On a SharePoint calendar you might have different event types, e.g. Birthday, Meeting or Holiday. Wouldn’t it be nice if you can display these events on the calendar and colour code them by event type?

Well you probably can achieve this by applying the right XSL to the calendar list – but this could get nasty. Alternatively you can use a no-code solution involving calendar overlays in SharePoint 2010.

You would end up with something like this:

The steps to achieve this include:

1. Filter the default calendar view to show only items of event type Meeting (for example)
2. Create another calendar view, and filter to show only items of event type Holiday
3. Create another calendar view, and filter to show only items of event type Birthday
4. Add the Holiday and Birthday views to the default view as overlays

This approach has some drawbacks, but it is simple enough that it could be a satisfactory workaround.

As a side note, check this post for adding calendar overlays programmatically in SharePoint 2010: http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/index.php/2011/06/programmatically-setting-sharepoint-2010-calendar-overlays