Master Calendars in SharePoint
Update
Greg Maass has included an extended case study of how his team is using Content Types to drive a master calendar. Check the comments section for details.
Original Article
Sometimes it’s worth revisiting a question because it works its way down the stack and isn’t easily found by new readers. Back in December, “How can I see multiple calendars in a single view?” prompted a pretty good discussion.
As I reviewed the replies, Greg Maass came up with a very nice solution that many people would not think of:
… you can combine calendars by using one calendar list, and use multiple content types within the list. That way, everyone can add distinct types of events, and have dedicated views of specific content types (essentially a separate calendar), and then have a master view that displays all of the content types in a calendar view.
Be sure to base your content types on the Event base content type, or else you won’t be able to use the “Connect to Outlook” functionality….
Greg Maass
I like that… especially the reminder to use the Event base content type to get the correct functionality. Try out this solution and I think you’ll find something you like. Thanks Greg. Nice touch.
If there are enough comments here and the rating is pretty good, I’ll do a screencast to show how all this works. Any takers?
What a cool solution. Thanks for posting this.
Michael – Agreed. I really started smiling while reviewing Greg’s response. Such a nice, elegant solution to a request that’s made daily in most business offices. — Mark
A screencast would be great. I’m planning to use Sharepoint to replace a 3rd party calendering product and this functionality would be great!
I’m all for a screencast that goes over the process (including creating the proper content types as well if possible).
Thank you.
Awesome idea and would love to see a screencast
Glad that people are finding this useful. To flesh it out, I’ll give a couple of examples of how we use this functionality:
1) Our Training and Development team schedules hundreds of classes a quarter. They use a “Training Class” content type to enter class, instructor, and room information. The room information is used to present a “Room Booking view” that displays room information rather than class information, for use when people need room availability information. They also rent out rooms for non class events, and these are captured in another content type, which can be wrapped into the master calender view. They also have another content type that basically tracks tasks, so that they can see on the calendar if someone is scheduled to do something when a class is being taught. Previously none of this information was aggregated and caused extra work and confusion. Having everything consolidated brings huge value.
2)Other teams participate in job fairs, so there is a job fair content type that captures information about upcoming job fairs (and also uses a separate list and workflows to allow people to sign up for shifts at the events.
One downside I have found is that attaching the master calendar to Outlook does not give you any options for attaching a certain view- it is all or nothing. Haven’t explored filtering on the Outlook end, and that might work.
Cheers,
Greg
Greg – Thanks for the extended input. Anytime you want to write an article documenting your solution, I’ll chip in by creating a screen cast to match your documentation. — Mark
I must be missing something, I can’t seem to locate the “Event” content type to use as a parent when I go to create new content types for the calendar.
I’m using WSS 3, for some reason though I don’t see the EVENT content type anywhere. It appears to be part of the “_hidden” group… suggestions on what I can do?
Here is the easiest way to make it not hidden:
http://www.elumenotion.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=15
In our environment, it isn’t a concern to leave this exposed, but if you have users with eleveated permissions you like messing around you would want to hide it again…
thanks for the suggestion.
very relevant to what we do today.
just had one of those ‘why hadn’t we thought of it earlier’ moments.
Forgive me for this basic question — I’m fairly new to SP. I’ve added content types to our ‘master’ Events List, but I’m not sure how to present these specific event types on sites/pages in a calendar view. Am I missing something? I’ve been able to use a CQWP to display the event title but it would be more helpful to see this in a calendar view (with date, time, location, etc.)
Thank you.
~Laura
Thanks for this post. This is very helpful as this question comes up often when working with clients.
I’m just writing a feature to inherit from the event content type for room bookings and I KNOW I’m going to get a question asked just like this. I’ll throw my hat into the ring as someone who’d like to see the screencast!
Ok, I’m convinced. As soon as Greg gets me the documentation, I’ll create a screencast. Make sure you’re on the Weekly Newsletter list so you get first notice.
Mark
Mark, what address can I email you some documentation to?
Holy Mackerel, Batman… he’s really going to do it! Greg actually sent me the documentation so now I feel obligated to do the screencast. Stay tuned…
Mark
A screencast would be fantastic! I’m currently doing this for our company and was seeking an elegant and simple way of doing this. Thank you so much!
Update on screencast and documentation for creating a Master Calendar:
Greg and I have worked out the solution. I’m planning on making it available as documentation and a screencast in next week’s newsletter.
I have to say, it turned out pretty sweet. Just to get you a little excited… this thing will be able to see across WSS sites and site collections OUT OF THE BOX!
Mark
I have put up an article this morning with Greg’s documentation. It is Part 1 in a 3 Part series.
Screencast coming next…
Mark
Thank you. This is a very simple solution to many of my woes.
However, I now need to get to get this (the events sorted into views by content type) into MS Outlook 2007 for my users.
Problem: I get the whole calendar to transfer, but how do I filter by content type?
I have not been able to get anything except the full calendar to display in Outlook once it is connected from Sharepoint. This is kind of a drag. Anyone have any success with this?