Why opt for an online project calendar? These project manager calendars are critical for aligning your team, coordinating with other departments, and keeping on top of deadlines. There are several ways to create a project calendar, including using Excel, Google calendars, or Wrike’s shareable work management calendars.
In this article, I’ll show you how to create a project calendar using those three methods alongside visual examples. If you’re looking for an even faster way to get your projects scheduled in a way you can easily visualize them, check out Wrike’s monthly planner template, which will help you streamline tasks with a customizable request form, monitor task status and urgency, as well as spot overdue tasks.
But first, let’s do a quick overview of the basics!
What is a project calendar?
A project calendar is a structured way to plan and track project activities, ensuring deadlines are met and tasks are completed efficiently. As suggested by PMI, project calendars are a key part of time management when developing a project plan. They provide a calendar view of all scheduled work, helping teams stay aligned and manage their workload effectively.
There are many different types of project calendars, each serving a specific purpose.
Task calendar
As the name suggests, a task calendar focuses on specific project tasks and their deadlines. It helps teams see what needs to be done and when, making it easier to break down work into manageable steps.
Is your task list becoming way too long and unruly? A calendar tool can help organize everything in a structured way. Many teams use Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or other project management tools to create and share their task calendar, ensuring everyone knows their responsibilities.
Resource calendar
A resource calendar tracks the availability of team members, equipment, and workspaces, helping managers plan around work hours and prevent conflicts. This is especially important for complex projects with multiple teams working together.
With resource calendars, project managers can:
- View team availability in real time
- Balance workloads to prevent burnout
- Allocate resources efficiently for different project needs
- Adjust staffing based on demand and project phases
- Identify gaps in team capacity before they cause delays
- Use built-in collaboration features to streamline resource planning
Project schedule calendar
A project schedule calendar maps out the entire project, including all milestones, dependencies, and deadlines. It provides a high-level overview of what’s happening and when, helping teams track project progress and adjust timelines as needed.
Doesn’t that sound like a traditional calendar? Sort of, but teams can use project management software here to manage delays without having to manually input or tweak dates during the planning process.
Milestone calendar
A milestone calendar highlights only the key deadlines and deliverables, keeping project teams focused on major goals rather than just daily tasks. This is important for long-term projects with multiple phases, as it provides a clear roadmap for both internal teams and external stakeholders and ensures they don’t get overwhelmed with too much info.
Project calendar examples
Every team manages projects differently. The way you set up your project calendar depends on what you need to track and how you want your work to flow.
For example, marketing teams handle multiple campaigns, product launches, and content approvals simultaneously. A structured marketing campaign calendar can help map out launch dates, track specific tasks, and coordinate content across different channels. Without a structured calendar for project planning, deadlines can slip, assets can get lost, and campaigns can end up feeling rushed.
Now, let’s dive into the three methods for creating your project management calendar.
3 ways to create a project calendar
How do you set up a calendar for project management planning? Should you use a simple spreadsheet, an online calendar tool, or project management software that keeps everything in sync?
The right choice depends on your team’s needs. I’m going to break down three different ways to create a project calendar, along with the pros and cons of each.
1. Create a project calendar using Wrike
Need to plan projects collaboratively and connect launch dates to underlying work? You need Wrike’s calendars.
Wrike’s calendars provide a high-level view of scheduled tasks by day, week, month, or year. Scheduled tasks contain all related information, files, and conversations, so it’s easy to jump from the calendar right into work. Simply drag and drop the task on the calendar to change due dates, and all dependent tasks will follow suit.
Having a shareable task and time management calendar allows you to view project plans for your own team and others. Whether it’s planning blog posts to correspond with a product launch or scheduling email campaigns around an upcoming customer event, Wrike’s calendars make it easy to align efforts and prevent deadlines from falling through the cracks.
Looking to visualize your calendar differently? Try Wrike’s Gantt charts for yourself.
Gantt charts are a timeline view of all ongoing projects and deadlines. They show task durations, connect task dependencies, note task assignees, and compare progress to the projects’ critical path. You can also view several projects on the same Gantt chart to see which ones overlap.
I always tell teams that if their work is scattered across different tools, it’s only a matter of time before they begin to lose track. Hootsuite’s marketing operations team used to deal with this exact issue, switching between emails and spreadsheets just to keep track of projects. But once they started using Wrike, everything changed.
“We’re very excited about Wrike calendars,” says Symon More, Resource Manager at Hootsuite.
[Wrike calendars] allow us to align all of our tactics, not only throughout the regions but also within HQ, from marketing pushes to product releases, feature releases, and partner integrations. Allowing us to align everything makes our messaging a lot clearer for our customers.
Symon More, Resource Manager
Pros of using Wrike’s calendars
- Designed to help teams manage projects effectively
- Directly link calendars to project tasks
- Easy to adjust schedules
- Teams can work together without managing separate files
- Scales well for large teams and multiphase projects
- Prebuilt calendar templates
- Includes a free trial, meaning teams can test features before committing
Tip: Wrike’s calendars are best suited for team collaboration rather than individual use. Check out our paid plans to avail of our full feature set.
2. Create a project calendar using Google Calendar
Source: Google Calendar
An online calendar like Google Calendar is a good solution for teams who want to collaborate on project planning in real time.
Google Calendar is flexible, allowing you to create multiple calendars and view them simultaneously or one at a time. You can organize your calendars in one of two ways:
- By assignee: Create a separate calendar for each team member and put their task deadline on this personal calendar. Team managers can look at each team member’s workload (or multiple workloads) to see which deadlines are approaching.
- By project: Create a separate calendar for each major team project, and enter task due dates and project milestones. Compare project timelines to see if work should be moved around to accommodate high-priority tasks or heavy workloads.
Although Google Calendar can be an efficient method for collaboratively planning projects, it’s mostly used to schedule meetings.
Pros of using Google Calendar
- Updates sync instantly across devices
- Team members can access calendars from anywhere
- Works well for scheduling meetings
- Integrates with other tools
- Good for tracking project timelines
Cons of using Google Calendar
- No direct way to track project tasks
- Limited visibility outside the organization (e.g., guests cannot view calendar details)
- Difficult to manage complex projects
- No built-in reporting
- Requires manual updates
3. Create a project calendar in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets
Microsoft Excel can be a default project planning tool because it’s familiar to many people. Formatting calendars in Excel is simplified with its native table view.
Source: Microsoft Excel
Excel has a prebuilt project calendar template, so you can save time creating one from scratch and easily jump into planning. The good news is that, if your team already works with Microsoft programs, they’ll likely have access to Excel and can easily open and edit the project calendar.
However, while Microsoft Excel offers a web-based version with version control, using it as a project management calendar can still require manual updates. If multiple people are editing, teams may need to track changes carefully to avoid confusion and ensure everyone is working with the latest version. Upkeep can be time consuming and costly.
While adding a finalized calendar or creating a work schedule in Excel is easy, collaborating around a shared project manager calendar is difficult. Task management within Excel is also challenging.
Pros of using Excel
- Most teams are already familiar with Excel
- You can create custom schedules and calendar templates
- If your company already uses Microsoft Office, no extra purchases are needed
- Works well for simple project planning
- Useful for offline planning
Cons of using Microsoft Excel
- Lacks real-time updates
- Difficult to assign tasks and monitor project changes
- More prone to human error
- Not ideal for large teams
Which project calendar is right for you?
Now that you’ve learned different ways to set up a project calendar, it’s time to figure out what works best for you. Some teams prefer the structure of a spreadsheet, while others need a more interactive project management tool that updates in real time.
Wrike’s calendar features are more robust than Excel and Google calendars, making them the clear choice for your next project management plan. A Wrike subscription will also allow you to avail of a selection of prebuilt templates, including one for monthly planning that will help you set up a calendar and pair it with a variety of other features like Gantt charts and project dashboards that will supercharge your project planning.
