If you are new to Teamup, one of the first and most important tasks is to create and organize your sub-calendars. Sub-calendars can represent people, resources, projects, areas, or anything you need to organize or schedule.
The structure of a Teamup calendar
When you create a new Teamup calendar, you create a master calendar.
The master calendar contains sub-calendars.
A master calendar can contain only one sub-calendar, dozens of sub-calendars, or even hundreds of sub-calendars. Sub-calendars can be organized in folders.
Sub-calendars form the structure of a master calendar, from simple to complex.
Think of each sub-calendar as a representation of who, where, or what needs to be organized on your calendar. The events you create are color-coded according to the sub-calendar(s) they belong to.
What sub-calendars represent
These examples are not exhaustive. There are as many ways to structure a calendar as there are unique scenarios.
- Individuals: To track what’s happening with everyone in your team, add one sub-calendar for each team member. To schedule jobs for field workers, add one sub-calendar for each worker, and share the sub-calendar with the worker so that he knows what to do.
- Resources: To track the availability of rooms or other bookable resources, add a sub-calendar for each resource to see when it is available and allow group members to book the available slots.
- Locations: To schedule deliveries, set up sub-calendar for each region to group deliveries together by area and create efficient routes.
- Projects or categories: To stay organized with details while keeping an overview of all projects, add a sub-calendar for each project. Or, to organize community or professional events, add a sub-calendar for each topic or event type so people can find what they’re interested in.
How to represent multiple dimensions
Real-world scheduling often has multiple dimensions:
- Team members are working on a project.
- A service business assigns a crew member as well as a fleet vehicle for each job.
- A coach needs to book a room for a client meeting.
- A conference includes a workshop on a specific topic hosted by a sponsor company and led by a speaker.
Sub-calendars or custom fields
With Teamup, there are two primary ways to represent each dimension that matters for your scheduling.
Sub-calendars: Use a sub-calendar or a set of sub-calendars to represent the dimensions. The sub-calendars can be organized in folders. For example, you might have all Team sub-calendars organized in a Team folder, and all Project sub-calendars organized in a Project folder. You can assign any single event to multiple sub-calendars.
Custom fields: Use custom event fields to represent some event dimensions. A choice field with options, for example, can represent projects. You can assign a single event to the appropriate Team sub-calendars and select the correct project option in the choice field.
Combine these approaches to create a calendar that keeps all scheduling dimensions visible and represented on your calendar. By using both sub-calendars and custom fields, you can build a calendar that is easy to use even while managing complex information. For example, you might create sub-calendars for team members and projects, organized in their respective folders, and use custom fields to track project phases and clients. It would still only take a few quick clicks to create an event or job on the calendar, while tracking four dimensions for each event and able to filter by each dimension.
What to consider
Before you begin creating sub-calendars, map out the dimensions to include in your scheduling. With a big picture of all the dimensions, you can decide which ones to represent as sub-calendars and which ones to manage with custom fields.
Here are some considerations:
- Sub-calendars provide color-coding. All events on the sub-calendar are displayed in the color chosen by the calendar administrator for the sub-calendar.
- When sub-calendars represent too many dimensions, the calendar can become complex and difficult to use. It’s often best to use sub-calendars for the primary dimensions (like projects) and custom fields for secondary dimensions (like project phases).
- Sub-calendars can be used to limit access to certain event types. If it’s important to prevent some users from accessing certain events, then sub-calendars provide that means of access control. For example, perhaps you work with different clients and some team members work with Client A but not Client B. You can allow those team members to access the Client A sub-calendar, but not the Client B sub-calendar.
- Custom fields are accessible to all users. Since custom fields are configured for the master calendar, they apply to all sub-calendars within the master calendar. So if there are certain dimensions that all users need to track or see, custom fields are a good choice since they’ll be visible on all sub-calendars.
- Users can toggle or filter to display all events on a specific sub-calendar. Users can also use built-in filters for any custom choice fields.
- Users can set up change notifications for events on a specific sub-calendar. The All changes notification type includes any change to custom fields on the events.
- Users can set up event reminders for all events on a specific sub-calendar.
→ Learn more about color-coded sub-calendars or custom fields.