# April's Automatic Timelines - Example
![[Obsidian_M1HZan1pxB.gif]]
Timelines can be a great way to show and manage the historic events that are happening in your game or world. There are a few different wayts to manage timelines within Obsidian. All of which have their different strengths. [[April's Automatic Timelines]] is the latest plugin (06/05/2023) to provide Timeline functionality and it works in a nice easy to use way.
First you need to install the plugin from Settings > Community Plugins > Browse > Search ([[April's Automatic Timelines]]) > Install > Enable
Make sure you read the Read Me for up to date instructions on how to use this plugin.
## Event Notes - Front Matter
> [!warning]+ Message
> \-\-\-
> aat-event-start-date: 359 # Required
> aat-event-end-date: 435 # Optional, can be set to `true` if you want it to span throughout the entire timeline
> aat-render-enabled: true # Enables this note to be rendered in a timeline
> timelines: \[timelinename, anothertimelinename\] # This note should be rendered in the timeline with the name "timeline" or "event"
> \-\-\-
If you check the front matter on this note you can see the default options for setting up a new event. Simply put this front matter into a note, modify the values per your required dates and it will be rendered in the timeline.
Then from any note you can add [[Front Matter (YAML) and Tags|Front Matter]] per the instructions.
## Render Timeline In Note
To display a timeline in a note type the following. The name of the timeline needs to match the one you have used in the Frontmatter.
> [!warning]+ Message
> \`\`\`aat-vertical
> timelinename
> \`\`\`
## Fantasy Calendar Integration
The Fantasy Calendar plugin by Jeremy Valentine is a fantastic addon to a vault for anyone who needs to track events, days, months, etc in their fantasy world. Turns out though that you can integrate both plugins together. As you add event notes, both the Timeline and the Calendar can update to display that event. There is a trick to this though, you must create new Events as notes (using a Template) as creating the events through the calendar itself will not work.
- Install both plugins.
- Go into the settings for April's Automatic Timelines and tick the option to `enable presets for Fantasy Calendar`.
## Create Templates
Copy this code into a new note and save it in your templates folder to use. These templates assume you have the Fantasy Calendar integration enabled. You can then press your hotkey to trigger a template > type: timeline and pick the template that suits your need.
````
---
aat-render-enabled: true
timelines:
- timelinename
fc-date: 1491-01-11
fc-end: 1491-01-12
fc-category: Event Category 1
fc-display-name: EventName
---
%% The first picture will be displayed in the timeline %%
%% The first few lines of text will
be fisplayed in the timeline %%
![[Pasted image 20230507075156.png]]
TEXT THIS IS ME
````
<br>
````
> [!note]- Timeline - Insert Event into Frontmatter
> aat-render-enabled: false # Enables this note to be rendered in a timeline
> timelines: [timelinename] # This note should be rendered in the timeline with the name "timeline" or "event"
> fc-date: 1491-01-11
> fc-end: 1491-01-12
> fc-category: Event Category 1
> fc-display-name: EventName
````
<br>
````
```aat-vertical
timelinename
```
````