create custom sharepoint calendar webpart with data from a WCF service

Question

I am fairly new to sharepoint. We are trying to create a custom calendar web part for our sales team to display their itinerary from an external WCF webservice. The calendar will look just like outlook calendar, but the calendar items are from an external service.

• The display would have a custom date range of 30 days (Ex: 16 May to 14 Jun)
• Each item in the itinerary will have a color code of its own.
• On click of the item in the itinerary we have to populate another webpart.

Following are a couple of questions I have for which I am not able to get the answers:

1. Is it possible to use the calendar view with a custom daterange? If so how can I do that programatically?
2. Is it possible to have different colors for each of the calendar items?

Currently I am building my own calendar control from scratch. But I beleive the existing calendar component in Sharepoint should be able to handle my requirements. If that is the case it will save me a ton of a time and mostly bug free.

Thanks for answering my questions in advance!!

Answer 1

It looks like no one has gotten into this situation. I was able to get answers for my questions above.

• It is not possible to have a calendar view with a custom date range. You can only choose between month, week or day.
• It is possible to have different color code for each calendar item.

I ended up creating my own calendar control that accepts a daterange upto 31 days. The control builds the calendar view on its own.