UPDATE: With the release of version 4.0, Calendar Plus Web Part now provides the capability to display up to 10 SharePoint Lists and Libraries in a single instance of Calendar Plus Web Part of any list or library type. This provides users flexibility to aggregate multiple sources of information into a single view. Since the list and/or library types are different, Calendar Plus Web Part is unable to retrieve a standard schema across all included lists and libraries, resulting in a limitation with Web Part Connections. If Calendar Plus Web Part is connected directly to SharePoint Lists and Libraries, the Web Part Connection configuration screen only provides the Calendar Plus attributes Title, Start Date and End Date. We greatly apologize for this inconvenience. Although when Calendar Plus Web Part is connected directly to a SharePoint List or Library, Web Part Connections are limited to only 3 attributes, the other 3 connection modes are not limited, and display the full list of columns since there is a single connection schema Calendar Plus Web Part can consume. As a result, a potential workaround is to instead of connecting Calendar Plus Web Part directly to a SharePoint List or Library, create a Bamboo List Rollup view and include the SharePoint List or Library in that view, then display that rollup in Calendar Plus Web Part.

Are you using the Calendar Plus Web Part and want your end users to be able to filter the content on-the-fly? You can do that with the dynamic filter feature of the Calendar Plus Web Part that allows users to choose a view. This feature uses the filter saved with each selected list view to filter the data shown in the Calendar Plus. Jeff’s post here gives you a few other options. But maybe you want your users to choose what they want to filter with on-the-fly, so you can’t use the dynamic filter feature since you can’t know ahead of time what they will want to filter on. Well, let me tell you about another option.

Use Case: I have a calendar-type SharePoint list that I’ve added a Category column to. The Category column is of type Choice and has several possible values. I’m using the Calendar Plus Web Part to display the contents of my calendar list because I want to color code the events by Category and I want users to be able to filter on-the-fly. I’ve created several different views of my list, so users can select a view to see just one category of events at a time; this declutters the calendar significantly. This is working great, but some users are telling me that they want to see two or more categories of events at once. I could create new views for that, but that is a lot of views if I accommodate all the possible combinations of categories. I need the end user to be able to select the categories they want to display on-the-fly. How to accomplish that?

Solution: This is possible if you use the Bamboo List Filter Web Part with the Calendar Plus Web Part. The Bamboo List Filter Web Part is part of the Bamboo Filters Collection. It’s a little bit different from the List Filter Web Part that comes with MOSS (and not only because it also works in WSS). I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m about to tell you about with the MOSS List Filter Web Part. Here are the steps:

(1) Configure your Calendar Plus as you want it. Mine is shown below. I’ve hidden the dynamic filters since I don’t want to confuse my end users with too many filter options. The purple events are Sales Meetings, the tan are Team Meetings and the green one has a category of Other.

(2) I add the Bamboo List Filter Web Part to the page and I create a Web Part connection from it to the Calendar Plus Web Part on the same page.

(3) Then I configure the Bamboo List Filter Web Part. In the tool pane, I select the Connected List as Bamboo Calendar Plus Web Part. Then I click Add Filter to add a filter. For the Select Target Column, I choose Category and for the Filter Name, I enter Filter by Category. Then I click the Add button to add the filter column. My tool pane then looks like this:

(4) I click Apply and then OK at the bottom of the tool pane to save my Web Part configuration.

(5) When I exit out of edit mode and refresh my page, my web part page looks like this:

I should change or hide the Web Part titles, but with the defaults shown above, it’s easy for you to see which is which. Ok, so now to see what the end user can do with this combination of web parts. When the user clicks the dropdown labeled Filter by Category, he sees the category choices available (see below). He can select one or more and then click Apply Filter.

When I choose to view events of category Sales Meeting and Other, my display looks like the one shown below. Just the purple and green events are displayed. I can click Clear filter to get them back, or adjust the filter to display something else.

Unfortunately, this process will not currently work if you are displaying a List Rollup Data View in your Calendar Plus – but we are working on that, and I will update this post when we have new information. All of the things I did for this post were done with the following Web Part versions: Calendar Plus: v3.4.16.0; List Rollup: v4.3.8.0; List Filter: c1.3.1.0