Riding the wave of success generated by its versatile utilities package, Now Software has come up with an ambitious entry in the calendar-software arena that promises to be every bit as successful as its Now Utilities, Now Up-to-Date is a full-featured but elegantly simple program that not only lets you schedule appointments and set reminders for your own personal schedule but also allows workgroups to schedule events over an AppleTalk network.
What distinguishes Now Up-to-Date (NUD) from other appointment-scheduling programs is its network strategy and superb interface. Unlike On Technology's Meeting Maker, for example, which was designed specifically as a workgroup scheduling program, NUD was built primarily as a personal scheduler that can also be shared over a network. As a result, unlike Meeting Maker, NUD doesn't require you to connect to a server to use the program. You can save a copy of your calendar to your PowerBook, for example, make changes while on the road, and then connect to the NUD calendar server when you return to the office and update your calendar.
In addition, although NUD is feature-rich, it's easy to learn and use. Its well-designed interface is intuitive and uncluttered, and even novice users can have the program up and running immediately. NUD comes closer than any other program currently available to mimicking the process of using a paper appointment book, but it has all the added software conveniences of easy updating, reminders, and workgroup sharing.
When you open NUD, the default view is of the current calendar month, but you can also opt for a daily, weekly, or yearly view. To enter appointments, you double-click on a day and NUD pops up a scrolling page that lists the hours of the day. You dick and drag through the duration of your appointment (3 p.m. to 4 p.m. for example) and type in its name. NUD handles event durations in 15-minute increments, beginning on the hour. When you return to your monthly calendar, you can see the time and as much of the event’s name as fits on a single line in the date square.
If you want to enter details on an event, you can call up an Event Info box that lets you enter descriptive notes, set up recurring events, and add audible and visual reminders. Double-clicking on an event brings up the Event Info box that describes it. NUD even lets you schedule any number of overlapping events and display them graphically.
With NUD, it's easy to customize the look of your calendar .You can create and save various styles that define fonts, text styles, and text color for calendar headers, date numbers, events, and other elements. This feature makes it easy to set up visual indicators that tell you at a glance which events on your calendar are personal and which are business-related, for example. In the month view, you can also create banners to label events that span several days,
NUD supplies numerous printing options. You can print any of the on-screen views, and a wall-chart option spreads one view over 4,9, or 16 sheets of paper. If you use an appointment book, NUD provides a wide range of formats, page sizes, and layout options for the DayTimer, DayRunner, Franklin Planner, and FiloFax.
With its ease of use, customizable features, and straightforward design, NUD shines as a personal scheduler. However, with a few minor exceptions, it also works well as a workgroup scheduler, allowing users on a network to set up and share public-event calendars that display such things as project schedules and staff meetings.
You use the Chooser to connect to a NUD calendar server. Once connected, you can create a new public calendar or view any of those that already exist. As you create new calendars, NUD allows you to password-protect them. You can set up two levels of security, one that controls who can view a public calendar and another that controls who can edit it.
You can subscribe to just one public calendar or to any number of the public calendars on a server. When you subscribe to a public calendar, NUD copies the events schedule from that calendar to your personal-calendar file. To ensure that your calendar is always up-to-date, you can leave your calendar file open in the background under System 7 and set NUD to poll the calendars you’ve subscribed to at regular intervals.
To enter an event into a public calendar you’ve subscribed to, you simply create it as you would any other event and then select the calendar you want to post it to from a list that appears in the Event Info box. To help you sift through all the event information displayed in your personal calendar (it can add up, especially if you’ve subscribed to several calendars), you can use a different text color and style for each public calendar. Another handy feature lets you set NUD to mark with a bullet each new event you haven’t read. When you elect to “unsubscribe" from any public calendar at any time, the events associated with that calendar are automatically removed from your file.
What makes NUD so versatile, especially for users who travel, is that it lets you save public events to your personal calendar file, work with the file off-line (although you can’t modify public events), and then reconnect to the server and have NUD automatically update vour calendar with public-event information.
From a network administrator’s point of view, setting up a NUD calendar server is a no-brainer: You simply drop an extension into the server's System Folder. The extension can run in the background on any Mae on the network. Once it's been installed, the calendar server requires no maintenance.
The flip side of NUD’s minimal administration requirements is its lack of adequate access controls. Because serialization is handled at the application level rather than from the server, site administrators can't control which users and groups can access public calendars. Moreover, NUD lacks a warning device for flagging events that conflict with one another in public calendars.
The Bottom Line
To be truly useful to business users, a calendar program must succeed first as a personal scheduler and second as a network group scheduler. With its accessible interface, flexibility, and well-designed features, NUD works supremely as a personal calendar program, and it will have special appeal to users who frequently need to work with their calendar off-line. Its technique for automatically updating personal calendars when users reconnect to the server is a real plus.
NUD’s network implementation is also noteworthy for its simplicity and maintenance-free design. Users will have no trouble deciphering the concept of shared public calendars, although administrators at large sites will find NUD somewhat lacking when it comes to adequate access controls. This drawback aside, NUD is the best business solution we’ve seen to date for managing busy schedules — both personal and shared.
Janus, Susan. (July 1992). Now Up-To-Date. MacUser. (pgs. 76, 79, 81).
Now Software
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2020-01-08 / 
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Now-Up-to-Date-1-0.1-demo.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
