Rolling Up Calendars in SharePoint

The idea of rolling up calendars across multiple SharePoint sites comes up very frequently in conversations with clients.  We’ve always tried to think of a nice, elegant way to make it work, but haven’t ever really come up with the “right” answer.  I saw a post on SharePointPedia today that looks to be that “right” answer.

In the post, Corro’ll Driskell outlines such a nice solution, I wish I’d thought of it.  You can read his post for clear step-by-step instructions (with illustrations), but basically he shows how to take advantage of the Data View Web Part’s (DVWP’s) capability to link data sources.  This is simple, and looks like it will work for calendars and any other consistently formed lists.

There are only a few questions or issues that I have about this:

• How many different data sources can be linked in this way?  My guess is that there is some upper limit, but it may be large enough not to be of concern.
• One needs to know exactly where the data sources are.  i.e., This doesn’t work if you want to roll up all of the calendars in a Site Collection, but you don’t know how many there are or where they will be.
• With calendars, you will need to be satisfied with a list view (as opposed to a calendar grid view).  DVWPs give you great flexibility on display, however.  For instance, you might color code the items in the list based on which calendar they come from.

None of these questions or issues is a reason not to use this method, but they may have an impact on its usefulness for you.