Calendar to enable end-user entry

Question

We have a department that needs a rich calendar control:

• It will display a month layout, with each day being clickable.
• When a day is clicked, a popup would allow someone to select a two-hour time window from a range of hours, if no one else has taken it.
• When the user clicks OK, it would then write that to a list with the user's domain ID.
• If departmental Approvers approve the item, it would appear on the calendar; else not. Either case, the user needs to be notified of approval/rejection.

Is this possible with a SharePoint 2010 calendar or 3rd party component?

Answer 1

It will display a month layout, with each day being clickable.

SharePoint calendar default behavior

When a day is clicked, a popup would allow someone to select a two-hour time window from a range of hours, if no one else has taken it.

Some custom event receiver needed to check if time window is free. Trick part is how to allow only two-hour window. Ideal solution would require some additional customization maybe even some JavaScript.

When the user clicks OK, it would then write that to a list with the user's domain ID.

Default behavior: every item has Created by (Author) column that contains user info.

If departmental Approvers approve the item, it would appear on the calendar; else not. Either case, the user needs to be notified of approval/rejection.

You can turn on 'Require content approval' on calendar (default behavior). However deletion needs to be handled by event receiver.

Summary: Most of required functions are SharePoint OOTB. You will need some extra customization to achieve better user experience and to handle verification. It is quite simple task for some experienced SP developer. I see only one 'tricky issue': is time window free or not if there is unapproved event present?

I am not aware of any 3rd party solution but most likely there are more the few out there.