Creating calendar items

In the Calendar and planning module we distinguish between three different types of calendar items:

• General calendar items
• Planning items
• Appointment item

In the month calendar (Calendar/Planning > Calendar > Month calendar) and the planner page (Calendar/Planning > Calendar > Planner) depending on the setting, we can see three different color icons for opening the popup pages for adding these different calendar items.

The white icon (  ) is for adding a general calendar item. The yellow icon (  ) is for adding a planning item. And the blue icon (  ) is for adding an appointment item.

The planning item is the one with the most options and the one that is most related to the WATCH project structure. Therefore this is the calendar item type that will be discussed first.

Planning item

Adding a planning item

When we click on the “add planning item” icon (  ) a popup window will appear where a new planning item can be created.

Figure 1 Insert planning item pop-up window

employee

The employee is already selected based on whose month calendar was active or based on where in the planner page the icon was used to open the popup window. Based on the privileges of the logged in user the employee dropdown list may contain other employees in the system.

skip weekends & holidays

This checkbox determines whether the weekends and holidays are automatically removed from the days planned.

The default status of this field (checked or unchecked) can be set in the system settings page (Calendar/Planning > Settings > System settings) using the “skip weekends & holidays default” setting.

Weekends are all Saturdays and Sundays, but the holidays should be created by the users of the application themselves. In the system settings page (Calendar/Planning > Settings > System settings) on the “Project elements” tab the project element can be selected where the holidays can be found. All planned days found on these selected project elements will be subtracted from the days planned when the checkbox is checked.

Attention: When the “skip weekends & holidays” option is used, the option to create recurring planning items (as described below) is disabled. These two functions cannot be combined when creating a planning item.

project and project element

The dropdown list with projects will contain all projects where the selected employee is a resource for one or more of the project elements for that project. This means that what projects an employee can be planned for is determined in advance when creating the resources for a project.

The project element dropdown list will contain all project elements for the selected project where the selected employee is a resource.

When there is only one project for the employee then this project will be automatically selected. When there is only one project and also only one project element for the employee both the project and the project element will be automatically selected.

Location

In the location field, the location of the activity that is planned can be entered. This is an optional field.

Hours overview  

When a project and project element are selected, an hour overview can be displayed by moving the mouse over the  icon. This hour overview will display the estimated hours and planned hours both on the project element level and on the resource level.

Figure 2 Hours overview in planning pop-up window

Extra employees

When the “extra employees” checkbox is selected, two new multi select fields are shown. The first “employees” field shows all other employees that are resources for the selected project element. While holding the control (Ctrl) key, one or more extra employees to add to the planning item can be selected here. The “managers” field enables the planner to include all employees of the selected manager at once in the planning process.

Figure 3 Extra employees in planning pop-up window

Date and time

The start date and end date of the planning item are entered automatically based on the location in the month calendar or planner where the planning icon (  ) was clicked.  The dates can be changed by hand or by using the calendar tool that pops up when the calendar icon (  ) is used.

A planning item can last a whole day or the start time and end time can be set by hand. The time format uses the “:” character as a separator between the hours and the minutes. If this character is not entered, it will be added automatically on leaving the field.

When the “entire day?” field is set to ”no” the start and end time can be entered. If the field is set to “yes” the time fields are cleared and hidden.

Recurring

As described above, the recurring option is only available when the “skip weekends & holidays” option is not used. Checking the recurring checkbox will show a number of new fields to define the recurring property of the planning item.

First we can set the recurring interval. This interval can be defined by selecting the days, weeks or months radio button and by entering a number.  The number of times the planning item should recur can be set by entering a number of recurrences or by entering or selecting an end date.

Figure 4 Recurring items in planning pop-up window

The “extra employees” option and the “recurring” option can be combined. The example above will result in the creation of 20 planning items because we will be planning 4 employees for 5 weeks.

When we edit the planning item afterwards (open the edit page by clicking on the planning item in the month calendar or in the planner page) we can select how many of the planning items created we want to change by using the radio group for  single versus all employees and the radio group for single date versus all dates.

Figure 5 radio groups for determining the scope of a planning item change

priority

Below the date and time section we can set the priority of the planning item. The priority will result in a  icon being shown for low priority planning items and in  icon for high priority planning items.

Description

The description field will accept large amounts of text to give a better description of the planned item.

General calendar item

When we click on the “add general item” icon (  ) a popup window will appear.

A general calendar item is not related to projects and project elements. They can be used to add loose calendar items to the month calendar and planner page.

Where the add planning item popup window shows the project and project element dropdown lists, the add general calendar item popup window only displays the subject field.

Another difference between the add planning item page and the general calendar item page lies in the “extra employees” functionality. In the planning item page only the employees that are related to a project can be selected. In the general calendar item page a selection of all active users can be made.

Figure 6 General calendar item  pop-up window

Appointment item

When we click on the “add appointment item” icon ( ) a popup window will appear.

An appointment general calendar item is not related to projects and project elements but it is connected to the contacts and contact persons in the application.

Where the add planning item popup window shows the project and project element dropdown lists, the appointment item popup window shows a dropdown list with all active contacts and after a contact is selected, all related contact persons are shown in the second dropdown list.

One more difference between the add appointment item page and the general calendar item page lies in the “extra employees” functionality. In the planning item page only the employees that are related to a project can be selected. In the appointment item page a selection of all active users can be made.

Figure 7 Appointment item pop-up window