The Appointments tab allows you to adjust setting related to DCO events that are placed on an Outlook calendar as appointments.

Access Appointments Options. To access the settings relating to Appointments, click on the Options tab on the DCO main screen and then click on the Appointments tab.

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Default Calendar Folder. This field allows you to select a single calendar as the default calendar folder where DocketCalendar date calculations will be directly added. Calendars in the dropdown list will include your personal calendar, any additional calendars you create in your Outlook account and any calendars which have been shared with you. If you accept the default setting for this field, both deadlines and appointments will be placed on your default Outlook calendar–the single calendar Outlook automatically creates when it is installed. If you follow our recommendation, you should choose your firm’s firmwide calendar as the Default Calendar Folder. This will result in all date calculations for all cases handled by your firm being placed on a single calendar.   For the firmwide calendar, we recommend for a solo practice using the primary calendar of the solo practitioner and in a larger firm using the primary calendar of a separate Outlook account set up specifically for that purpose. Once created, your firm’s firmwide calendar will not appear in the list of the Default Calendar Folder field and will not be available to select until it has been shared with you.

You Can Ignore These Settings:

The following settings can generally be ignored:

• ‍Public Folders Scan/Public Folders Autoscan.  Default:  All folders.
• ‍Public Calendar “Favorites” Folder.  Default: Favorites.
• ‍Additional Shared Calendar Folder. Typically, when another staff member’s calendar has been shared with a staff member using the DocketCalendar Add-In, it will automatically appear in the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder. But if a shared calendar is not present–it may have been deleted or not correctly “accepted”–this option provides an alternate way to add it to the Calendar Folder. You do so by entering the email address of the staff member who shared the calendar and clicking Add.
• ‍Cache Calendar/Task Folders.  Default: Yes. This setting determines whether the list of shared calendars in the Calendar Folder is retained from session to session or retrieved from the Exchange Server when the DocketCalendar Add-In is started. It may affect how long it takes for the DocketCalendar Add-In to load. You should accept the default.  If recently added shared calendars fail to appear in the Calendar Folder list, temporarily changing the default from Yes to No and restarting the Add-In may solve the problem. If it persists, you should contact customer support.

‍Show Calendar Folder on “Use Rules Tab”. Default: Unchecked. If checked, the list of calendars to which you have access will appear in a dropdown list on the Use Rules tab. When you perform a rules calculation, you will have the option to choose any calendar in the list and the events you create will be placed on that calendar.

Appointment Length.  This setting determines the length of time that will be reserved on your calendar, when a rules calculation places an appointment event on your calendar that takes place at a specified time. The default is 60 minutes. If the Appointment w/Time Status setting is set to “busy”, your calendar will show that you are busy for the period of time selected.

‍Reminder For Appointments (minutes). The default amount of time before an appointment that you will receive a pop-up reminder in Outlook. The default reminder is 15 minutes.

‍Default Category for Appointments. If you use Outlook categories, you can select the one you want assigned to appointments by default. We recommend that you select Category “Z CRO”. You will need to create that Category in Outlook before it can be selected here. 

‍All Day Appointment Status. Default: “free”. When you choose to display deadlines on your Outlook calendar as appointments, they are configured as all day events, so that they will appear at the top of the calendar, separated from other appointments scheduled for a particular time. Since normally Outlook will show you as “busy” during appointments, people looking at your calendar would not be able to tell when you were free to schedule a standard appointment on any day when at least one deadline appeared on your calendar. This setting is used to show your appointment status as “free” for these all day “appointments”.

‍Appointment w/Time Status.  Default:  “busy”.  This setting determines whether a calculated event that is a court appearance or appointment will show the time slot when it takes place as “busy” on your Outlook calendar, so that other people will not try to schedule other appointment at that time. The default is “busy”.

‍Case Name Location.  Default Setting: Prepend to subject. This option determines where the case name will be placed in the subject or the body of an Outlook calendar entry or Task list. For help on how to view the body of a deadline or appointment placed on your Outlook calendar. If you do not want to accept the default setting, select one of the other options from the dropdown list:

• Prepend to subject. Puts the case name first on the subject line, before the event description. (Default and recommended setting)
• Append to subject. Puts the case name after the event description in the subject line. If the event has a lengthy description, the case name may be cut off when you view the subject line on the Outlook calendar.
• Prepend to body. Puts the case name in the body of the calendar entry, before the rule snippet or rule ID.
• Append to body. Puts the case name in the body of the event after the location of the rule snippet or rule ID.
• Don’t add. Removes the case name from the subject and body. This option is not recommended, because you may not be able to identify the case without the case name.

Custom Text Location. Default setting: Prepend to body. This option determines the location of custom text entered during docket calculations in the calendar entry on the Outlook calendar. It can be put at the beginning or end of the subject line or body of the calendar entry using the following selections:

• Don’t add. Custom text not displayed.
• Prepend to subject. Displayed at the beginning of the subject.
• Append to subject. Displayed at the end of the subject.
• Prepend to body. Displayed at the beginning of the body.
• Append to body. Displayed at the end of the body.

Add “DocketCalendarEvent” Tag. Default setting: No. If enabled, this setting will configure DocketCalendar to automatically insert the text string “DocketCalendarEvent” into the body of each Outlook appointment and meeting invitation generated by DocketCalendar when deadlines and events are created. These text characters can be used to uniquely identify DocketCalendar appointments on the calendar of staff members as well as the meeting invitations for these events appearing in the Outlook inboxes of staff members. Using this identifier, staff members can search for DocketCalendar events among others on their calendars, create filters to only display these events on calendars or create Outlook “Rules” to remove automatically meeting invitations from their Outlook inboxes. Since we recommend that you set up an Outlook Rule to suppress meeting invitations and cancellations, this setting should be changed to “Yes”.