How can I prevent overlapping appointments in Calendar View?

Question

I am trying to create a calendar trough SharePoint to schedule and track appointments for my staff. I have tried 2 ways now. One - by creating a calendar. Two - by creating a custom list and then a "Calendar View" of the list. So far, the custom list has worked out better for me, as I can manage the content type/each column easier.

My main issue now is how to prevent duplicate/overlapping appointments? My other question is whether there is a way to have the employee receive a confirmation email after scheduling the appointment, or even a reminder email the day of.

Many thanks

Answer 1

You can set up any calendar to act as a "Resource Reservation" calendar. This will manage the appointments/reservations that will check for double booking upon creation or appointment. This is in the General Settings of the calendar.

Look here at well: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/enable-reservation-of-resources-in-a-calendar-HA101810595.aspx

For your second question, you can create a workflow that fires upon modification or creation to delay for a certain period of time (until the appointment starts) until an email is fired, and you can also have the workflow use the ListItem properties. One of those properties you can tie to the user that last modified it.