Calendar & Timeline

Two more ways to look at the records you already have: Calendar plots them on a month grid by date, and Timeline stretches them into bars between a start and end date. Both filter, search, share and hide fields exactly like the grid, and clicking any item opens its record. Switch views Every view of a table shares one header: the table's name, how many records it has, Fields & setup and New record. When the view's filters or search narrow what is showing, the count says so — 4 of 6 records. Below the header, the view tabs — Grid, Board, Gallery, Calendar, Timeline, Map — show the same table a different way. To switch tables, use the rail. Calendar and Timeline need a date field to place records in time; on a table without one they say what to add instead. New record on either starts with the date you are looking at already filled in, so you can check it before saving. Filter, search, and share these views Calendar and Timeline carry the same toolbar the grid does, and it means the same thing on all of them. • Filter — narrows which records the view draws. A calendar with Status is Active on it plots only active records. • Search — the same box as the grid's, scanning every field of every record rather than just what is on screen. It narrows whatever the filter already matched, and never clears it. • Fields — which fields this view carries. There are no columns to hide on a calendar, but the choice still decides what the peek drawer shows and what a public link publishes. • Share — publishes this view as a read-only web page, exactly as the grid does. The shared page renders as a table whatever shape the view uses here. A filter lives in the URL, so a filtered calendar is a link you can send a colleague, and anyone who can read the table can filter it. If you can manage the view, Save to “…” appears beside it and makes what you are looking at the view's own filter; Reset throws the unsaved one away and keeps you on the same month or zoom level. There is no sort control on these two. A calendar places records by date and a timeline by start date — the order is the view, so a sort would be a button that did nothing. Sorting lives on the grid. Two kinds of condition the grid can run are not offered here, because these views read records rather than query them: a condition on a Lookup, Rollup, Formula or Auto-number field, and one that reaches through a link (Project → Region is East). They are not in the menu, and if a saved view already carries one the toolbar says “1 filter doesn’t apply here” and links you to the grid, where it does. Everything drawn is still narrowed by the conditions that can run — the view is never quietly showing you the wrong set. Read the calendar Calendar lays the month out Sunday through Saturday and places each record on the day from its date field. The line under the table name tells you which field the view is grouped by, along with how many events it found. • Each record appears as a colored pill; click it to open the record. • A day shows up to three pills. Busier days add a +N more note below them. • Every day with at least one event shows a count badge in the corner of its cell — the true total, even when only three pills fit. • Days outside the current month are shaded, today's cell is highlighted, and records with no value in the date field don't appear at all. • A pill carries the record's name and the fields the view is set to show — pick them under Fields in the toolbar. Anything the event's position already tells you is left off rather than repeated, so an event doesn't print the date it's sitting on or the lane it's in. Hours, lanes, and dragging events around When the date field behind the calendar is set to include a time (a switch on the field, in Edit fields), Day and Week draw an hour grid and put each event where it actually falls, instead of stacking everything into an all-day strip. • Drag an event to move it to another time or day. • Drag its lower edge to change how long it runs — which writes to the view's end-date field. • Both snap to sensible increments, and an event dragged across midnight rolls its date properly. • Records with a date but no time stay in the all-day band at the top, so nothing is drawn twice. Day view splits into lanes when the view has a lane field set — one column per person, room or machine. That's the rota read: who is on, and when. Month and Agenda stay as they are on purpose. Thirty hour grids side by side is thirty columns of slivers, and an agenda is a list where a time is a label rather than a position. Which clock the calendar runs on Record dates are stored as plain wall-clock time, and the workspace time zone (Settings) says which wall that clock is on. A shift at 9:00 AM is 9:00 AM at the site, whoever is reading the rota — which is the behaviour you want almost always, and it is the default. For the times that genuinely belong to the people in them rather than to a place — a call, a remote session, a cross-border booking — turn on Show in each viewer's time zone on the date field. Then 3:00 PM London shows as 10:00 AM to a colleague in New York, and dragging it works in their terms too. Nothing changes for anyone who has never set a time zone on their own profile: they see the workspace's times exactly as stored. Move between months Use the ‹ and › buttons in the page header to step to the previous or next month, and Today to jump back to the current one. The month and year you're looking at is shown on the right side of the calendar's header bar. Set up a table for the Timeline The Timeline draws each record as a horizontal bar from a start date to an end date, and it picks those fields for you by name: a date field whose name contains a word like start, begin, from, kickoff, or open becomes the start, and a second one containing end, finish, due, complete, target, closed, or to becomes the end. If no name matches, it falls back to your first date field for the start and any other date field for the end — so any two date fields give you true spans, and clear names just decide which plays which role. The toolbar always tells you which fields it chose. With only one date field there is nothing to infer the end from, so every bar ends three days after it starts and the toolbar says End inferred (+3 days). Add a second date field to draw real spans. Read the timeline Months run along the top ruler, and a vertical Today line marks the current date. Each row shows the record's name and its dates on the left; the bar sits on the timeline to the right. Scroll horizontally to move through time — the name column stays pinned. Click a bar or a record name to open that record. Records with an empty start date are left off the chart, and a record whose end date falls before its start is drawn as a single day. Move and stretch a bar If you can edit a record's dates, you can change them on the timeline itself. • Drag a bar to move it. Both dates move together, so the work keeps its length. • Drag either end to stretch or shorten it. The left edge changes only the start date and the right edge only the end date. An edge stops when it reaches the other one, so a bar is never shorter than a day. • From the keyboard, Tab to a bar and press the left or right arrow key to move it a day. Hold Shift to move only its end. Each change saves as soon as you let go. If it can't be saved, the bar goes back to where it was and a message says why. A date that includes a time keeps it: move a 9:30 AM start by a day and it is still 9:30 AM. The ends only stretch when the view has an end-date field. With a single date field the end is inferred, so a bar can move but not stretch. A bar too short to hold two handles shows only the right one; drag it out first, or move the whole bar. Where the Tree view went The Tree view has been retired, and any Tree views you had are now grids. It could follow one link, two levels deep, and a record with nothing linked dropped out of its own table's view with nothing on screen to say so. What it did is covered better elsewhere: • To see a table filed under the records it links to — tasks by project — group the grid by that link. • When a table links to itself — a parent, a manager — use Or nest rows in the grid's Group menu, which nests as deep as the links go. • To follow the links out from one record, open it: the peek drawer and the record's graph show what it links to and what links to it. When a view looks empty Each view tells you what it's missing and offers the fix: • Calendar on a table with no date field shows Add a date field, which takes you to the table's field editor. • Timeline in the same situation shows Edit fields — one date field gets you bars with inferred ends, a second gets you real spans. If you have no tables at all yet, both views point you to Create a workspace instead. Calendar and Timeline also fall back to that message when you open them fresh and none of your tables has a date field yet. Tips • A table with no date field can't be drawn on the Calendar or the Timeline until you add one — the view says so and links to the field editor. • Any two date fields give the Timeline true spans; naming them "Start date" and "End date" (or "Due") decides which one is the start and which is the end. • The count badge on a calendar day shows the true total even when only three pills fit. • A filter you author on the grid is the same filter on the calendar and the timeline — they read one saved view, so there is nothing to keep in sync. The exceptions are conditions on computed fields or through a link, which only the grid can run; these views say so rather than applying them wrongly. Good to know • Calendar always uses the table's first date field (by field order) — you can't choose a different date field from the calendar page. • Records with an empty date value silently disappear from the Calendar. On the Timeline, an empty start date drops the record entirely, while an empty end date just gets the inferred three-day end. • The +N more note on a crowded calendar day isn't clickable — only the first three pills link to records, so open the table's Grid view to reach the rest. • With a single date field, every timeline bar's end is set three days after its start — that's an inferred end, not real data. • Dragging needs permission to edit the record's dates. A calendar event moves by drag in the Day and Week hour grids; Month and Agenda don't drag, so change those dates on the record itself. A timeline bar's ends only stretch when the view has an end-date field. Who can do what • Both views require signing in, and they only list workspaces and tables you are a member of. • Anyone who can see a table can use both views; moving an event, or moving or stretching a bar, needs permission to edit its dates.