UICalendar Connector for Outlook Basics: Login, PDA Synchronization, Passwords, Help

There is an Outlook Connector for UICalendar that allows you to use Outlook to manage your UICalendar database. This page gives some tips on how to use Outlook with UICalendar. It assumes that you've already opened your UICalendar account. See UICalendar Outlook Connector Install for installation instructions.

• What's New
• About Outlook Connector at UIC
• Opening Outlook and Logging In
• Getting Help
• PDA Synchronization
• Your UICalendar Password
• Access Rights and Editors -- Important Privacy Information

Here are some of the new features of the current release. For more information see Getting Started What's New? in the Outlook Connector help.

Configuration and deployment

• POP mail server support
• Multiple options for configuring automatic updates of offline folders
• Ability to install automatic updates from the About dialog box or from a new system tray icon notifying you when updates are available
• New system tray icon providing server status information
• Support for Outlook 2007 (the version that is available for download now)

Features

• Improved support for third-party products working with Outlook
• Additional support for features available in Outlook with Microsoft Exchange
• Option to back up your personal folders before resetting them
• Interactive progress bar for enhanced user feedback
• Ability to send and receive messages while you are working offline
• Ability to customize the display range for your Calendar folders
• Support for attaching linked and embedded objects into messages

Requirements

The operating system, Outlook version, disk space, and memory requirements, as well as instruction information, are given in UICalendar Oracle Calendar Outlook Connector Install and Setup.

When you use MS Outlook with UICalender Outlook Connector, your Outlook schedule is kept in UICalendar, so you can access it from any Outlook client with the Oracle Connector for Outlook installed, such as Outlook at home and Outlook at work.

But we're talking UICalendar and Oracle Calendar here, so your schedule will also be available to you in UICalendar on the Web from anywhere and also anywhere you install an Oracle Calendar native client or sync it with SyncML. This is really cool. Another cool thing is that you will be using the Outlook Connector email client (not Outlook's own email client) and it keeps email on the ACCC email servers, so you can read the email you leave on the server using the ACCC's WebMail Web service from anywhere there's an Internet Connection and a Web browser.

The only difference in opening Outlook when you're using the Oracle Connector for Outlook is that, if you haven't told Outlook to remember your passwords, Outlook will ask you to enter the password for your UICal account and for your ACCC email account (which will be the same, the ACCC strong password) while Outlook is opening.

As of April, 2008, a change: We have finally fixed the problem with using the netid to login to Outlook Connector, and, according to Oracle, it will also fix the problems we've all been having with Outlook Connector being unstable. Now you can -- and should -- change Outlook Connector to login using your netid as you do in all other UICal clients.

Here is how:

1. Close Outlook.
2. Start Control Panel User Accounts (Vista) or Start Settings Control Panel (Windows XP)
3. Select Mail.
4. E-mail Accounts... Oracle Connector for Outlook Change (Vista)
   or E-mail Accounts View or Change Existing Accounts Next > Oracle Connector for Outlook Change (Windows XP)
   
5. Highlight your full name in the User name: box under Calendar, and replace it with your netid. (Ada would replace Ada^Lovelace Byron with adabyron.)
   
6. The User Name: is all you have to change. Click Next>.
7. You will go back to the E-mail Accounts screen, where you click Close (Vista) or Finish (XP).
8. A dialog box will out saying that your local folders will need to be reset. Click OK.
   
9. Close the Mail settings window and the Control Panel.

Outlook using the UICalendar Outlook Connector works pretty much the same as Outlook -- the major difference is that the data is stored online on the UICalendar server rather than locally or on an Exchange server.

When you install Oracle Connector for Outlook, it adds Help topics for Oracle Connector for Outlook to Outlook's Help menu.
Select Help Oracle Connector for Outlook Connector Help

As explained in the help item in the illustration above, the Outlook Connector online help explains how the Oracle Connector for Outlook differs from Outlook; it does not explain specifically how to use Outlook.

Notice the Outlook Connector Help section on PDA synchronization (illustration above)? The Oracle Outlook Connector is compatible with most types of third-party PDA-Outlook synchronization software. Basically, it works like this -- however you synced your PDA (Palm OS or PocketPC) with Outlook before, you probably can continue to do so now. (With an exception if you use PocketMirror or PocketJournal, which is explained in the help.)

There is also Oracle Mobile Data Sync, which is introduced in Appendix H. It works with many PDAs and cellular phones and is independent of Oracle Outlook Connector. If your PDA or smartphone can use Oracle Mobile Data Sync, SyncML, we very much recommend you use it instead of a PDA-Outlook sync. One major advantage is that you can sync with OMDS from anywhere; you aren't tied down to a specific PC.

Oracle does recommend that you don't use both an Outlook sync and ODMS. Choose one or the other.

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

The UICalendar Outlook Connector has a password changing tool. If you try to use it, it will tell you it was unable to change your password.

Change Your ACCC Common Password

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 Oracle Calendar and select the Calendar.
   • In older Outlooks: if necessary, click on the small down arrow head beside the title of the open window to open the Folder List;
     
     and then click on the push pin on the right of the top of the Folder List to keep the Folder List pane open.
     
   • Or, in Outlook 2003 and newer, click Calendar in the Navigation pane on the left hand side.
     
     
     
2. Right-click on the name of the Oracle Connector Calendar and choose Properties from the right-click menu. In Vista, I had to click on the right side of the Navigation area and drag it over to the right before I could see My Calendars.
   
   
   
3. Select the Permissions tab.
   
   "Anyone" will be selected, and the default permissions is that anyone can invite you to meetings and anyone has no other permissions. Change anyone's permissions here, and anyone that you want to give custom permissions to. But if you want to give "delegate" permissions -- give people permissions to read and perhaps change your calendar, it's easier to use the Delegates preference, next.
4. Delegate permissions:
   1. Tools Options Delegates tab
   2. Click Add...
   3. Type the name of the person you want to add to select them from the Global or your personal address list.
   4. Click to highlight their name and click Add .
   5. Click OK.
   6. Select the Roles that you want to this person:
      • None: This particular person won't be able to read your busy times or invite you to a meeting.
      • Reviewer: Reviewer allows people to view the times and the details of your appointments.
      • Editor:  Editor allows people full access to item, as if they were you. This is equivalent to a designate in the Oracle Calendar native or Web client.
        
   7. Click OK.
      
      

For more information, see Help Oracle Connector for Outlook Connector Help Sharing Information Delegate Access and permissions