UICalendar Oracle Calendar Client: Creating a Meeting

All the instructions on this page assume that you are logged into UICalendar using the Oracle Calendar Windows or Mac native client. Unless otherwise indicated, the instructions apply to both the Windows and Mac clients. Most of the screen shots are Windows, but the Mac clients look exactly the same (in a Mac sort of way), unless otherwise stated.

This page explains how to do the additional things you need to create a meeting that you're inviting other people to. The first thing to do is follow the instructions on the previous page, UICal Oracle Calendar Client: Creating Events, to create a new meeting -- either a singe meeting or a repeating one -- then continue with the instructions on this page to invite people and resources to it.

If you want to keep your changes, click the OK button. If you don't want to keep your changes, click Cancel. That's true for both Windows and Macs.

You add people and resources to a meeting while entering a meeting in the New Meeting window or editing it in the Edit Meeting window, on the People/Resources tab.

1. On the People/Resources tab, type the last name of each person you want to invite who has a UICal account in the Add: box and click the Checkmark icon -- a green check button to the right of the Add: box. Don't worry about this too much -- you can keep trying until you find the people you want to invite.
   
   Or there are other things you could do. For example to invite Ada Byron Lovelace, you could type any of the following in the Add: box and click the Checkmark:
   • Her initials. UICalendar now thinks that Byron is Ada's middle name, so her initials are the first letter of the first word in her first name and the first letter of her last name: a l
     a b l won't work.
   • A hyphenated last name, such as Newton-John counts as one word, so Olivia Newton-John's initials would be: o n
     If the person has a two word last name, like I do: Judith Grobe Sachs, the initials are the first letter of the first name and the first letter of the first word of the last name: j g
   • Her first name: ada
   • Her lastname: lovelace
   • Her netid: adabyron
     
   
   
   This is a Windows New Meeting window; it looks pretty much exactly like a the Mac New Meeting Window.
   Notice the green check mark by Ada Byron Lovelace's name; she's setting up the meeting, so Oracle Calendar assumes that she will attend. (She can change that later.)
   There is a blue question mark beside Grace Hopper, because she hasn't responded yet.
   
2. If more than one person matches your Add: criteria, the Select Name box will open that will allow you to select from the available choices. Highlight the name of the person you want and click OK.
3. If you are not allowed to invite that person to a meeting, the Unable to Invite box will open telling you so. You can always send that person email; see Inviting People Who Don't Have UICal Accounts. Click OK to close the box and continue.

The above section, Inviting People by Name or Initials, explains how to select people using searches on their names or initials. But Oracle Calendar allows you to search on several other criteria as well.

1. On the People/Resources tab, or wherever else the magnifying glass Search icon appears, click the button with the Search icon. The Directory Search box, below, opens. (The illustration below is the Windows Directory Search dialog box. The Mac Directory Search box has exactly the same fields and buttons, but instead of having tabs at the top, you choose to search for People, Resources, and Groups by clicking on icons on the left.)
   
   
2. Use the People tab to search for people, the Resources tab to search for rooms and other resources, and Groups to search for groups.
3. In any of these tabs, clicking the Search button without entering criteria will give you a list of all available people/resources/groups. That's useful for resources and groups, but in the long run, there are likely to be too many people for that to be a good tactic to take when searching for people. (A good argument for making groups of people such as departmental faculty, staff, undergrads, and graduate students, for example.)
4. You might find it very useful to use Org. Unit 1 to search for people in a particular campus department or unit, as I have searched for ACCC in the illustration above.

1. To create a group, in Oracle Calendar Agenda view, select Tools -> Manage Groups -> click the New button.
   
   
2. Select the Group type: from the drop-down list. If this is a group for an ongoing project, where different group members may be scheduling meetings, Members-only is a good choice. Individuals can only create Private (yours only) and Members-only (available to all members of the group) groups.
3. Add the members of the group just as you would add the people you would invite to meetings (see above), one at a time. (Don't forget to add yourself!)
4. When you're finished adding members, click OK.. You can go back and add or delete people whenever you want.
   
   

As more and more people get UICal accounts, it will be a good idea for departments and campus units to define departmental groups, such as the department's faculty, staff, undergrad majors, and grad majors. For more information, send email to uicalendar@uic.edu.

Inviting People in Groups

Then when it comes time to invite people to a meeting, back in the New Meeting or Edit Meeting window, if (some of) the people you want to invite are members of a group, on the People/Resources tab click the Search icon to open the Directory Search box. Click the Group icon/tab .

1. Select the types of groups you're interested in from the Group Type at the top.
2. If you know what the group name is , type it or a part of it in the Group Name: box.
3. Click Search.
4. Select the group you want from the list of groups that you have access to in the Groups: box in the middle. When you click on a group to highlight it, the members of the group will be listed in the box below it.
5. If you want to print a list of groups or a list of a particular group's members, use Print groups... or Print members....
6. Once the group that you want to invite is listed, click Add All . Or highlight individual members and click Add.
   

Again, you add rooms and equipment -- resources -- to a meeting while entering a meeting in the New Meeting window or editing it in the Edit Meeting window.

1. The meeting we're working on here will be held in a meeting room belonging to the ACCC, BGRC 130. In Oracle Calendar, you invite rooms or equipment to meetings, just as you invite people to them.
   • On the People/Resources tab, if you know the name of the room, you can type it in the Add: box preceded by an "r:"; for example: r:grc 130 and click the Checkmark.
   • Otherwise,
   1. Click the Search icon to open the Directory Search box, select the Resources tab/icon, and click the Search button.
   2. Click on the name of the room or other resource you want to invite, and click Add.
   3. Click OK when you're done.
2. When you're done, the room or other resources will be listed as an unconfirmed "Attendee".

This isn't as easy as it could be, but when you create a meeting or anytime you open it to edit it, you have the option to send email about the meeting. This is the way you can invite people who don't have UICal accounts to a UICal meeting and keep them up to date about changes in the meeting. See Sending Email to Attendees (Even if you don't own the meeting or the Attendee doesn't have a UICal account.) below for more information. The good news is that the note that UICal sends to people who don't have UICal accounts includes the meeting information as an attachment in standard calendar format that the recipient can likely open it automatically in their calendar program and save there as a calendar item.

It is a good idea to include a list of the people you've invited who don't have UICal accounts on the Details tab of the meeting's Entry because Oracle Calendar won't allow you to add them to the list on the People/Resources tab. Ada did this for Alan Turing at <aturing@bigbill.com> in the example in Sending Email to Attendees below.

If the person in question is on the UIC campus, you should ask them if they want to open their own UICal account. They're likely to find it useful.

Here are the people and resources Ada has invited to her small meeting, as listed on the People/Resources tab in the New Meeting or Edit Meeting window:

• She didn't have to invite herself; that was done automatically.
• She invited the members of the Oracle Calendar Members-only group UICal.
• And she invited an ACCC room.

It says one will attend -- that's Ada herself; Oracle Calendar assumes that the person creating the meeting will attend, but that can easily be changed. And four did not confirm yet.

The next step is to see whether the people invited can come. Do this by clicking the Check Conflicts button. Turns out that Ada herself has a conflict, a class every Friday that startes at 12:00 noon. Oracle Calendar says that in the Details of Conflict dialog box. Click OK to close the dialog box and return to the New Meeting window.

There's two ways she can go to find an appropriate day and time; both involve tasks on the New Meeting main menu:

Advanced -> Open Group View (Windows; use the menu in the meeting window) or View -> Advanced -> Open Group View (Mac; use the Oracle Calendar menu) , gives the Daily schedule of each attendee, and the combined schedule of all three. That suggests that any time after 12:30 pm on Friday, August 25, would be ok.

Tools -> Suggest Date/Time (Windows; use the menu in the meeting window) or View -> Suggest Date/Time (Mac; use the Oracle Calendar menu) which allows you to select options and click List suggestions and have Oracle Calendar suggest meeting times. The following is the result for this meeting:

This suggests 12:30 pm on Friday as well. Ada can move the meeting to 12:30 pm by clicking on Friday at 12:30 pm and clicking OK.

She check conflicts again, and it says no conflicts found.

There is one other person that Ada wants to invite to her meeting, Alan Turing at <aturing@bigbill.com>, who doesn't have a UICal account. Here's how she can take care of that.

First, on Macs, you have to turn on the sending email notifications of meeting changes:

1. Oracle Calendar menu -> Preferences
2. Select the Scheduling box on the left-hand side, then select the Notification tab.
3. Click in the three boxes under "Ask to send e-mail to attendees:"
4. Click OK.

Then for both Windows and Macs:

1. When you save a new meeting or make changes to a previously existing meeting, a dialog box will open asking you whether you to send email about it. Click Yes if you do, No if you don't.
2. If you click Yes, a window will open that will allow you to compose the message.
3. By default, the email message will be sent to the attendees (real ones) other than yourself. Click All attendees to include yourself.
4. If you'd like to send the email to someone else who has a UICal account, you can add their name as usual for people with UICal accounts using the Other: box.
5. If you'd like to invite someone to the meeting who doesn't have a UICal account, here's your chance: type their name and email address in this format:
   Alan Turing at <aturing@bigbill.com>
   in the Other: box and click the Checkmark. They will be listed in the Distribution list with a letter icon by their email address. (See illustration below.)
   
   
6. By default the iCalendar and vCalendar items are selected at the bottom; leave these selected. With these selected, UICal will send email attachments to people who do not have UICal accounts that may allow them to open (or paste) the attachment directly in whatever calendaring software they use, without having to type it in by hand. (It works in Outlook, for example.)
7. Asummary of meeting is automatically included in the email message; you can add your own text to it if you want.
   
   
8. Click Send to send the message.
   
   
9. The above message when received by a person who has a UICal account looks like:
   
   

   Subject: UICal Pages Meeting
   From:   adabyron@uic.edu
   Date: August 21, 2006 4:50:07 PM CDT
   To:   babbage@imarginary.com, judygs@uic.edu, hopper@imarginary.edu
   Reply-To:   adabyron@uic.edu
     
   Message regarding:
     
   Proposed by: Ada Byron Lovelace
   Access level: Personal
   Importance level: Normal
     
   Title: UICal Pages Meeting
   Friday, August 25, 2006
   Time: 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm (CST6CDT)
   Location: BGRC 176
     
   --
   Powered by Oracle Collaboration Suite.
   
     

10. And the above message when received by a person who does not have a UICal account looks the same, but the note includes two attachments: event.ics and event.vcs. The recipient should be able to open one or the other of these in their calendar program and have them go in as a meeting. (They both work in Outlook.)
    
    
11. You can send email to the attendees of any meeting on your Agenda, regardless of whether you own it, any time you want. Just open the meeting in your agenda (double-click on its Entry in your Agenda), and select Tools -> Send Mail (Windows; use the menu in the message window) or select View -> Send Mail (Macs). The rest is exactly the same as above.

The section in Client: Basics on the Agenda pane described the default colors of meetings in Oracle Calendar;

• 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
• 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 (Control-Click on a Mac) on the meeting item in your Oracle Calendar Agenda pane and select Will attend, Will not attend, or Will confirm later.

Oracle Calendar automatically updates the invited attendees' agenda when you click OK to save a new meeting or whenever you update the meeting. Deleting or Rescheduling a meeting can only be done by the person who owns the meeting (who created it) or by someone else acting as the owner's designate.

Actually deleting or moving it is really simple. Just do it. Right-click on the meeting's Entry in your Agenda and select Delete to delete it or (left-)click on it and drag it to a new time/date to reschedule it. If the new time will create a conflict with any of the attendee's schedules, Oracle Calendar will tell you. In either case, the attendee's Agendas will be updated and you will be given a chance to send them email.

You can also change the date or time when you're editing the meeting entry. For example, to change the date of a meeting, double-click on the meeting Entry, then click on the calendar page below/beside the Date:, then scroll to and click on the new date, as shown in the figure below:

Changing the time while editing the meeting is similar: click on the clock icon below/beside the Start or End time and slide the cursor to the time you want to move the meeting to: