Once you have created a new Calendar you can optionally configure it to fine tune how it displays information.
To get the full list of configuration options you need to enter configuration mode using the spanner icon (requires elevated permissions). From the Calendar configuration menu you can specify event:
- Title
- Start (date/date-time)
- End (date/date-time)
- Colour
- Layout
Each of these is illustrated in the following animation and explained in the section below.
Title
Title determines what information is displayed on the Calendar. You can select any field from the Calendar's parent Report to use as the title. In the above animation the title is changed from 'Action Plan' to 'Owner' then to 'Status' and back to Action Plan.
Start (date/date-time)
Start represents a date or date-time to mark the 'start' of an event. The start can be selected from any date or date-time field on the Report, including calculated fields.
In the above animation there is only 1 date field to choose from so it is automatically selected. A start date is required to display a Record on a Calendar (i.e. if a Record has a Null start date it will not be displayed on the Calendar).
End (date/date-time)
The end date/time is optional. Like start date/time the end date can be selected from any date or date-time field on the Report, including calculated fields. However the same field cannot be used for both the start and end.
In the above animation there is only 1 date field to choose from therefore it is not possible to select an end date (the Report can, however, be modified at any time to add an end date if desired).
Points to note:
- the field types for Start and End must match - i.e. if Start uses a date-time field, End must also use a date-time field
- Start must occur before End, if an End date occurs before the start date the event will not be displayed
- when end dates are used, they can not be Null - if either date is Null the event will not be displayed
Colour
The colour dropdown is used to specify where the Calendar gets its colour formatting from. There are several options for specifying the colour of events on a Calendar.
Options depend on what type of field is selected and whether that field has formatting applied, the expected behaviour is different for:
- None - all events are the same colour (a default colour is used)
- Choice Fields with formatting - colours are inherited from the Choice Field
- Reports with conditional formatting - colours are inherited from the Report
- fields without any formatting specified - a different colour is applied to each unique value
The above animation shows how colour might change depending on which field is selected.
Initially colour is defined by the field 'Action Plan' - since no specific formatting has been specified for that field colours (from a predefined pool) are arbitrarily assigned to each event. The colours are different because the field values are different (and the pool of predefined colours has not been exhausted).
Changing the colour source to 'Owner' causes both events to have the same colour. Like 'Action Plan', no specific formatting has been specified for that field - however the Owner is the same for both events and therefore the same colour is used for both (the colour is still arbitrarily assigned).
When the colour source is changed to 'Status' the event formatting is inherited from the Status field, which is a Choice field. In this case formatting has been applied to the Choice field and the colours represent 'In Progress' (blue) and 'Not Started' (red).
Note that both the text and background support formatting, learn how to set up colours and conditional formatting.
Layout
Layout determines whether the Calendar will display as a Calendar, Timeline, or Agenda. These Layouts are shown in the above animation.
Note the Layout setting is also available to platform users are able to switch layouts in a non persistent way.