I really like to talk about new and exciting standard functionalities from SharePoint 2010. Today I would like to share a cool new feature introduced with the SharePoint 2010 calendar.
It is now possible to show multiple calendars, from Exchange and SharePoint, within one SharePoint calendar. To do so you have to go to the ribbon of a calendar and select ‘Calendar’ and ‘Calendars Overlay’. Now choose for ‘New Calendar’ and the following screen will appear:
As you can see it is possible to select an existing SharePoint calendar from everywhere within the current site collection. I don’t know if it is possible to select a calendar from another site collection. Let me know if that works. So to connect the SharePoint calendar you have to choose a name first. Then fill in the URL of the site and click on ‘Resolve’. Automatically the available lists (calendars) from that site can be chosen and even with the available views. Now select the colour you want for the calendar and confirm with ‘Ok’.
To connect an Exchange calendar you have to select ‘Exchange’ in the figure above (not that surprising right?;)) and the following figure will appear:
The SharePoint calendars are shown with the chosen colours. The title of a SharePoint calendar event is shown but the title of the calendar item from the Exchange calendars aren´t. It shows ´Busy´ if an appointment is set. That is too bad but this is still a great feature for instance for project sites. A project leader can immediately see which project members are available.This new functionality is a huge step forwared, compared to SharePoint 2007, and I know for sure customers will appreciate this feature and developers will extend it with great extra solutions.
