Enough about Calendar Web Parts - here's a cool SharePoint iPhone application!

Ok - now I think I've covered the world of SharePoint Calendar web parts pretty comprehensively, here's something more fun!

One thing I was thinking of developing was a way to access SharePoint lists on the iPhone - properly!

Yes, I know you can render a SharePoint page nicely on an iPhone, but proper navigation still eludes us... except now..

I found these folks in Australia - Spyk Software - have created a very good, stable iPhone app called iShare that will let you navigate a SharePoint site! It works really well - just read only for now - but you can set up multiple servers as needed. That saves me the effort of developing that one! Thanks ;-)

Seriously, go check it out and support them... good job folks and keep up the great work!!

Kwizcom Calendar Webpart

Kwizcom produce a calendar webpart, but as you can see from the picture, the design is fairly complicated. It seems to only have limited features and add only a little extra functionality to the standard Microsoft SharePoint calendar.

http://www.kwizcom.com

Ole Software Calendar Webpart

Another firm that offers a calendar webpart, but which has less functionality than ours, is Ole Software. They offer a nice presentation of a web part that can show multiple list in one view, but at the time of writing the part does not offer user friendly features like checkbox selection of which list to show/hide, Outlook 2007 design, drag and drop, resizable, mini calendars. However, again worth checking out and let us know what you think!

http://www.olesoftware.com

Virto Software Calendar Webpart

I just found this firm, looking for similar calendars. This team have put together a nice (though non standard Microsoft Office style) 'Google-calendar look' web part, with similar functionality to ours. In review, I think we have more options for the typical user such as:

- In our web part you can select which view of which list you would like and we allow you to overlay different views of a same list in different colors - e.g. My Events, Your Events in different colors from one SharePoint list and you can easily click our checkboxes to show/hide.
- In our web part you have Mini Calendars on the left for quick navigation.
- Ours is a little less expensive
- We offer iCalendar export for sharing to your Outlook, Google, or iCal calendars if needed

All in all though no doubt a nice web part and seems like a good alternative to ours if for some reason you want to spend more and not buy ours! Let me know what you like or don't like about their offering and if you agree with my assessment. As I said it's a good alternative and good luck to them (and all the makers of SharePoint web parts - we're a big community really). We'll include your ideas of improvements in future upgrades for our calendar! :)

http://www.virtosoftware.com

Bamboo Solutions Calendar Webpart

Bamboo Solutions offer a number of different webparts, and they have a calendar webpart, with lots of features particularly oriented to tracking timelines and project management functions. While it does have a lot of data connectivity options, the user interface is relatively standard, and does not have drag & drop 'Outlook 2007' type functionality.

http://www.bamboosolutions.com

Other SharePoint Calendar Webparts

In addition to our own great webpart ;-) there are a few other SharePoint calendar webparts out there by similar companies. As technology consultants, we know that not everyone has the exact same need for their calendar webpart in SharePoint - functions, style, price, and browser compatibility may differ for instance from person to person.

Our goal at SharePoint-Central is to help you find the right webpart for your site, and as a result we'll blog about the ones that we know are out there. If you know of any others, please let us know and we'll include them here in our blog.

..and do let us know of how you think our own webpart could be improved, or what you are looking for!

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Welcome to SharePoint Central!

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We're pleased to join this growing community of SharePoint developers and users.

Over the coming weeks in this blog we will feature news about our upcoming webparts, and also reference other great tools, techniques and webparts that we know of.

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