Advanced Options for Availability Calendars
guides > calendar management
The Advanced Options Panel
Advanced options are not essential to the functionality of the calendars but they offer a host of additional possibilities. Each calendar has its own Advanced Options Panel, which is accessed via the 'wrench' button in the Calendar Management area.
The Advanced Options Panel allows the account owner to...
- change an individual calendar's time zone.
- alter or remove the text and icon which refers to 'orange dates' on the calendar's key.
- set or change a calendar-specific password.
- set all unmodified days to default to either green, red or orange as preferred.
- change the appearance of the text and date numbers on the dynamic calendar.
- adjust the default transparency of the dynamic calendar.
- view the dynamic calendars and see the effects of any adjustments on different backgrounds.
Guides for the above options can be found close to the relevant controls on advanced options screen itself.
Other Advanced Options
In addition to the adjustments possible on the Advanced Options screen, the calendar's link string can be amended to achieve a variety of customization options.
Because changes to the link string apply only a specific display or sharing scenario it is possible, for example, to have the same calendar displayed on different web pages yet looking different on each one.
Because changes to the link string apply only a specific display or sharing scenario it is possible, for example, to have the same calendar displayed on different web pages yet looking different on each one.
You can...
- specify the number of future months to be displayed.
- replace the calendar's top heading with different text.
- alter the text for any of the main items in the calendar key.
- remove the calendar key.
- link a calendar's title text to a URL.(T)(M)
- change the language.(D)*
- adjust the radius of the corners.(D)
- change the colour scheme of the calendar display.(D)
- override/set the transparency level for a calendar display.(D)
- display multiple calendars on a single web page.
Features limited to the specific calendar types where indicated.
(T)able, (M)ini, (D)ynamic. *English/Spanish
Why Set a Calendar's Timezone?
The timezone setting controls the time of day when a calendar indicates that the current day (today) has ended. If you enter a higher number than your real time zone offset, calendars will automatically 'shut-off' availability earlier in the day. This might be useful, for example: If your calendar relates to the America EST timezone (-5) and you set the calendar timezone to GMT(0), the calendar will show that any availability there might have been for today date expired at 7PM instead of at midnight. People viewing the calendar do not see any mention of the timezone. It simply tells the calendar what time today becomes yesterday.
Each calendar account is set with a default timezone that will automatically apply to all newly created calendars, however, the Advanced Options Panel allows calendar owners to change the timezone for individual calendar at any time.
Customizing a Calendar's Text
Take a look at this image of a dynamic calendar for a ficticious pizza restaurant. This is how it has been customized: The top headline was changed from the default 'Availability Calendar for' to 'Opening Calendar for' , and all the items on the key have also been changed. These customizations have been done simply by changing the link string for the calendar. A link string will only work properly if it is a continuous line with no spaces but to make it easier to read here we've split the different parts onto different lines and made some lettering bold. Every calendar must have an id but all the other elements are optional and the order in which individual elements appear doesn't matter.
https://availacal.com/dc.asp?id=Pizzeria+Napolitana
&hx=Opening+Calendar+for
&ka=Open+12:30+to+2pm+%26+from+6pm
&ku=Closed+all+day
&kam=Open+for+Lunch+12:30-2:00
&kpm=Open+for+Dinner+from+6pm
&c=ffffff
&b=d9d9d9
&mo=24
As you can see, wherever spaces are needed between words we use a + symbol, and notice that if we want to have an ampersand (&) in the actual text we use the 'escape' code %26 (other characters are available).
Hopefully most of this is self-explanatory by looking at the parts of the link string and seeing the resulting text on the on the calendar. The last three settings might not be so obvious so here's what they do:
&c=ffffff is what makes the calendar background white because #ffffff is the Hex RGB code for white (we leave out the # ).
Similarly &b=d9d9d9 makes the border lines between the day numbers off-white.
Lastly &mo=24 means that this calendar will show 24 months into the future. You can set this to between 1 and 24 months. If we left this out the calendar would show the default number of months which is 12. In reality the calendar will add 1 month to the number because otherwise there would be very little information displayed as the end of the current month draws near.
You may have noticed that there is no orange icon shown on the key. The option to display an orange item, and any text to go with it is set in the Advanced Options Control Panel. For this calendar, a random letter was entered so orange would not be included in the key.
Other Link String Customizations
The rounded corners on the calendar are the default which is a corner radius setting of 4. For square corners we would add &cr=0 or for much more rounded corners we can go up to &cr=9.
There are other settings which are settable via the link string. See the list in the Advanced Options Panel for more. For example, whatever transparency is set in the control panel can be overidden by adding &xt=n to the link string, n being a number from 1 to 9. &xt=0 will make the calendar completely opaque and &xt=9 will cause the calendar to be almost completely transparent.
Take a look at this AVAILABILITY CALENDAR GALLERY to see a lots of different ways you can get the availability calendars to look.
Changing the Default Daily Availability Status
The default availability status for a calendar can be changed in the Advanced Options Panel. Untouched calendar dates are normally green but if preferred they can all be set to red or orange. This can be useful if, for example, you are starting with more unavailable dates than available dates and you want save time by using the calendar admin panel mainly to mark dates which are available rather than dates which are not.
Ideally, the default status should be decided when creating a new calendar then left alone. The default status will be green unless changed.
It is still ok to change default status on a calendar that has already had dates blocked-in but if doing so bear in mind that only previously untouched dates will be changed to the new default status. Any dates or blocks of dates which have previously had their status changed will not be affected at all when changing the default. This is great because it means that the default status can be changed at any time without fear of losing any actual availability data but remember that this also means that any dates which have been specifically set back the previous default staus (e.g. for a cancelled booking or a correction) might initially look the same as untouched dates but they will not change to the newly selected default status along with the untouched dates. For example: If you change the default from green to red, any dates that are green because they were specifically 'set' to green, rather than being green by default, will remain green unless they are specifically set to red or orange either via the admin panel or custom booking script.
If you have a large multi-calendar account and you want all/most of your calendars to default to red or orange just send us a request to 
and we can set your account to have red or orange as the default applied automatically all your new calendars as you create them, instead of you having to manually change the default for each new calendar you add. (In this case you are still able to set individual calendars in your account to default to green, orange or red as you wish.)
and we can set your account to have red or orange as the default applied automatically all your new calendars as you create them, instead of you having to manually change the default for each new calendar you add. (In this case you are still able to set individual calendars in your account to default to green, orange or red as you wish.)