Use Case: Training Sessions Next to Rooms and Trainers
This use case shows how a learning and development team checks, in one week, whether each training session can happen at that time, in that room, with that trainer. The sessions stay in a SharePoint list, the rooms in their room mailboxes and the trainers’ time in their own Outlook calendars.
What you need
- Virto Calendar App in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
- A Training Sessions list in SharePoint with the session, its start and end, and columns such as the trainer, the room, the delivery mode and the number of registrations.
- The training rooms as Exchange room mailboxes, where facilities already take bookings.
- The trainers’ Outlook calendars.
Step 1. Add the three kinds of source
- Open the calendar settings by clicking the calendar name.
- Add the Training Sessions list as a SharePoint data source. See Adding a New Data Source.
- Add the training rooms by name or address. See Meeting Rooms.
- Add the trainers’ calendars. See Overlay Exchange Calendars (Outlook Calendars).
Give each source its own colour. Nothing is copied: bookings stay in the room mailboxes and the trainers’ entries stay in Outlook.
Step 2. Read a session as a stack
In Work Week, a session from the list, its room booking and its trainer’s entry sit side by side in the same time slot, each in the colour of its source. A stack of three is a session that can happen; a stack of two is a question to answer: the room booking is missing, or the trainer has something else.
Trainer entries carry the status set in Outlook, such as Busy, Out of Office or Tentative, so a session planned onto a trainer’s out-of-office day is visible before it is confirmed. To leave some statuses out of the calendar, use Filter Exchange events.
Step 3. Plan the programme
- Month shows which weeks already carry sessions, where a trainer is away for two weeks and where a room is still free.
- Task (days) turns the same sources into rows: each trainer, each room and each session gets a line, so a day with a session, a room and a trainer is one vertical stack.
- Search for a trainer’s name to see every session they deliver.
Step 4. Open the session
Click a session to open its card with the columns of the list item, such as the trainer, the room, the delivery mode and the registrations. Choose which columns the card shows in the data source’s tooltip settings.
What the app does not do
Enrollment, capacity, attendance and completion stay in the learning management system that owns them. Virto Calendar App shows whether the session can happen at that time, in that room, with that trainer.