Monday, February 25, 2008

Creating the Calendar View

As this calendar contains only taxi bookings entries, the individual items need not be

assigned to a category.

To create this view:

1. Create a new table-type view from the Define Views | New option and name

the view Taxis.

2. In the View Summary dialog box (Customize view in Outlook 2003), click

Fields, and select the fields: Subject, Start, and Contacts, and click OK.

3. We will now create the following three new manual fields using the New

Field tab:

Name

Type

Format

Purpose

Taxi Co

Text

Text

To enter the name of the Taxi company.

Booked

Yes/No

Icon

To produce a check to indicate that the taxi

booking has been made.

Cost

Currency

2 digits

To record the taxi fee obtained from the

invoice.

4. We will also create the following Formula field:

Name

In the Formula Field window

Time

Pick up time: " & Format([Start],"hh:mm AM/PM")

5. Exit the View Summary and from the Format Columns dialog box rename the

following fields as follows:

Field name

New name

Format

Subject

Journey


Start

Date

Choose a format that shows the day and date only.

What Just Happened

We have constructed a view that will enable us to view the items in an organized and

logical manner and that will make reconciling the taxi booking accounts much easier.

The only formula field in this view is the Time field and it performs two functions:

Inserting the prefix text Pick up time: before the time

Using the Format function to format the Start field to show the time only as

hours and minutes adding AM or PM as appropriate

How to Use This View

1. Make the entry for the taxi booking in the calendar in the Day/Week/Month

view.

2. Link the entry to the staff member concerned by clicking the Contacts button

at the bottom left on the Appointments form and selecting the staff member

from the Contacts folder.

3. When taxis have been booked, change to the Taxis view of the calendar, and

click the icon in the Booked field.

4. When the invoices are received from the taxi companies, change to the Taxis

view of the calendar to reconcile the bookings that are being invoiced and

enter the charges in the Cost field.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

OUTLOOK CALENDER FOLDER

The Calendar Folder

The Outlook Calendar folder can be overlooked as a valuable storage area and source of

information relating to diary events. This chapter will introduce you to ways of viewing

your calendar that will enable you to extract quickly, and in professional formats, data

relating to meetings and events without the need to replicate the data or use any other

application or program.

We can use the following examples:

A Meetings Schedule

A Record of Goods or Services

A Staff Leave Calendar

A Staff Leave Calendar—Daily View By Department

A Staff Leave Calendar—Sick Leave View

A Calendar View that Records Conference Costs

A Calendar View that Records Your Expenses

A To Do List for Calendar Items

A Meetings Schedule

In a busy calendar, there will be a variety of events, teleconferences, appointments, visits,

internal and external meetings, and at times it would be useful to extract and/or print

schedules of particular types of calendar entry, such as a schedule of various current and

future internal meetings.

Such a schedule can be produced by creating a table type view of the calendar that filters

on items assigned to the internal meeting category, with start dates on or after the current

date and that groups items by Subject.

How to Create Calendar View

In the above example, all meetings within the organization have been assigned to the

internal meeting category and the view highlights those meetings taking place within the

current week. The steps to create the view above are as follows:

1. Create a category named internal meeting. To do this, first open the Categories

dialog box by either right-clicking on any item in your calendar or selecting

any item in your calendar and clicking the Categories option in the Edit menu.

From the Categories dialog, click the Master Category List button, enter the

name internal meeting in the New category: box, and click Add.

2. For those meetings in your calendar that are internal (in other words within

your organization), assign them to the internal meeting category by

right-clicking each item in the calendar, selecting Categories, and choosing

the internal meeting category.

3. Create a new table type view from the Define Views | New option. In Outlook

2003 you will find this option under View | Arrange by | Current View |

Define Views | New.

4. Name the view Internal Meetings.

5. In the View Summary dialog box (or View | Arrange by | Current View |

Customize View in Outlook 2003), click Fields, and select the fields: Subject,

Location, Start, and End, and click OK.

6. Set Group By to Subject.

7. Set Sort items by to Start.

8. From the Filter | More Choices | Categories option, select the internal

meeting category we created above.

9. From the Filter | Advanced tab, create the following filter:


10. From the Automatic Formatting option, click Add, and create the following

formatting rule:

We have just created a simple but very useful view of a very busy calendar. The view has

enabled us to simplify the calendar by extracting only certain items and condensing them

into a neat table format that will enable us to plan and manage the items more easily.

Result

The result, when printed, can produce a schedule to show either all or only selected

meetings. The Internal Meetings heading of this report was created from the File menu |

Print Preview | Page Setup | Header/Footer tab.

A separate Outlook Calendar, reserved for the purpose, is also a convenient place to

record the ordering or purchase of specific goods or services.


For example, if you are required to book taxis on a regular basis, make entries for

these bookings in a calendar especially for taxi bookings. The Taxi Calendar in a

Day/Week/Month type view may look something like this:



However, if we create a table type view of this calendar, as in the screen shot below, we

can produce something that will allow us to analyze and print the data. This view will

enable us to reconcile taxi company invoices and records and apportion the costs against

the relevant members of staff.