Calendar Overview

Centerbase offers a built-in calendar module that allows for full firm shared calendaring. Users maintain their own calendars, but visibility is easy using the powerful filtering options. To access the calendar, click the Calendar link in the navigation bar.

Offering the basic Day, Week and Month views, Centerbase also gives options for a side-by-side calendar comparison in the User Logins view. The List tab offers a listing of all activities in list format, while the Tasks view provides a to-do listing with pre-configured filters and grouping options.

Every view in the calendar is subject to the filtering options selected by opening the Filter side panel. To change the activity filtering, click the grey arrow in the upper left-hand corner of the view. The Filters side panel will pull out offering three sections:

Activities may be created on the week or day views by clicking and dragging from the start to end time. Within the month view, double clicking on a day will create a new activity. Activities may also be created from anywhere in Centerbase by clicking the    icon in the upper right-hand corner. The added benefit of using this method is that the activity automatically becomes linked to the current record (i.e. if I am on a matter and click the new activity icon, the current matter will link to the activity without having to manually link it).

No matter how the new activity is created, the user will be taken to the New Activity page to enter pertinent information. The entire form is editable to show the fields and the firm wants to track, but here are some fields that are important to include:

Activity Subject: This subject shows on the calendar views. Start Date/Time & End Date/Time: Set the start and end times for an appointment. All Day Event: Allows the appointment to be set as an all-day event, which will show at the top of the calendar view. Color: Drop-down menu allowing the user to select from the list of colors defined in the System Settings color section (see section 2.2). Description: Further detailed description of the activity. Does not show in the calendar view. Matter: Allows the activity to be linked to a matter in Centerbase. Centerbase supports multiple lookup fields like this in an activity. Hide Details and Show As: Also, known as the Busy Setting. Checking this checkbox will hide the details of the activity from other users and show the selected label (i.e. Busy). Custom security is also set on this record to prevent others from opening the record and viewing the details. Repeat: Recurring events may now be created using the button on the Activity Edit screen. Regular and custom occurrence patterns may be set in the dialogue.

The Scheduled section on the bottom of the Activity record allows users to schedule the activity for other users or any other Centerbase record (matter, client, contact, document, etc.). The current user is automatically scheduled for the task but may be removed if the appointment is being created for another user. Adding another user is as easy as clicking the drop-down menu and selecting the users or groups to attend.

Finally, if the user’s Centerbase account is linked to Office 365, the activity can be automatically pushed to their O365 calendar upon creation. See section 12.5 for details on setting this up.