Simplifying calendar booking

A customer of mine had this question about enhancing a booking calendar on a SharePoint 2007 website. They had a basic team site with a basic calendar on it, but they wanted to make it more simple for the users to make a new event or booking, than to force them to use the New button and the basic New Item Form with several unnecessary fields in it. Also they wished for the form to be on the same page with the calendar so free dates could be viewed simultaneously with filling in the form.

So I took to figuring out the easiest and most convenient way of doing this. After fiddling with dataviews and forms and coming to the conlusion that they, in fact, were not what I wanted and needed, I decided on inserting the calendar webpart to the aspx-page in calendar view and then inserting a custom list form beside it in SharePoint Designer.

I actually ended up doing this from a scratch, on an empty aspx-page. First, I created a table inside the PlaceHolderMain, then inserted the calendar web part in the left hand cell by dragging and dropping it from the web parts task pane.


Then I selected the table cell on the right hand side and inserted the List Form in it (Insert > SharePoint Controls > Custom List Form).



Select to use the Calendar on the site and the New Item Form. I didn't want the Attachment and Spelling buttons on the form, so I also deselected the Show standard toolbar checkbox.

Now, the form needed some editing for it had way too many fields in it. So I selected the rows containing data that was not needed and deleted the rows by right-mouse-clincking them and selecting Delete > Delete Rows. But beware not to delete the requiered fields (marked with the stars).



Once the form contained only the necessary fields, it was time to test it in the browser. It was nice and neat and worked as it should.