Multi Availability Calendar for Joomla

Multi Availability Calendar is a calendar for websites that use Joomla CMS. This calendar is designed to edit and display the availability of multiple elements, such as rooms, cars, bikes, seats in entertainment or touristic activities, but also professional availabilities, like those of a personal trainer, hairdresser, doctor, lawyer, tutor and many more - allowing to locate available days at first glance. It can also be used to set and display prices for certain ranges of days, for example seasonal prices.

Each calendar can contains various units, each unit is a row in the calendar and the permissions for each unit can be set separately, so you can decide who can edit, add and/or delete events/information on each unit.

The units are created separately and later assigned to the a calendar that can group one or more units. In the public website the calendar can be published either as a display-only calendar to show the information and also as a calendar that allows editing the unit's events/information.

Features

• It can be used as a module, component and plugin in the frontend to show the availability of several elements simultaneously;
• You can set the unavailable or busy days in different colors to highlight different reasons, or ranges of busy days.
• You can associate information to each range of days; it will be presented in form of floating panels, which facilitates the publication of details on the days marked as reserved or, for example, to show the booking rates for certain ranges of days. This information may be private (only for the backend) or public (will be shown in floating panels which appear on mouse-over in the frontend).
• Management interface uses Ajax technologies, making it comfortable, modern and easy to use.
• Allows to put links on calendar days, so that different dates can link to pages with related information.
• By editing the CSS files you can adjust the look & feel of the calendar.
• It can be published as a read-only calendar in the frontend or as an administrable calendar using the frontend component included for this option.
• You can specify who can edit, add and/or delete the events on each calendar's unit.
• Purchase of this product includes access to our Premium Support service.

Demo at the frontend:

Demo at the backend:

This is a "simplified" demo since the administration in the Joomla backend has a different interface with more options to select the calendar units and set the permissions.

Important note: To see the administration changes applied into the "frontend" calendars above you must refresh this page.

Click on the videos below to see how the calendar can be managed:

• Component Installation
• Module Installation
• Managing the Calendar: Creating and Renaming
• Managing the Calendar: Publishing
• Managing the Calendar: Content Management

Requirements:

This calendar has been designed to be used with both Joomla!® 1.5.x, Joomla!® 1.6.x, Joomla!® 1.7.x, Joomla!® 2.5.x and the new Joomla!® 3.x. There are separate installers for each Joomla version. The version featured on this page works on Joomla!® 1.5.x, Joomla!® 1.6.x, Joomla!® 1.7.x, Joomla!® 2.5.x and the new Joomla!® 3.0.x.

If you need a version of this calendar for websites that are not based on Joomla have a look at our Multi Availability Calendar for Dreamweaver.

If you need the calendar for another version of Joomla, please contact us.

Installation and Use:

Download the calendar "Multi Availability Calendar", then proceed to the installation. To install the component in Joomla!^® you will need to access the Joomla!^® Administration menu, once there, follow the path Menu> Extensions> Install/Uninstall, select "Browse" and look for the previously downloaded file. Hit the "Upload File & Install" button.

Once the Calendar is installed, you will be able to set up the component. To do so, follow path Menu > Components and select "Availability-Calendar" component. There are two sub-menus there: "availability-calendars" and "units". We recommend you to start creating some "units" to link them later to a calendar:

1. Click on the "units" menu
2. Click "New" to add a new unit
3. Enter the name of the unit and the permissions for that unit as shown at the following screenshot:

Image 1: Creating a unit and setting permissions.

Note that you can specify the permissions for group of users or for specific users. These permissions are applied when you publish the calendar in the front-end with the "allow edition" property set as "true". If you publish the calendar in the display-only mode the permissions are ignored since no modification is allowed in that case.

Once you have created some units you may proceed to create a calendar to group and publish the units, to do that go to the menu Menu > Components and select "Availability-Calendar" >> "availability-calendars", on that page:

1. Create a new "Multi Availability Calendar" using "New" button, located on the top bar.
2. Assign units to the calendar by clicking on the desired units. You can also add separators between units and order the units using the mouse to drag & drop them.
3. Publish the calendar by selecting Publish to the List or "Publish" button on the top bar.
4. To add information, click on "Admin Data" and enter the desired information.

Image 2: Adding a calendar.

Note that you can add separators to create (visually) sub-groups of units and you can drag & drop the units with the mouse to set the desired display order.

To show the calendar on the website, Multi Availability Calendar offers two options; as module, as component or as a plugin.

Publishing the Calendar as a component:

1. Go to Menu and click on "New" button.
2. Select "availabilitycalendar" >> "Large Calendar" for a display-only calendar or "availabilitycalendar" >> "Calendar Administration" for a calendar that allows edition in the frontend.
3. Add the menu name and Joomla basic parameters.
4. IMPORTANT: In the parameters select the calendar you wish to link to the menu and the language in which you wish to display it.

Note: The calendar is available in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese.

Publishing the Calendar as a module:

First download the "Multi Availability Calendar" module for Joomla. Follow the same steps as with the component installation. If the component is not installed, the module will not be able to work. Once installed, go to the Module Manager, Menu> Extensions> Module Manager and select " Availability Calendar". You will need to specify which of the calendars created in the component will be shown, also select the language and if the calendar will allow edition in the frontend, then complete the rest of the basic configuration data of Joomla that allows you to select the location of the module, etc. Finally publish the module and it will be displayed in your site.

Publishing the Calendar as a plugin (into an article):

1. Install the two plugin packages (button plugin and content plugin) in Joomla (usually in Menus>> Extensions>> Install)
2. Go to the Plugin Manager (usually in Menus >> Extensions) and enable the "Content - Availavility Calendar" and "Editor Button - Availavility Calendar"
3. Now go to any article (Content >> Article Manager) and use the button named "Availavility Calendar" (located below the editor area) to insert the calendar. You will be asked to select the calendar that you want to insert, the language and if it will allow edition in the frontend. That's all, save your article and check it at the front-end.

Instant Download

Basic Version

Free

• Limited to 5 events
• Contains a link to the product's page
• Doesn't include technical support (60 days of support service can be purchased for us$25)

Direct download link.
No registration required.
Unzip the downloaded file to select the installers for the Joomla version that you are using.

Note: Licensed under GNU GPL.