The planning calendar allows users to see different appointments at the same time and to create new appointments. It allows the user to display appointments for several objects, such as a team calendar, and compare them to each other.

Usage

Use the planning calendar if:

• You want to compare objects of the same type with each other over a period of time.
• You require responsive behavior.
• You have less than 100 lines in the calendar.

Do not use the planning calendar if:

• You want to show a calendar for one object and a detailed overview of appointments over a long time interval.
• You want to show a complex or graphical representation. In this case, please use the Gantt chart.
• You have more than 100 lines in the calendar. In this case, please use the Gantt chart.

Responsiveness

Types

You can define what size of interval the calendar should show, and whether multi selection should be possible. Additionally, the row header and the interval appointments are optional.

Components

This section describes the various components of the planning calendar.

1. Toolbar

The toolbar is optional and can contain a title as well as app-specific and generic actions.
If you have actions in the toolbar, we recommend that you use a title to describe the purpose of the planning calendar. For more information, check out the toolbar guideline article.

The generic actions are as follows:

• Search
• Add Appointment (icon: add)
• Add New Contact (icon: add-contact)
• Multi-sSelect Mode (icon: multi-select)
• Legend (icon: legend)
• Settings (icon: action-settings)
• Full Screen (icon: full-screen/exit-full-screen)

2. Header

The calendar header comprises the left part, which includes an optional switch to see the calendar in a different view (day, month, year), and the right part, which contains the calendar view.

3. Calendar view

The calendar view defines the granularity of the appointments. You can decide what kind of view (Hours, Days, or Months or Week) the appointments display and how many values are shown. There is a default value for the number of values shown. App developers can change this value, but they should then ensure that the app is still responsive.

Week view always displays seven days in one screen. It can be found in the view select as a default view. When applications have this view available, we strongly recommended setting a different number of days displayed in the days view (more or less than seven). Otherwise, the user might be confused as the navigation the two views differs.

The start date is always the beginning of the week. This can be Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, depending on the locale data.

Users can also navigate to the next or previous view, and easily switch to another year, month, or day.

4. List item

The list item contains the row header, row, appointments, and interval appointments. Each row can show different working and non-working days. This is useful if users want to view calendars from different countries that have different weekends.

5. Row header

This identifies the object for which the appointments are shown. The row header pops in if there is not enough space. It can contain a picture or icon, a title, and a subtitle.

6. Row

All appointments that appear for an object are shown here.

7. Appointment

Appointments enable an icon or picture, a title, and a subtitle to be shown. If appointments appear simultaneously, they are shown under each other.

App developers can define the colors of different appointment types, and appointments can be shown as tentative. Appointments are fully colored.

The control can register the click event, and the app development team must define what happens next.

If the view changes and there are too many small appointments at one time, an aggregation is shown. Aggregations show a number indicating how many appointments are not fully visible in this view. This functionality will be improved in future releases. Otherwise, the click/touch area would be too small.

There are two sizes of appointments – regular and half size. The half-sized appointments can save space, but also note that they do not show a second line for details of the appointment.

8. Interval appointment

Each row can also have interval appointments. These are smaller and always appear at the top of the row. They can be used to show appointments that last for a prolonged period of time, such as vacations or workshops.

Behavior and Interaction

To create an appointment, the user must trigger an action by clicking the Add   icon in the toolbar. Clicking directly on the row also created a new appointment.

The user can click on the appointment to see further details. The app development team must define what kind of information is then shown. For example, clicking on an appointment can trigger a popover with detailed information.

A multi-select toggle can also be provided in the toolbar. This can be used, for example, to select multiple people in order to delete them from the planning calendar.

Various tooltips can be shown, but you should not use them to show additional information because users cannot access this functionality on touch devices.

Depending on the current time interval, appointments might be smaller and the text might be cut off, not truncated. However, this should not be an issue because the main use case is to see whether there is a free time slot. Additionally, the user can click or tap the appointment to see the details.

In the month view, appointments may appear as aggregations due to lack of space for detailed visualization. Aggregations show a number indicating how many appointments are not fully visible in this view.

The “alternating rows” functionality gives users the possibility to row coloring on or off. By default, the alternating rows option is turned on.

Appointments in the calendar have two sizes, regular and half appointment. The exact sizes can be found in the visual specification. The app developer can choose the size that fits the use case, but keep in mind that the half-size appointment shows less information about the appointment.

With “hiding the interval header”, the user also has the option to hide the interval header and the space that is reserved for it. This option can be included as an icon in the toolbar.

Interaction Flow for Switching Days

Guidelines

Switching the Row Header

If you want the end user to be able to rearrange the planning calendar by switching the row header, you can implement a flexible row header. This is not done by the control and should be implemented by the app development team.

The list items in the row header can be a value of any attribute of an appointment. The appointment attributes are part of app-specific content, so they should be specified by the app development team. The control does not provide default attributes.

Our guideline is to use the select control in the place of the calendar title. The select control will contain all the attributes that can serve as the row header. When a different attribute is selected, the calendar is rearranged accordingly. You can also add a counter after the list items to indicate how many appointments fall into a specific group.

It is also possible to have both the calendar title and select control, in which case you should have first the title and then the select.

On small screen sizes, use select instead of the calendar title. If you want to keep the calendar title, place select in the overflow menu.

Resources