Mamta
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Downloaded the latest Collaboration Calendar HERE.

Latest features on the Collaboration calendar

One-View

  • The one-view is a consolidated one stop shop for all your events and  calendars. Create and Manage events from one-view
  • Designed to bring all your calendars together for better visual and event management
  • Catch conflict resolution, which becomes apparent, with an aerial view of your entire event landscape
  • You can filter the calendars out and in just like you would the events
  • A drop-down with a list of all the calendars that you own and those shared with you
  • All Out of Box features are available on the one-view continuing the experience of a single calendar

find_real_file.png

Create a calendar from a ServiceNow Table

  • Create events from data, on a ServiceNow table
  • Just point the calendar to a table and set the default fields
  • Select a field as the title, start date and end date from the ServiceNow table
  • Automate all events from the data of the chosen ServiceNow table to create a read-only calendar

find_real_file.png

Share a calendar with the entire company

  • Just flip a switch, the public button, and share a calendar with everyone in your company
  • Holiday calendar , Company All hands and so many more!

find_real_file.png

 

INTRODUCTION 

A VISUAL ONLINE COLLABORATION CALENDAR FOR TEAMS TO DRIVE EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION AND PROVIDES A SINGLE VIEW AND CAN BE SHARED WITH EVERYONE.  

 

Calendar App is an enterprise collaboration tool to plan, organize and share events, resources, assets and anything else that has to be organized across a group of people and time. You can share the calendar with your team and group of people so that there is one destination where everyone can come for their collaboration needs.  

 

What is the problem and how does the Calendar app solve these problems? 

Most calendars are designed for individual use and there is a need for groups and teams to be able to visualize work at a team level. Moreover, individual calendars are not visible to team members, and it becomes difficult to plan shared resources/content at a team level. Also, sharing information about events and assets with teams does not scale with existing calendars  

Solution: Collaboration Calendar App by ServiceNow 

Using the collaboration calendar available on ServiceNow platform, teams can now visualize, manage, and share calendars across teams, individuals and groups. The calendar is fully customizable and users can add and configure using custom fields and assign color coded categorize to visuals several different calendars. Easily share a calendar with an individual or a group of users from within the app. Invite them to collaborate on your calendar. There is also an easy link that can be used to share. 

What are some popular applications (use cases) for Calendar 

Here are some of the scenarios where the Calendar app can help  

  • Do you have trouble managing teams and resources on a project? 
  • Holidays are around the corner, and you don’t know who is OOO when? 
  • You work with Content and need to organize and plan across geos, themes, and leaders? 
  • You are in workplace services, and need to deploy resources, or need a tool to book assets? 
  • Best of all, need one source to share and collaborate across all your team members? 
  • Build a Release plan across multiple projects 
  • Plan for reserving Assets (projectors, printers) 
  • Events and Communications planning and organizing content for social media or communication

What value proposition and benefits does it deliver 

  • Employee Productivity and Collaboration
  • Employee experience: Manage admin functionality with ease in a visual tool (coming soon)
  • Ease of use and organization: Centralized portal for all collaboration calendars  

Key Features 

  • A Dashboard view to manage and view all calendars
  • Create events using front end tool for flawless experience 
  • Tag events with categories
  • Color code calendar events for easy visualization 
  • Time-zone option
  • Share Calendars
  • Quick access link to calendars
  • Hide/Unhide calendars (coming soon)
  • Filter, Search and Sort on topics and calendars 
  • Front end GUI interface for admin functionality – Coming soon in next release 
  • Create custom fields to configure calendar
  • Tag your events with user defined categories and custom fields (example, geographic, projects, departments, etc.)
  • Connect to your ServiceNow eco-system to create customized events using other data residing on the platform.

HOW TO USE THE CALENDAR 

Calendar App –building blocks 

Common Terminologies 

Calendar

Categories

Events

Custom Fields 

A calendar will have categories which can be color coded to distinguish between different categories. An event has to be tagged to at least one category.  An event will have default out of the box fields and you can add custom fields on the event. 

Category: A way of organizing calendar, as well as categorizing and color-coding events 

Event Fields: Information you need to create an event 

Out of Box- Default fields 

Custom: User-defined fields 

A calendar must have at least one category

An event has to be assigned to at least one category

You can assign multiple categories to an event

 

Getting Started on HOW TO USE THE CALENDAR

Step 1: Create Calendar using your ServiceNow platform instance

 Login to the Platform and search for ā€œCalendarā€ in Filter Navigator 

 Click on ā€œCreate Newā€. New Calendar record form is displayed 

 

image        image 

 

Name - Calendar Name that will be displayed on the top left of calendar front-end 

Language - Default Language in which the calendar is displayed. Currently, the only supported language is English 

Time Zone - This is the time zone for your calendar and all its events 

Color - Choose a color for your calendar. This Calendar will be displayed on Dashboard with this color code 

Owner - This defaults to the calendar creator. More users can be assigned this role 

Set multiple categories per event - If this feature is enabled, the event modal allows the assignment of multiple categories to one event. 

Use default table - This enables the users to save all calendar information in the set of default tables.  

 

Step 2: Create Categories 

Open your calendar and click on ā€˜Load Related List’. Now you will see all the other tabs you can use to complete your calendar set-up. 

Click on Calendar Categories tab, and then ā€˜New’ to create a new category 

image 

Name – Enter the name of the category, ex- Project-1, EMEA Comms, Sales Team 

Color - Choose a color for this category. All events associated with this Category will be displayed in this color on the Calendar 

Order- This allows you to control the order in which the categories will be displayed in the left pane of the calendar. Display is in ascending order. 

 

Step 3: Manage Out of the Box Event Fields settings (if needed) 

 

You can rename, disable, mark as mandatory and reorder the Out of Box Event fields 

image 

Mandatory - If true, an event cannot be created or edited without this field being populated. 

Active -If true, the field shows on the events modal page     

Show on Event Title - If true, the contents of the field will be shown in event pop-up 

Order- Can be used to determine the display position on Event Modal 

 

Step 4: Create Custom Events (if needed) 

You can create your own custom fields for any specific needs by clicking on ā€˜NEW’ 

image 

image 

Name – Event field Name 

Label- Event field Name that will be displayed on the Event Modal 

Internal Name - can be same as ā€˜Name’ but with no spaces 

Type- Event Field type. For this Pilot it can be text, choice (dropdown) or True/False 

Order- can be used to determine the display position on Event Modal 

 

Customer Field Choices: 

If you have created a choice type custom field, you can define the values (dropdown values) by clicking on ā€˜New’ Event Field Choices related lists 

imageimage 

Enter all the information and click on Submit. Create as many options as needed. Order will determine the order in which these are listed in the dropdown 

 

Step 5: Create/Edit events 

Access the Calendar through the URL or Dashboard 

image 

Calendar Front-End 

image 

            Create an Event 

You can create an event by clicking on the date or clicking on ā€˜New Event’ button 

image 

Enter all the applicable values in Out of Box fields 

If you had created any custom field as active, it will be displayed on this modal 

It is mandatory to assign a category to an event. 

You can assign multiple categories to an event 

You can create an All day, recurring or a single timed event 

Click on Save to create your event 

Edit an Event 

image 

Search for an Event 

You can search the calendar with a keyword within a given duration 

By default, the start date is six months in the past and the end date is six months in the future 

 

image 

Select/Deselect Categories and Filter Events 

You can deselect the categories you don’t want to see on your calendar. Events associated with that category will not be displayed. 

You can filter the events. Filtering applies only to the events currently on your screen. 

All Out of Box and Custom fields can be filtered on. Only the events that match the keyword(s) entered in the field will be displayed 

You can also use a combination of filters (AND condition) 

image 

 

Step 6: Share  

 To share your calendar, click on ā€œCalendar Available Forā€ tab, then click on ā€œNewā€ 

image 

You can assign 3 types of permissions here: 

Can read: Provide Read-only access to all events 

Can contribute: Allow others to create/edit/delete all events  

Can manage: Allow others to manage categories, event fields and all other attributes of the calendar 

This can be done by selecting a user criteria or creating a new criteria for specific users or groups 

If you don’t create a record here to provide explicit permission, others cannot view your calendar. 

 

Step 7: Access Calendar Dashboard 

You can navigate to Dashboard from Platform view to access all Calendars created and shared with you. 

image 

 

What else do I need to know? 

You need to have calendar admin role to be able to create a calendar 

It is recommended to create a new user criterion to assign viewing or editing permissions 

 

Examples of how to use calendar app for popular use cases

Team Members vacation planner

Add each team member as a category. All events for vacation or out of office will be displayed in a unique color for each team member

Schedule Resources 

To schedule resources across projects, add one category for each worker, and share the calendar with the team so that they know their assignments 

Book engineering resources across projects and catch any possible overlapping and conflicting priorities (Future Release) 

Building a Release plan across multiple projects 

To manage multiple projects with the detailed plans of each project while keeping an overview of all projects, create a category for each project. You can also use custom fields to visualize the various attributes within each project. 

Availability of Assets – Book projectors, equipment, and any bookable resources 

add a category for each resource so to easily identify when it is available, and members can book the available slots  

Events planning (similar to employee comp) 

If you want to organize events and need to present the program in topics to your audience, add a category for each topic so that people can filter to see only the topics of interest. 

 

 

Comments
kmolson73
Tera Expert

If we are using a custom table for our events how do we get the categories to work? I have added a field to my table that references the calendar category table (list type field) and added the categories under the related list under my calendar but it's not working. Any ideas?

Mahesh Kukar Mo
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Categories event field is out of the box field for the calendar. You need not to create another event field for that. Once events from the custom table are tagged to the categories of the calendar, it should work.

Alex23
Kilo Guru

Hello!

Is anyone getting this error when clicking the calendar url?

find_real_file.png

find_real_file.png

I've followed the installation instructions and updated to latest version today.

Is it not finding a UI page?

Thanks,
Alex

acuriousmind
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi Alex, 

Looks like the url displayed in the text box below "The page you are looking for could not be found" in the screenshot attached by you is jumbled up and it should be in below format:

/esc?id=collaboration_calendar&sys_id=<sys_id_of_calendar>

Please can you help me with some more information through below questions?

Question 1. On clicking of the Calendar url field link as shown above after upgrading to newer version is it jumbling up the url as shown above on your screenshot? If yes let us know we can take a look on this scenario.

Question 2. Let me know if you are able to access the calendar by clicking on it directly from calendar dashboard or not as per below screenshot

Question 3. Which portal are you using is it "esc" or some other portal page?

 

find_real_file.png

Alex23
Kilo Guru

Hello!

I fixed this issue by changing the portal suffix to my portal.

But now I am experiencing another issue - I cannot add Calendar entries.

I input all the details and click submit but nothing appears on the calendar.  Any ideas?

Thank you!
Alex

acuriousmind
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hello it looks like the date time format on your profile could be different .

Please change your date time format to default one then try 

"The default date format is: yyyy-MM-dd."

"The default time format is: HH:mm:ss".

An enhancement for supporting multiple date time formats will be launched soon. then you can download the latest patch for it.

Let me know if above helps you

 

 

Alex23
Kilo Guru

Hi there,

Thanks so much for the fast response, it's now working perfect! šŸ™‚

My last query (I think), do you know how/if it's possible to remove the grey space around the calendar -

find_real_file.png

 

So the portal background will show?

Thanks again,
Alex

acuriousmind
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

You will need to edit the code on the widget. It is designed by default to look like this with spaces on all the corners. and was designed to work on esc portal by default.

In the widget the extra space is added in css or client side code i dont remember exactly right now but will update you further. 

 

 

acuriousmind
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hello Alex,

A latest version of Collaboration Calendar has been released to allow 

support for other date time formats and ability to open calendar on any portal than esc.

You can install the latest version 1.1.3 for this.

Let me know if this helps you.

Thanks

Alex23
Kilo Guru

Hi there,

For some reason I cannot install the latest version on by dev instance.

When trying to do it through the store is says it's not compatible.

On prod it states there is an update available but I cannot update on prod without updating on dev first.

Our Dev instance is on San Diego and prod is on Quebec, is this maybe the issue?

Thanks,
Alex

acuriousmind
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Ok yes currently the Collab Calendar app only supports Quebec and Rome.

We will enable support for Sandiego soon.

Is there any other non prod instance available which is in rome /quebec? you can try on that first.

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi Alex,

Just checking in on this conversation. Please let us know if you need any further help.

MarkyMark1
Tera Expert

@acuriousmind @Krishna Nagaraja  Any updates or information on when we might expect a San Diego compatible version?

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

@MarkyMark We are currently in the process of getting the app certified for SD. We are estimating by July 1st week or 2nd at the most we should be able to release this

MarkyMark1
Tera Expert

Hello - As we head into the 3rd week of July I just wanted to reach out to you to see if you currently believe this will be available for San Diego soon?  Thanks

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

HI @Marky Mark ,

Apologies for the delay. We have a release date of July 28th fixed. WIll keep you posted if that changes.

 

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

The latest version of the Collaboration calendar is now available for San Diego. Please check out the latest features is here

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @Marky Mark ,

The latest version with cool new features, for San Diego, is live now. Appreciate your patience

Alex23
Kilo Guru

Hi there,

I have a few questions on the Calendar -

  • I have chosen the task table to use in order to display all change requests. However for event start and end I can only pick the actual start and actual end fields - can I choose the planned start/end field instead?

    If I use the change request table for the above I can't select short description for the title.
  • Can you add a calendar category to the records e.g. all change requests records are category 'Change Request' ?

Thanks!
Alex

Alex23
Kilo Guru

Also when i manually add an event on the calendar it appears, but once refreshed it disappears!

Allow event creation is ticked.

Thanks!

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi Alex,

Using the change request table is the better option. It will draw all the parent table fields as well and short description should be available at the Comments and Description field. The title is more focused on the fields that come with the source table. The "Number" for example.

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Would be happy to meet with you and check this issue.

Alex23
Kilo Guru

Hi there,

Could we please arrange a call? It would be really appreciated!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-logan-149037157/

Thanks,
Alex

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Sure. Will send an invite.

Raymond Coates
Tera Contributor

Hello,

 

We have been using the Collaboration Calendar for a while now and it is working well.  Once of the things that we have noticed is that when we use it embedded in Microsoft Teams using the HTML widget it can get cutoff a bit on the left-hand side.  It would be best if there would be a way for the alignment to not disappear on the left.  The scroll bar at the bottom does not allow for a person to scroll left to see the part that is cut off.

 

RaymondCoates_1-1669154693190.png

 

 

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

hi @Raymond Coates ,

 

Thank you for reaching out. We will check this. The iframe dimension may be intervening with the calendar over all width.

 

Thanks

Krishna

Kim Sullivan
Tera Guru

@Raymond Coates - what HTML widget are you using to get this in Teams?

Raymond Coates
Tera Contributor

@Kim Sullivan This one.  I guess Website widget is a better term.

RaymondCoates_0-1669155371339.png

 

Raymond Coates
Tera Contributor

I see a new version of the Collaboration Calendar has been released.  I cannot recall if the Outlook Spoke piece is new or not to ingest stuff from M365 but it looks new to me.  Anything else new?  I don't see any updated release notes?

 

Thanks.

Mhasenkamp
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

HI @Raymond Coates - you are correct, the team added Outlook Integration for this release; the team has also optimized the code in various places as well as enabled the following

 

  • Reduce context switching by bringing all your Outlook calendar events alongside events from other calendars in One View
  • Allows search on events across multiple calendars in One View
  • Displays all calendar events in the user's preferred time zone in One View to effectively manage conflicts
  • Allows the table view result to be sorted per columns

 

Please give it a shot and let us know your thoughts!

Geert_Swillens
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

hi team,

 

any way that this would be able to be adapted to manage the creation / update of business calendars and schedules combination? 

acuriousmind
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi Please can you elaborate more about above

Mhasenkamp
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

@Geert_Swillens The Collaboration Calendar is able to display date/time data from existing tables within the ServiceNow platform, so if you have a pre-existing table that stores event-type data such as a list of holidays with a Datetime field, a calendar can be created with those two data points.  If the data changes, the next time the calendar is viewed, the changes will be reflected in the Collaboration Calendar.  

 

We encourage everyone to request a free download.

Raymond Coates
Tera Contributor

We have been using the Collaboration Calendar in a wallboard capacity and in a tab in a Microsoft Teams channel.  We have received feedback from the team on a couple points.

  1. Can we have an option built into the Collaboration Calendar for refreshing the data on a regular basis?  In both the wallboard and Microsoft Teams channel tab situations the data isn't refreshed regularly.  Someone has to manually refresh the data, or the tab has to be configured using an extension in the browser to force the refresh.  This is fine for the wallboard scenario but does not solve the issue within the Microsoft Teams tab.  For the Microsoft Teams scenario a person is required to navigate away and back to the tab to get it refreshed.
  2. This feedback is primarily focused on the Week view of the calendar but might apply to other views as well.  The data pills do not wrap the text.  When viewing the Week view on a desktop or a wallboard we would like the Event Title to wrap in the data pill to take advantage of the vertical space on the display.  There seems to be a lost opportunity here.

Thank you.

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @Raymond Coates ,

 

Thank you for reaching out with your feedback . I will get back to you on this.

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @Raymond Coates ,

 

 

Firstly this is great feedback. 

1) The initial thought on a scheduled refresh can affect performance based on the load of the queries and number of calendars. This is something that is coming off of our experience. Hence this dint include this in to the design. 

2) The UI customization is also something that we have placed in the "user customization space". A CSS change here will solve for this. 

That being said I have taken these into the backlog. Thank you again and keep them coming!

 

Thanks

Krishna

J Lalonde
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Calendar Sharing - Am I able to create a group or do I have to give permissions all one by one?

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @J Lalonde 

 

You can share with an entire group. On any calendar you can click on the 3 dots and open the share modal. Here you will see options to add an individual user and/or a group.

 

Please make sure to

1) Enable the system property "Show Share modal on click of share button on dashboard" (sn_collab_calendar.openShareModal)

 

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks

Krishna Nagaraja

Community Alums
Not applicable

Please share steps to integrated outlook Calendar using Azure. and How to fetch the data in servicenow Collaboration Calendar oneview

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @Community Alums ,

 

The complete step-by-step configuration is available on the ServiceNow stores' innovation lab. It is under the Supporting Links and Docs  Installation Details - Collaboration Calendar v1.4.0.pdf

Community Alums
Not applicable

Hi @Krishna Nagara1 , 

 

I had gone through this file. But the problem. I am unable to install Powershell Exo V2 module.

Also after completing all the steps. 

From where we have to fertch the data that exactly not understanding. 

Brad Lieberg
Tera Contributor

Hello @Krishna Nagara1 -

I am having an issues sharing the calendar(s). I have adjusted the property to "show the share modal on click", but the option to add a user or group do nothing when clicked. I also do not see the "new" option in the platform view when viewing the calendar record. I am an admin and also assigned the sn_collab_callendar roles to my user. I assume its something simple I am missing or maybe a bug on the version we are on (Tokyo Patch 4b)

2023-03-20 11_03_59-Window.pngcalenadar_share_portal.png

Thanks,

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

hi @Brad Lieberg ,

 

Thank you for reaching out. Apologies for the inconvenience. Is the share modal not working for new calendars after you turned on the property or the one before that. We have identified a bug will be fixing this. 

The available for could be a list control level issue. Can you please try and  configure the list control to show the new button?

Brad Lieberg
Tera Contributor

@Krishna Nagara1 

For the share modal the issue is happening for both existing and new calendars.

Looks like by default the following are checked in the list control. Unchecking resolves the issue. Also once I have adjusted the list control the share modal works as well!

list_control_cal_collab.png

Jerry kk Wong
Kilo Sage
Kilo Sage

Hello, Can we display the /esc?id=calendar_one_view "Calendar - via the following:

 

  1. One View via a Micrsoft SharePoint page?  
  2. How to display to non-ITIL users?
Jerry kk Wong
Kilo Sage
Kilo Sage

We have recently upgraded our dev instance to Utah Patch 4 and currently using the collaboration calendar.  We have been testing and have found when we go to import calendar we cannot see any further lists via the  "Source table for events" as per below screenshot as we can only see the "User [sys_user] table.  Has anyone got advice on how to make the other tables appear?

 

2023-07-20_22-21-45.png

Our production instance is still on Tokyo and i can still see the other tables on the list.

 

2023-07-20_22-22-20.png

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @Jerry kk Wong ,

 

Sorry to hear that. Have you checked the ACLs and roles in the dev instance? Just checking here. If already we can get on a call to solve this.

Jerry kk Wong
Kilo Sage
Kilo Sage

@Krishna Nagara1  - can you advise which name within the ACL for the Collaboration calendar?

Jerry kk Wong
Kilo Sage
Kilo Sage

Hi @Krishna Nagara1 ,

 

Our developer has further performed checks and advised,  "this looks like a change from ServiceNow's side itself. Previously (and currently in production) the source table doesn't appear to have any restrictions/filter on it, however in the newer version it has a script calling to filter the tables. 

 

The problem we would face in updating that script, or reverting it to how it was, could be big during later upgrades. 

 

The filter it is applying is to the sys_dictionary table and this is the filter:

 

ctive=true^internal_type=glide_date_time^ORinternal_type=glide_date^ORinternal_type=calendar_date_time^ORinternal_type=schedule_date_time^element!=sys_created_on^element!=sys_updated_on

 

Now, if I run that as a filter on the table itself, or run it as a background script it does return multiple tables, including "incident". 

 

So that function itself is working. However, there is a default filter (same as production) for sys_user, so - whilst this function is working technically, i don't believe it is in the way they had hoped or, it's not working the way we would expect. 

 

I did a test by commenting out the filter and then it allowed 3 tables to appear:

 

Calendar Categories, Group and User.  

 

Could we arrange a call to with you to confirm if this is a new function with version 1.5.0 as our production is still on 1.4.0?

Krishna Nagara1
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

hi @Jerry kk Wong ,

 

Sure. Lets get on a call next week. We will triage this too. Please send me your availability. Thank you!

Version history
Last update:
ā€Ž11-11-2021 11:33 AM
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