IBM® Notes® 9..0 includes the ability to categorize calendar entries, To Do items, Contacts, or groups in Calendar, to organize items and find them more easily. Combined with a new feature in IBM Notes 9.0, it is possible to not only categorize calendar entries, but also to assign colors to these categories, making it easy to quickly distinguish individual entries. This article describes how you can achieve this customization.

Benefits of this feature

1. By assigning a color to a category, and assigning the category to a calendar entry, you get a quick overview of how individual calendar entries have been categorized in your Calendar view.
2. You can create custom categories, using keywords for useful information. For example, you may create categories with the names of different meeting venues, assign colors to those categories, and then immediately see the venue of each meeting in your Calendar view. Or, you can create categories with names of customers, and assign colors to each category - then for each scheduled meeting, just assign the corresponding category, and the entry will appear in the assigned color, providing information at-a-glance.

Steps to create custom categories, and assign colors to a category

1. To assign colors to an existing category, or to create a new custom category and assign color to it, select File → Preferences → Calendar & To Do.
2. Select the Display tab, then select Entries.
3. Select an existing category from the “Categories” field, or add a new category as desired:
   
   
   
   
   
   Note: Multiple values need to be separated by either comma (“,”) or semicolon (“;”) or a new line. Category values added are case-insensitive, for example, “Test” and “test” will be considered as a single category value.
   
4. Click on the hyperlink 'Calendar & To Do – Colors – Category Colors' displayed above the Categories field; this will open the Colors - Category Colors tab.
   
   
   
   
5. Click the button beside the first Category field; this will open a dialog box with a list of available categories. Select one or multiple Categories from the list and click OK.
6. A default background color of white, and text color of black, is assigned to the selected category(ies). You can change these colors by clicking on the “Background” and “Text” color fields to choose desired colors for each.
   
   
   
   
7. You can have a maximum of 10 different types of color assignments, and you can assign these colors to any number of categories.Note: Each category can have only one specific type of color assignment; for example, the category 'To Do' shown in the example, cannot be selected for another category field.
8. To remove a selected category from a color assignment, click again on the button beside the category field. De-select a selected category and click OK.
9. To remove all selected categories and their color assignments, click the “Restore Default Colors” button.
   Note: This button will only remove categories from the Category Colors tab, not from the Display - Entries tab.
10. Once you have made all your color assignments for different categories, click OK in the preferences dialog and your Calendar will be rebuilt to display the categorized calendar entries from your assigned color set.
    Note: Color assignment will appear only in all Calendar views and not Lists views.
    
11. Any new entry created or accepted will be displayed in the assigned color set if you assign a category to that calendar entry.
    
    

Steps to create categories and assign colors directly from calendar entries

1. Create a new calendar entry, or open an existing calendar entry of any type in Edit mode.
2. Click on the “Category” link to choose a category from available values, or add a new custom category and click OK. You can also type the category value in the 'Category' field of the Calendar Entry form.
3. Click the “Assign Colors . . .” button, beside the 'Category' field; this will open the Category Colors tab in the Preferences dialog.
4. Click the button beside any category field and enter a value. Select a category and click OK.
5. Choose a color assignment for the selected category and click OK. When saved, the calendar entry will be displayed in the assigned color set, for all Calendar views.
6. If the selected category in your calendar entry already has a color assignment, then simply saving the entry will set its color; there is no need to click the “Assign colors . . .” button.
7. If you assign multiple categories to a single calendar entry, it will display in the color assigned to the first category value. If the first category value in has no color assignment, then the calendar entry will be displayed in the color set defined in the Calendar Entry colors tab.
8. You can categorize and assign colors to all calendar entry types: Meeting, All day event, Appointment, Anniversaries, Reminders, and To-Do.

About the Author

Supreet Kaur Bhatia is working with IBM - India Software Labs, as Senior Software Engineer. She is a Notes Client developer and interested in Template development for both Client and Web based applications. You can reach Supreet at Supreet.Bhatia@in.ibm.com.