How to Share University Events and Important Dates with PLAN10

Important dates at university arrive from everywhere: the registrar’s email, a course page, a society’s group chat, a poster in the hallway. Every student copies the same dates into their own calendar, and some of them miss one.

In PLAN10, one student can collect those dates into a Countdown Collection and publish it. Classmates subscribe once and get the dates in their own Countdowns. This guide explains what that does today, how to set it up, and where its limits are.

What a Countdown Collection is

A countdown in PLAN10 is a date you are counting down to, with an optional time, a colour and a note. A Collection is a named group of countdowns, for example “Fall 2026 term dates” or “Student events 2026–27”. In Countdowns, each date shows how many days are left and which Collection it belongs to; your own dates sit in Personal.

• Filter by Collection: the Collections menu shows all of them, or only one, and opens Manage Collections.
• Calendar: each Collection has a switch for whether its dates appear on the Master Calendar.
• Reminders: you can turn reminders on for a whole Collection or for one date, for example at the countdown time or a day before.
• Size: a Collection can hold up to 300 countdowns. Larger sets are easier to use when split by purpose anyway.

Who it is useful for

Collections work best when many students need the same dates and nobody wants to type them twice. Some realistic examples:

The dates in this guide’s examples are fictional and do not belong to any real university or event.

Build the Collection

1. Create the Collection from Manage Collections in Countdowns. Give it a clear name and a one-line description; these become its listing in the Library.
2. Add the dates. Use Add Countdown, choose the Collection, and add a time if it matters (“registration opens at 8:00”).
3. Use the note for details people would otherwise ask about, such as “Teams of up to four. Registration closes 7 November.”
4. Check it the way a subscriber will see it: titles that make sense without context, consistent colours, and nothing personal.

Publish it to the Public Library

In the Public Library, choose + Publish, then Countdown Collection, and pick the Collection. Before anything is published, the dialog states exactly what will be shared.

• Published: each date’s title, date, time, colour and note.
• Never published: your reminders, what you have hidden, and your Calendar settings.
• Listing: the Collection’s own name and description; change them in the Collection’s settings.
• Visibility: Public lists it in the Library; Private by code keeps it out of browsing so only people with your code can open it, which suits a single class or society.

How classmates find and subscribe

In the Library, the Collections tab lists published Collections. Each card shows how many dates it holds and their range, the publisher, a rating, and how many students subscribed. Preview lists the dates before anyone commits.

Subscribe… opens a short sheet with the only choices that matter:

• Reminders: Off by default, so forty event dates do not start notifying anyone by surprise. Turn them on for the Collection, or for single dates, at any time.
• When the publisher updates it: Automatically, Ask me first (the default) or Don’t update.
• Tell me when it’s updated: one notification per update, separate from countdown reminders. On by default.

After subscribing, the dates appear in the subscriber’s Countdowns as a Collection of their own. It is a copy they own: they can rename a date, move it, hide it or delete it, and nothing they change reaches the publisher or anyone else.

How updates work

Dates change: an exam moves, an event is added. The publisher’s Collection works like a draft. Editing it changes nothing for subscribers until the publisher publishes it again, which creates a new version. In the Collection’s settings, the Share in the Public Library section shows what has changed since the last version (for example “2 added · 1 changed”) and offers Publish updates. Each subscriber’s update choice then decides what happens:

• Automatically: new dates and the publisher’s changes arrive by themselves. Anything the subscriber changed stays as they left it.
• Ask me first: the subscriber sees what changed and chooses when to apply it. The Library card shows Update available.
• Don’t update: the copy stays as it is; the subscriber can still check for changes.

If the publisher removes a date, it is removed from subscribers’ copies (and can be restored), unless a subscriber made a deliberate choice about it, such as editing it or turning its reminder on; then their copy is kept and marked as no longer in the publisher’s list. Reminders, visibility and calendar settings are never changed by an update.

Ownership, permissions and moderation

• Only the publisher can change the published Collection, publish new versions, switch it between Public and Private by code, or unpublish it, all from My Publications.
• Subscribers own their copies and can leave the subscription at any time. Students who subscribed can rate the Collection.
• Moderation: PLAN10 can hide or remove published resources that break the rules. Publishing is immediate, so publishers are responsible for checking dates before they share them.
• Accuracy: a Collection is only as reliable as its publisher. For official deadlines, the university’s own announcement remains the source of truth.

What works today, and what would need new features

It helps to be precise about what Collections can do now, what you can achieve by combining existing tools, and what are only ideas.

Example: a society’s events Collection

A student organization wants members to stop missing deadlines. One committee member creates “Student events 2026–27” with six dates: a health data hackathon, a clinical skills workshop, a research day poster deadline, a medical education conference abstract deadline, a case competition and a summer research application deadline. Each has a time and a short note. They publish it as Public and share the Library link with members who use PLAN10.

Members subscribe with reminders off, then turn reminders on only for the events they plan to attend. When the workshop moves by a week, the committee member edits the date and publishes again; members who chose Ask me first see the change and apply it with one step.

For the study side of the semester, see How to Organize Your Medical School Study Schedule, and for exam preparation, How to Prepare for USMLE Step 1 Using PLAN10.