This post will walk you through a very simple vacation calendar. The calendar will contain a simple vacation approval system. The items will appear on the calendar for the user making the request, but they won't show for other users until its approved by management.
I'm going to start by creating a standard calendar and calling it Vacation. If you're not sure how to do this, just click on Site Actions > Create. Then find and click Calendar, name it, and click the create button.
Once you hit create, you'll be taken to the Calendar view. Above the calendar, you'll see three buttons. New, Actions, and Settings. Click on Settings and then click on List Settings. In the settings page, you will see several links at the top. In the first column, select Versioning settings.
At the top, you'll see a section called Content Approval. Click the Yes radio button. Make sure that under Draft Item Security, you have "Only users who can approve items (and the author of the item)" selected. Then click OK.
Now we're done. A user can go in and create a new calendar item which they will see as well as the site administrator. No other users will see it on the calendar. The admin can select your item, click the Approve/reject item button and make their decision. If it's accepted, everyone will see the item. If it's rejected, only the admin will still be able to see the item until he/she deletes it from the calendar.
Note: When you create a new vacation item, you may want to check the box next to All Day Event. Doing this will create a continuous item from your start date until your end date. Otherwise, you'll see a single calendar item for each day in your range. So if you select Monday - Friday of this week, you'll see 5 individual items.
Labels: End-User