UICalendar Oracle Calendar Basics: Install, Login, Password, Help

This page has basic information on how to use the Oracle Calendar Client with UICalendar, including links to documentation for Windows and Macs. Oracle Calendar/UICal for Macs is very similar to Oracle Calendar/UICal for Windows. The information in this page applies to both unless explicitly stated otherwise, in which case specific information for each platform is given.

For downloading and installation information for the Oracle Calendar Mac, Windows, and Linux client, see the Appendices of this group of Web pages. (The last of the links above.)

Some of the new features in the Version 10 clients and server. Many require that you set Preferences (Mac)/Options (Windows) before you can use them. Some are discussed in these pages; see the online help for the others.

Scheduling

• Ability to schedule external attendees in Agenda entries using their e-mail addresses or by selecting them from the Global Address List or your Personal Address Book
• Ability to add new contacts to your Address Book from attendee names
• Support for multi-day notes and day events

Searching

• Ability to search the Global Address List and your Personal Address Book in addition to the calendar server when adding users to Agenda entries
• Automatic name completion option when opening agendas and tasks, adding people to entries, or locating a person

Per-instance possibilities

• Ability to create per-instance details for your Agenda entries
• Ability to create per-instance personal notes for any Agenda entry

Offline capabilitiess

• Prompt to switch offline when the calendar server is unreachable and prompt to reconnect when the calendar server connection is restored
• Ability to synchronize your offline password with your online password

Preferences

• Ability to have e-mail reminders and notifications sent to an alternate e-mail address
• Preference to enable or disable pop-up reminders on startup
• Ability to set your reply for an entry upon creation (including free/busy information)
• Entry owners can set the reply status for external attendees
• Ability to make tasks untimed by default
• Ability to print attendance status

1. Open the UICalendar client:
   Windows: Start -> Programs -> Oracle Calendar -> Oracle Calendar
   Mac OS: Finder -> (Mac OS X) Applications -> Oracle Calendar
2. The Sign-In box will open.
   
   
3. You should have set the Connect to: box to connect to UICalendar; the Client Install Appendix (above) for the Windows or Mac client has step-by-step instructions.
4. UICal online accepts two User names: your netid and your UICalendar name, which is generally your full name. Ada's are adabyron and Ada Byron Lovelace. If necessary, type one or the other in the User name box. It's "if necessary" because UICalendar remembers the User name you used last, so you should only have to type it in once.
5. Type your UICalendar password in the Password box. If you've already selected an ACCC common password, then that will be your UICal password. If you haven't, you will be asked to select one when you open your UICal account. (For more information on UICalendar passwords, see Your UICalendar Password below.)
6. Click the Sign-in button.
   • The first time you login, your In-Tray, which lists invitations you've received and sent out:
     
     and your Agenda will open. The first time you login, for both Windows and Mac, your agenda will be in Day view, which is UICal's default.
     All future times you log in, your agenda will be displayed the same view as you had when you logged out.
     
   • If you left UICal with the In-tray closed, UICal won't open it when you log back in, but if there is something you should look at in your In-tray, a dialog box will pop open telling you about it. That is the default In-Tray option; there are others: Oracle Calendar -> Preferences -> General -> Startup (Mac) or Tools -> Options -> General -> Startup (Win)
7. To open your In-Tray or Agenda by hand:
   • Click the Open My Agenda icon on the task bar (a calendar page which is either the first or second item on the Toolbar) to open your agenda, or use File -> Agenda -> Open (Mac) or File -> Open -> Agenda (Win).
   • To open the In-Tray, click the Open In-Tray icon on the task bar (a wooden in-tray, which is the first item on the task bar on the Agenda window) to open your In-Tray, or use File -> Open In-tray (Mac) or File -> Open -> In-tray (Win)
8. UICal will remember which Agenda view -- Day, Week, or Month -- you had when you last closed it and will re-open in that view.

If you don't already have one, UICalendar will ask if you want to create one an offline agenda each time you log in -- one which will allow you to manage your UICalendar agenda when you don't have an open Internet connection -- when you log in. So you don't really have a choice about creating one; UICal won't let you log in without one. But you don't have to use it.

1. A dialog box will open asking if you want to have an offline agenda or UICalendar may tell you that your offline agenda is owned by someone else.
   • In Windows, the easiest way to fix this is to click Browse and add "/netid" to the end of the path that UICalendar suggests; for example, Ada Byron could have: ..../adabyron
   • On a Mac, create an offline agenda with account's netid as its name, and in the future, you can click Browse and it will be easy to find.
2. Click OK on Windows, Choose on Mac.

Your netid does not work as your User Name: when logging into your offline agenda. You must use your UICalendar name, which is your full name. For example, Ada must use: Ada Byron Lovelace

If you don't know what your UICalender name is you can click on the magnifying glass Search icon beside the User Name: text box and look yourself up.
It is also in the heading of your Agenda; see The UICalendar Agenda Pane below.

The UICalendar help has instructions on using offline agendas:

• On Windows, Help -> Contents -> Using your Agenda offline.
• On Macs, Click Help, then click the Home icon. The Offline Agenda item is at the bottom, above the TroubleShooting and Glossary.

There used to be a problem with the passwords of the online and offline agendas getting out of sync when you changed your common password -- the password for your online agenda, leaving the offline agenda still using the old password.

But the new Oracle Calendar now has an option to automatically change the offline password to match the online password, which takes care of that problem, but only if you turn on the option before you change your password. Here is how, and how to get UICal to automatically download a copy of your agenda each time you leave UICal.

You don't have to download your agenda if you don't want to. The download takes time, and if you're not going to use it, don't bother. But do turn on the password sync. That will save you hassle whenever you change your ACCC common password.

Note: These are Oracle Calendar Client Options, not an option for a particular account. Once you set it up, the options you select will be used for every UICal account you log in to.

1. Log in to UICal.
2. MacOS:
   1. Oracle Calendar -> Preferences ... -> click the Offline icon on the left, which is supposed to look like a broken connection.
   2. Click the Download tab.
      
3. Windows:
1. Tools menu item -> Options -> click the + beside Offline on the left.
2. Click on Download.
   
4. And the options, in both cases:
   
• If you want to download an offline agenda, in Download (period), select the period of time that you want downloaded. If you have a large calendar, it can take some time to download. In that case, you won't want to download more than a few months at a time. The default is one month in the future and one month in the past.
• If you want to download an offline agenda, click the Automatically download radio button to tell UICalendar to automatically download a copy of your agenda or Prompt before downloading if you want to choose when you download it.
5. Click Synchronize online password to offline files (Mac) Automatically change the offline password to match the online password (Windows) to take care of the online/offline password sync problem.
6. Click the Reconciliation tab. These options govern how the Offline Agenda is reconciled with the Online Agenda when they disagree. Be sure to check it out to make sure the options are what you want.
   
7. Click OK.

After you do this, UICal will download your entire Agenda for the specified time period each time you exit from UICal. A download progress box will open which has a Cancel button that you can use to cancel the download if you're in a hurry. (If you have a lot of Entries in your Agenda, the download will take some time.)

There are a number of other options under Off-line that allow you to customize your offline use of Oracle Calendar.

Note: This is an Oracle Calendar Option, not an option for a particular account. Once you set it up, the options you select will be used for every UICal account you log in to.

Windows: Click File -> Exit.

Macs: Oracle Calendar -> Quit Oracle Calendar

In Windows, if you exit by closing the In-tray and Agenda windows, then the next time that UICalendar opens, it will only open the last window you closed. (The logging in instructions above explain how to fix that.)

Just installed a new version of the Oracle Calendar client? Check out the Getting Started -> What's New? help entry.

Windows Oracle Calendar Online Help Oracle Calendar has a great online help system that should be useful when you're learning how to use it. Select: Help -> Contents, click the + beside the topics you're interested in, and click on the item you'd like to learn about. In a window or dialog box and not sure what to do or what it means? No problem. Press F1 and go directly to the Oracle Calendar help on that task. This is a really nice feature of Oracle Calendar.

Mac Oracle Calendar Online Help Oracle Calendar has a great online help system that should be useful when you're learning how to use it. Select: Help -> Oracle Calendar Help. By default, the help for the current window is opened. If you want to see the overall help, click the Home icon. Click on a subject and that subject is opened in this window. Click the back arrow to go back to the menu when you're finished. In a window or dialog box and not sure what to do or what it means? No problem. Click the question mark in the circle at the right of the main menu to open context-sensitive help. (See the illustration of the In-Tray above.)

Oracle documentation at: Appendix A: Oracle Calendar Manuals from Oracle

After you login, by default your In-Tray (on Macs) and your Daily Agenda with Tasks will be displayed.

The UICalendar Agenda Pane UICalendar default is to display today's agenda along in the Agenda pane along with today's tasks in the Task pane. Each time you open it, UICal will display your agenda in the same view you had when you last logged out, so if you want to use a specific view -- Day, Week, or Month -- as you default, just make sure UICal is in that view whenever you log out. In the image below, the icon for Week view has been clicked (the depressed button in the center of the third group on the Toolbar). The Task pane, which is at right of the Agenda pane in Daily view, isn't displayed in Weekly or Monthly view. The connected plugs at the end of the Status bar (bottom right) means that you're working on-line -- connected to the UICalendar server.

1. Click on Today in the heading bar below the Toolbar to display today's calendar. The arrows on either side of Today move to previous or next day/week/month. (Depending on what view you've selected.)
   
   
2. Today is highlighted on the agenda (the date in red and daily tasks with a yellow background) in the Weekly or Monthly views.
   
   
3. Below the Menu bar is the Toolbar -- icons for common UICalendar Tools.
   • Point to an icon in the Toolbar and pause to display its function.
   • The third group of icons select Daily, Weekly, and Monthly views.
   • The fourth group is used to create new appointments and tasks.
     
     
4. There's a meeting from 11:00 am - Noon on Tuesday.
   • Double-click on the meeting to edit it.
   • You can move a meeting (that you created) to another time by dragging and dropping it.
     
     
5. Each time you open it, UICal will display your agenda in the same view you had when you last logged out, so if you want to use a specific view -- Day, Week, or Month -- as your default, just make sure UICal is in that view whenever you log out.
   
   
6. Use Tools -> Options -> Agenda -> Display (Windows) or Oracle Calendar -> Preferences -> Agenda -> Display tab (Macs) to customize your Agenda display. In particular, you might want it to display Saturday and Sunday, and to select Sunday as the beginning of the week:
   
   
   
7. The default colors of meetings. The meetings in the figure above are colored green because Ada Byron has confirmed that she will attend them and blue when she hasn't. The default meeting colors for UICal agenda views are listed in Tools -> Options -> Agenda -> Colors (Windows) or Oracle Calendar -> Preferences -> Agenda -> Color tab (Macs):
   
   • dark green for accepted meetings; light green for accepted tentative meetings
   • bright red for refused meetings; pink for refused tentative meetings
   • dark blue for unconfirmed meetings; light blue for unconfirmed tentative meetings
     
   You can alternatively color meetings by their importance or their ownership.
8. Spend some time looking through the other options as well; there are other options that you will want to set.

The section above on the Agenda pane described the default colors of meetings in UICal; green for accepted meetings -- ones you've said you're going to attend -- red for rejected meetings -- one you've said you won't attend -- and blue for unconfirmed meetings -- ones that you haven't replied to yet or that you've said you will accept or reject at a later time.

How do you accept, reject, or put off confirming meetings? It's easy -- Right-click (Windows) Control-click (Macs) on the meeting item in your Agenda pane and select Will attend, Will not attend, or Will confirm later. If the item is a meeting that other UICal users are invited to, they will be informed of your decision. You can now also reply when you create or edit the meeting, using the Reply/Notes tab, where there are dropdownlist for the Response: and Show time as: Busy or Free.

Passwords for online UICalendar Online Agendas (and the Web client) can only be set using the ACCC Password Changing Utility Web page, which allows you to select a single ACCC Common password that will be used for your ACCC accounts on argo, icarus, mailserv, tigger, and UICalendar.

The Oracle Calendar Client has a password changing tool: Tools -> Change Password ... which appears to work, but we've turned it off on the server side for your Online Agenda. If you try to use it, it will fail on the server, giving you a strange error message -- that your old password didn't match. That isn't necessarily the case, but it will always be the result; that's just the error message that it gives because of the way that we turned the password changing tool off.

Click Here To Change Your ACCC Common Password

When you change your common password, the password of your Offline Agenda must also be changed to the new password, or you will not be able to log in. Either log in to the offline agenda with its old password and change its password to your new common password using Tools -> Change Password ... (which does work for the Offline Agenda), or, if you have previously set UICal to automatically sync your online and offline passwords for you, then just log in to your native Mac OS or Windows client and it will sync your passwords for you automatically. See Automatically Sync Your Online and Offline Passwords and Download Your Agenda for instructions.

Access rights control who can see your schedule and send you meeting invitations, and, for advanced users, are used to appoint designates -- Editors, as they are called in the Outlook Connector -- who can manage your schedule for you. (We should all be so lucky.)

By default, no one can see your UICal calendar or Task information or invite you to meetings unless you give them permission to do so, either specifically, by name (if the person has a UICal account), or generically (for everyone who has a UICal account).

The smallest UICal permissions that you can give (above none, that is) is that people can see a calendar for you with the times that you are busy marked out. There are higher levels of access that you can give to specific people (who must have UICal accounts), up to and including, full access to edit and manage your UICal calendar and Tasks for you.

If you'll need to share your calendar with people who do not have UICal accounts, turn on your UICal on the Web Global Agenda so you can send them its URL. It's a Web calendar showing your busy times with a link to send email to you.

You can also allow individual people, groups of people, or everyone with UICal accounts to invite you to meetings.

UICal isn't worth much as a collaborative system if you don't share your online schedule with your colleagues or allow at least some people to invite you to meetings. So please take the time to do the following to add access to your calendar to those people who should have it.

1. Open the UICalendar client.
2. Select Tools -> Access Rights...
3. First, you want everyone to be able to invite you to meetings, click the Scheduling tab (Windows) or icon (Macs). Highlight Default: Any unlisted person, and check Can invite you to Entries. Or uncheck it and add any specific people or groups that you want to be able to invite you to meetings.
4. Now click the Viewing tab (Windows) or icon (Macs). Use the box at the bottom of the tab to enter a list of specific people to give the viewing rights to.
   • Either add the people you want to allow one at a time by typing all or part of their last name and clicking the green check button,
   • Or by clicking the magnifying glass search icon (beside the green checkmark), then click Search in the Directory Search dialog box for a list of all UICalendar users. Scroll down the list, highlighting the name of each person you want to add to your access list and click >>Add to add them. Click OK when you're finished.
   1. Then click on the name of the first person you've added, scroll down to the bottom of the list of added people, then hold down the Shift key and click on the last person's name. This will select all the people you've added.
   2. Click on No Viewing Rights to unselect it.
   3. Click on each of the entries in the View times only column to allow the selected people to see the times of all of your appointments.
   4. While all the added people are still selected, go through the other tabs in the Access Rights box and select their viewing rights. (I have No viewing rights selected on the Viewing Tasks tab and and Can invite me to Entries selected in the Scheduling tab selected.)
      
5. Click OK to accept your changes.

Would you like to allow another UICal user to have more access to your calendar and tasks? Then you can appoint them have access to your calendar as your designate. (Note that this has to be a specific UICal user; you can't appoint Default: any unlisted person to be a designate.)

1. Select Tools -> Access Rights... and click the Designate tab (Windows) or icon (Macs).
2. Type the name of the person you want to give rights to into the edit box and click the Checkmark (green check) or use the magnifying glass Search icon search for him/her.
3. Click to select the name of the person you want to give additional access to from the list at the bottom of the tab. The name will be highlighted in a blue line.
4. Deselect Same as default (Windows) or Defaults (Macs). (For Windows, the Full designate rights box must also be deselected in order to be able to set specific designate rights.) The default designate rights for all users is No designate rights.
5. For each type of Entry -- Meetings, Day Events, Notes, and Tasks -- assign an access level for the person.
   • The levels of designate rights are:
     • Modify: The designate can create, view, edit and reply to Entries in your name. (You have to select either Modify or None for Normal Meetings, Day Events, and Notes.)
     • View/Reply: The designate can view and reply to Entries in your name.
     • View times only: The designate can only view the times of your Meetings. The designate will not see Daily Notes or Day Events, as they do not occupy specific blocks of time. This level of designation has to be set on the Viewing tab.
   • Alternatively, grant the person:
     • Full designate rights, which means that the designate can view and modify all Entries.
     • No designate rights, which means that the user cannot modify anything in your Agenda.
6. If all the checkboxes for setting Access Rights are grayed out,
   1. First, add a user to the list of designates, then
   2. Select and deselect the No designate rights or the Full designate rights checkbox.
7. Ada has give me full designate access to her UICal Agenda, as seen in this figure. She also has given me Full viewing rights selected on the Viewing Tasks tab and Can invite me to Entries selected on the Scheduling tab .