words" .

The Search Text dialog box will be displayed once again.

5. In the first field, enter the word "DocketCalendarEvent" (without quotes), click the Add button when you are done and then click the OK button.

6. When you are done, the first screen of the Rules Wizard should look similar to this:

7. Click the Next button to move to the next screen that starts with the question "What do you want to do with the message?" and check "delete it"

8. Click the Finish button.

If you elected to run the rule, all of the existing meeting invitations will be moved to the folder you specified.

Installing the Outlook Add-In

DocketCalendar for Outlook works through an Outlook Add-In, which you must download and install on each workstation where docket calculations will be performed.

The DocketCalendar Add-In is downloaded from the following link: https://tools.docketcalendar.com/outlook/setup.exe

To download and install it:

  1. Click on the link; or, if that does not work, copy and paste the link into your browser’s address bar and hit the Enter key.

This will cause your browser to begin downloading the DCO Add-In’s installation file, “setup.exe”.

2. Depending on the Internet browser you are using, do the following: 

  •  If you are using Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge, click the Run button on the banner at the bottom of the screen.
  • If you are using Google Chrome, double click on Setup.exe in the left bottom corner of your screen.
  • If you are using Firefox, click on the Save File button on the box that appears on the screen.

If you do not see another box in the top right corner, click on the downward pointing arrow to the right of the address bar to display it.

Double click on the word “setup.exe" in the box to start installation of the Add-In.

If you receive an error message during installation, warning you that DocketCalendar for Outlook “is not trusted,” then you will need to add the web address of the computer where the setup file is located, “www.docketcalendar.com,” If you need help contact support@docketcalendar.com

If you do not receive an error message, another box will appear on the screen, giving you the option to install the Add-In. Click the Install button.

After the setup program runs, another screen will appear, indicating that installation has been successful.

Click the Close button on that screen. The Add-In is now ready to use.

Using Microsoft Excel for Reports

Microsoft Excel can be used to augment the reporting capabilities of DocketCalendar by exporting events and deadlines to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, The primary reason for exporting Outlook data to Excel is to take advantage of Excel's more powerful formatting and printing functionality.

  • Export an Outlook Table View Report to Excel. First, you can move the events and deadlines in an Outlook Table View report to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
  • Export a Trigger List to Excel. Second, you can export all of the events generated by a Trigger to a spreadsheet in two available formats: (1) the Event Report format, which displays the Trigger information as the heading of the report and then lists the events; and (2) Event List, which displays a list of the events and includes the Trigger information as part of each event description. You can export the events from the Use Rules screen, after you calculate the events, or from the event listing located within the appointment record for any of the events relating to the Trigger.

DocketCalendar events have been transferred to a spreadsheet, you will need to adjust the width of columns so that the data can be viewed easily. You can expedite this process by creating an Excel template with the columns widths preconfigured.

Export an Outlook Table View Report to Excel

The easiest way to export the results of a Table View Report is to simply copy and paste them into a blank Excel spreadsheet or a preconfigured template.

Adjust the columns to display the text in each column.

  • You can adjust the width of each column manually by moving the mouse pointer across the column heading bar until it reach the line between two columns. When the mouse pointer changes to a grab bar, click and hold the left mouse button and drag the column to the desired width.
  • An easy and automatic way to adjust a column: at the position where the mouse pointer changes to a grab bar, double-click. The column will change to a width large enough to view every record in the column.

You can now save or print the spreadsheet or use Excel to format it in a way that makes it more useful for its intended purpose.

Use Blank Excel Spreadsheet Template:  If you plan to export a particular Table View report in the future, you can create a blank Excel spreadsheet template with columns of a preconfigured width and paste the Table View report contents into it the next time you want to export the Table View report.

Export a Trigger List to Excel

You can export a list of all events relating to a Trigger Event to an Excel spreadsheet. You can export the list from two locations within DocketCalendar: (1) The Use Rules screen; and (2) the Events list in an appointment record. The export is available in two formats: (1) the Event Report format, and (2) the Event List. The Event Report recites the Trigger, Jurisdiction and case information as a heading at the top of the report, followed by a list of the events. In the Event List, this information is repeated on each line of the report. The layout of the Event List is more amenable to further sorting, grouping and filtering using Excel tools than the Event Report format.

The Report Formats

The Event Report groups the Trigger information in a heading at the top.

Figure 1--Event Report Format: The Event List report displays a list of all events relating to a Trigger with the Trigger, Case and Jurisdiction details repeated on each line of the report.

Figure 2--Event List Format[/caption]

Creating  Event Reports from the Use Rules Screen

From the dropdown list, choose either Event Report or Event List, depending upon the type of report you want to export. See The Report Formats above.

As soon as you click the button, the details on the Use Rules screen will be exported to an Excel spreadsheet, which will open immediately. You will see it in your Taskbar, represented by the Excel icon on an orange background.

Creating  Event Reports from the Listing in an Event Record

When you create DocketCalendar events as Outlook appointments using a Trigger, each appointment contains a list of events calculated using the selected Trigger. The list is visible only to staff members who have installed the DCO Add-In in the Outlook desktop application. On the list in each appointment record created with the Trigger, you will find the same Export Events button as appears on the Use Rules screen.

  1. Click on the Excel i
  2. Adjust the width of the columns as explained above.
  3. Save the Report to your file system.

Save an Excel Spreadsheet as a Blank Template

If you want to eliminate the step of adjusting columns every time you export a particular Table View report to an Excel spreadsheet, you can save one of the spreadsheets you create as a blank spreadsheet template. The template will retain the column widths of the spreadsheet used to create it. To use the template, you will  open it as a blank Excel spreadsheet and paste the contents of the Table View report into it. The data in the columns of the Table View report will fit into the preconfigured columns of the template.

Create a Blank Excel Template

  1. Create the Table View report.
  2. Copy the rows of the report to a new Excel spreadsheet.
  3. Adjust the columns as desired.
  4. Delete all of the rows of the report.
  • You can hold the Ctrl key and then tap the "A" key to select all of the rows.
  • After selecting the rows, click the Delete key to remove the contents of the spreadsheet.

When you save the spreadsheet as a blank spreadsheet template, the column sizes will be retained.

  1. Save the report as a blank, preformatted template in a location where you can easily find it at a later time.
  • On the File menu, select Save As.
  • Browse to the location where you want to save the template.
  • Enter a name for the template in the File name box.
  • From the Save as type dropdown list select Excel Binary Workbook as the file type.
  • Click the Save button when you are done.

Copy the Event Report to the Excel Template

Once you create the report, you can copy its contents into the Excel template you created.

  1. Create the report.
  2. Copy all of the rows of the report.

The same commands used to copy a Table View report are available in Excel:

  • Select all of the rows.  You can hold the Ctrl key and tap the "A" key to copy all of the rows.
  • Copy the rows. You can hold the Ctrl key and tap the C key or click your right mouse button to display the context menu and click Copy to copy the highlighted rows.
  • Place the insertion point in the first cell of the spreadsheet before you paste the report into the template.
  • You can hold the Ctrl key and tap the V key or click your right mouse button to display the context menu and choose the first icon on the Paste Options menu item to paste the rows into the blank spreadsheet.

If the events in the report you used to create the template were substantially different in length than the events in your current report, you may need to adjust the width of the columns.

Checking for Rules Updates

At the beginning of each month updates to court rules are added into the system. If you have used a trigger that has been modified by court rules changes. You will see a Popup that notifies you that you have triggers on your calendar that may be impacted by the new rules changes. These changes are usually only going to apply to new deadlines calculated, but the Update screen will permit you to review all of the triggers you have where changes took place. One of three types of changes can occur.

  • Delete. The change in the procedural rule eliminated the event and it should be deleted.
  • Update. Some aspect of an event has been changed, usually the date calculation, and may require the current date to be updated.
  • Add. A new event has been added and can be added to the events that have already been calculated.

Be aware that our notification that rules affecting the events have changed does not necessarily mean that you will want to update all of the events, especially updates that change an existing deadline. For example, perhaps the affected date has been changed by stipulation or is irrelevant to the type of case. Or perhaps under the case law in your jurisdiction, the change is deemed not to apply to pending cases. Consequently, whether to apply an update will be your decision based upon your understanding of the applicable procedural and substantive law.

Controlling Update Notifications

You can disable automatic update notifications by changing the Check for Updates option from "Yes" to "No" on the General Options screen.  With automatic notification enabled, after the first of the month a screen, containing a Rules Update Notifications, will appear each time you open the DCO Add-In. To display a screen with the events that need to be updated, click on the Show Updates button on the Rules Update Notification screen.  Once you have processed and activated updates, you can prevent the notification from appearing by clicking "Do not remind me about this update".

With automatic notification disabled, you can view the Updates screen by clicking the update button on the right side of the Use Rules toolbar.

The Updates screen will be displayed, showing a list of events, grouped by the Trigger used to created them.

Reviewing and Updating Events

When you click the Show Updates button on the notification screen or the Updates button on the Use Rules toolbar, the Updates screen will appear. In the top half of the screen, you will see a list of the Triggers whose events have changed in the past month. 

If you select a Trigger by clicking on it, a list of the events relating to the Trigger that have changed will appear in a list in the bottom half of the Updates screen.

Figure 1--Updates Screen

Activating Updates

  1. Select a Trigger from the list.

The list of events relating to the Trigger that are affected by the update will be displayed.  See Figure 1--Updates Screen.

  1. Double-click on the applicable Trigger item (in the upper list).

An Outlook appointment record will open, showing the Trigger and a complete list of the events based upon the Trigger, including the events that have changed.

Note:  We recommend that you move the Outlook appointment record to the side of the Updates screen, so that you can see the original date for the event on the Updates screen and in the Outlook record at the same time.

Figure 2--Updates Screen and Event Record Side-by-Side

  1. Click the Re-Calculate Events button in the listing in the appointment record.
  • Updated. Any event with a status of "Updated" on Updates screen will show up with new date required by the changed procedural rule on the listing in the Outlook appointment.
  • Added.  Any event  with a status of "Added" will appear in the listing with the date required by the procedural rules.
  • Deleted.  Any event with a status of "Deleted" will be removed from the listing.

Figure 3--Updated Event in Outlook Appointment after Recalculation

By comparing the date and status of the original event on the Updates screen with the details of the event in the Outlook appointment record, you will be able to see the effect of the recalculation using the updated events.

  1. Once you are satisfied with the result of the recalculation, click the Update Checked Events button.

The updated events will be either added, updated or deleted from the Outlook calendars on which they appeared originally.

  1. When you are done updating the events, close the Outlook appointment record.

To see the updated date of an event in the Updates screen, click the refresh button at the top right of the Updates screen.

  1. If you are not ready to finalized these changes, simply exit the Outlook record without clicking the Update Checked Events button.

By clicking the Updates button on the Use Rules toolbar, you will be able to activate the updates when you are ready.