Downloaded the latest Collaboration Calendar HERE.

Latest features on the Collaboration calendar

• 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

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

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!

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

• 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.

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 “Calendar” in Filter Navigator

Click on “Create New”. New Calendar record form is displayed

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 ‘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 ‘New’ to create a new category

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

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 ‘NEW’

Name – Event field Name

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

Internal Name - can be same as ‘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

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

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

You can create an event by clicking on the date or clicking on ‘New Event’ button

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

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

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)

To share your calendar, click on “Calendar Available For” tab, then click on “New”

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.

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.

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