Exchange is a great tool for contacts and appointment information. It's a great place to start building integrated solutions because it is simple. That said, I've been asked again and again "How can I view a monthly calendar with all events showing?"
There is no real easy way to do this unless your screen supports huge sizes. Why? Outlook uses a screen-size calculation to build the size of the view for a monthly calendar. If you have a monthly calendar and it is as busy as some I've dealt with, you'll need screen widths of close to 6000 pixels, and heights close to 2500 pixels.
How?
Some screens have a driver (graphic cards too) that allow you to set the screen size as large as you want. When using the outlook client app on windows, you will want to blow up your screen size as big as possible. Now you can blow up your outlook full screen and get as much info as possible. The downside? You now have to be able to scroll your screen up and down. Some people don't like things that complex. But my age (mid 20's) and younger are just fine with it after a day or so.
If you don't like the screen size adjustment, there is another way. If you have OWA, you can utilize it to view a monthly calendar as well, but the same screen rules apply for the monthly view. You can get around this by placing the page in an iFrame that has a set size. This will blow up your web-page, but will also make the calendar scrollable. However, you'd have to be logged in. So you would have to be able to view that calendar. There are ways to do this. If you use scripts from the microsoft technet documentation or the MSDN libraries to build pages for each person, you might be able to do it, but it wouldn't be as secure (the login info is stored in the scripts on the page! Anybody who can read source can have access!). So what do you do? If you want only a viewable calendar, I suggest you publish your calendar through OWA and restrict it (gives a weird, difficult to search url), and then place the URL (ends in .html) into a presized iFrame page. You can now use that page to view your monthly calendar.
If the OWA javascripts had been built for iFrames that are scrollable, they'd be alterable in a way that would make them more useful. A simple adjustment to the default OWA javascript files would suffice to make it apply for all users for all calendars. Why do this you ask? It could make the monthly calendar into an actual monthly calendar instead of a dud. Is it still possible to do? Sure. If you really know what you are doing, you can place all the info inside a presized iFrame by altering the javascripts that build the owa, but you'll have to use a browser that can read the page source and you'll have to know where to find the scripts, where to find the files etc. You could set the row and column size as a function that sets the frame size. How do I do that? Check the javascript. It grabs the calendar items for each day an displays it on the table if the table is sized properly (I think it uses a percentage script). If you could redo that search, but use the font size etc to build the iFrame size by adding row and column sizing with a short padding, and then make it scrollable. Build it with a set size to start, and run a test to see if the size you come up with is larger or smaller. Test the size of each row and set it to a specific size to allow some visual acuity, and you'll be all set with a custom OWA calendar view. If you're a programmer, please try. IF not, please don't. If you do, post some snippets here.
There is no real easy way to do this unless your screen supports huge sizes. Why? Outlook uses a screen-size calculation to build the size of the view for a monthly calendar. If you have a monthly calendar and it is as busy as some I've dealt with, you'll need screen widths of close to 6000 pixels, and heights close to 2500 pixels.
How?
Some screens have a driver (graphic cards too) that allow you to set the screen size as large as you want. When using the outlook client app on windows, you will want to blow up your screen size as big as possible. Now you can blow up your outlook full screen and get as much info as possible. The downside? You now have to be able to scroll your screen up and down. Some people don't like things that complex. But my age (mid 20's) and younger are just fine with it after a day or so.
If you don't like the screen size adjustment, there is another way. If you have OWA, you can utilize it to view a monthly calendar as well, but the same screen rules apply for the monthly view. You can get around this by placing the page in an iFrame that has a set size. This will blow up your web-page, but will also make the calendar scrollable. However, you'd have to be logged in. So you would have to be able to view that calendar. There are ways to do this. If you use scripts from the microsoft technet documentation or the MSDN libraries to build pages for each person, you might be able to do it, but it wouldn't be as secure (the login info is stored in the scripts on the page! Anybody who can read source can have access!). So what do you do? If you want only a viewable calendar, I suggest you publish your calendar through OWA and restrict it (gives a weird, difficult to search url), and then place the URL (ends in .html) into a presized iFrame page. You can now use that page to view your monthly calendar.
If the OWA javascripts had been built for iFrames that are scrollable, they'd be alterable in a way that would make them more useful. A simple adjustment to the default OWA javascript files would suffice to make it apply for all users for all calendars. Why do this you ask? It could make the monthly calendar into an actual monthly calendar instead of a dud. Is it still possible to do? Sure. If you really know what you are doing, you can place all the info inside a presized iFrame by altering the javascripts that build the owa, but you'll have to use a browser that can read the page source and you'll have to know where to find the scripts, where to find the files etc. You could set the row and column size as a function that sets the frame size. How do I do that? Check the javascript. It grabs the calendar items for each day an displays it on the table if the table is sized properly (I think it uses a percentage script). If you could redo that search, but use the font size etc to build the iFrame size by adding row and column sizing with a short padding, and then make it scrollable. Build it with a set size to start, and run a test to see if the size you come up with is larger or smaller. Test the size of each row and set it to a specific size to allow some visual acuity, and you'll be all set with a custom OWA calendar view. If you're a programmer, please try. IF not, please don't. If you do, post some snippets here.
