UICalendar Services for Departments

UICalendar is a campus-wide calendaring and scheduling service offered by ACCC. UICalendar uses the Oracle Calendar Server, a component of Oracle's Collaboration Suite. This Web page introduces how to create, manage, and share all types of departmental calendars: two types of event calendars and the schedules for departmental resources such as conference rooms, department-owned equipment, and departmental services.

UICal departmental calendars can be used for departmental functions such as the following:

• Schedule departmental meetings
  • Define groups of people to use for recurring meetings
  • Check for conflicts and suggest alternate times if necessary
  • Easy searching
• Publish events and departmental calendars
• Publish departmental address books
• Keeping track of contacts
• The Oracle Outlook Connector allows you to tie Microsoft Outlook into the UICalendar server and the ACCC mail servers. No need for an Exchange server.

There is a new function now available for Departmental Event Calendars: Departments can request a department calendar that is authorized to publish public items that will be included the all-campus UIC Events Calendar. Events Calendars, or Eventcals, are departmental event calendar, that have been authorized to do this.

The new functions available through Event Calendars:

• Easily display events from your Event Calendar calendar in the all-campus UIC Events Calendar (which is at the Events link on the UIC home page, or http://events.uic.edu).
• Allow people with UICalendar accounts to click a button on the UIC Events Calendar and add an event calendar event to their own UICalendar calendar.

Eventcal calendars are regular departmental calendars with special privileges, so they can be managed using Oracle Calendar clients. However, you will find it much better and easier to use the ACCC's Eventcal Web pages, introduced below.

Previously existing departmental event calendars can be made into Events Calendars.

There are also two types of Department Resource Calendars:

• Room-Reservation for scheduling rooms and
• Shared Resource for scheduling resources such as cameras, projectors etc.

Department Events Calendars -- Eventcals -- that will be tied to the all-campus Events Calendar must be created by the ACCC. Send email to uicalendar@uic.edu with your request. We need to know who is going to own the calendar (name and netid), which can be one or more people -- we'll assume that the first person is the primary owner -- and what the published title of the calendar will be. The editing of the calendar after it's created can be done by anyone that the owner of the Eventcal allows to edit the calendar.

Department Resource Calendars and General Department Calendars if you don't want them to be tied to the UIC Event Calendar are created by your department's REACH representative. If you don't know who your department's REACH representative is, see Search for your Department's REACH member. The editing of the calendar after it's created can be done by anyone with a UICal account whom the calendar owner assigns designate rights to for the calendar.

Like all UICalendar calendars, all departmental calendars must be owned by a single individual and can be logged into with his or her UIC netid and ACCC common password. However, all types of departmental calendars have an important difference from individual UICal calendars. They generally need to be managed -- added to, changed -- by several people. This creates a problem. The calendar owner uses their password for their other ACCC accounts -- to read ACCC email, and to login to all the ACCC, UIC, and U of I secure Web pages; the owner should not -- should never -- share his or her ACCC common password with anyone else.

To avoid sharing passwords, which would be a very bad thing, everyone -- including the owner -- who will modify a departmental calendar does it using designate rights, or, in the case of Events Calendars and the EventCal Web page, adminstration rights. This allows the calendar owner to assign anyone with a UICal account right to access the departmental calendar from their own UICal account. (A UICal account is not necessary to access the Web pages used to edit Eventcals.)

This is done differently for Eventcals and for other Department Calendars.

Departmental Events Calendars that will be tied to the all-campus Event Calendar only:

Eventcals are generally edited with the Eventcal Web interface. Permission to use the Web interface is independent from Oracle Calendar delegate rights, so we call using the Web interface administering the calendar and the people who are allowed to do it are administrators.

The owner of an Eventcal automatically has permission to edit the Eventcal with the Web interface and also has the ability to authorize other people to edit it with the Web interface. To add or delete administrators:

1. The owner of the calendar goes to the calendar's Web interface:
   https://www.uic.edu/htbin/eventcal/eventcal.fcgi?&defaultcal=deptcaltes.deptcal
   where they substitute the name of their Eventcal for deptcaltes.deptcal. Note the https -- the "s" is required to get the Admin functions.
2. The owner logs in with his or her UIC netid and ACCC common password.
3. Click Admin functions under Submitting Events on the left hand side.
4. Type the netid of the person to be added as an Administrator in the Add a new user: netid= box and click Add. (The owner can delete administrators here also.)
   

Being added to this list allows a person to add or modify the entires in an Eventcal using its Web interface.

All types of Department Calendars:

Any departmental event calendar -- including an Eventcal -- can also be editied using an Oracle Calendar client. In this case, only people with UICal accounts and delegate permissions for the calendar can edit the calendar, because they will use their own UICal account to do so, opening the department calendar as a designate. (We do not recommend that you edit an Eventcal with this way, however.)

No designate rights are set for any calendar -- even an Eventcal -- by default. The calendar owner must login to the department calendar account directly -- using the departmental calendar's name and the owner's password -- and assign full designate rights for the calendar to everyone who needs to modify it, including the owner him- or herself.

1. The calendar owner logs into the calendar using the calendar's name and his or her password. Calendar names have the following form:
   • Department Resource calendars, for example, bgrc_176.rescal (which is the resource calendar for my office)
   • Department Calendars, for example, accc_docum.deptcal (which is the ACCC's sample documentation department event calendar)
   • Eventcals, for example, deptcaltes.deptcal (which is the ACCC's test Eventcal calendar)
   The calendar owner must use an Oracle Calendar native client when setting designate rights for Resource calendars; you cannot at this time log directly into Resource Calendars on the Web.
2. The calendar owner then gives everyone who needs to edit the calendar full designate rights to the calendar, including him- or herself.

Instructions for setting designate rights are in UICalendar Oracle Calendar Basics.

Then to edit the calendar, the designates will log in to their own UICal account and use File -> Agenda -> Open As Designate to open the event, room, or resource calendar. So they their own UICal account and their own ACCC common password and calendar owner doesn't have to share his or her password with anyone else.

In summary, you can edit departmental UICal calendars:

As a UICalendar agenda:

The calendar's owner logs into the actual departmental calendar account and sets designate rights for you; then,

1. You log in to your own UICal account.
2. File -> Agenda -> Open As Designate.
   
3. Then select the title of your department calendar from the list of calendars you have designate rights to.
   
4. Click OK.

For regular Departmental Event Calendars and Department Resource calendars, you will be able to do everything you need to do editing it this way.

For Eventcals, your ability to enter event that will be displayed in the UIC Event Calendar when editing as a UICalendar agenda will be limited:

• Items entered this way to Eventcals will not be added to the published calendar until the following day and will be displayed very generically.
• Remember to make the Access: Public on items you want published to Eventcals.

Using the Events Calendar Web Pages:

• For Eventcals only, this is the easier and preferable way to submit or edit events: the submitting Events links on the calendar's EventCal Web interface:
  http://www.uic.edu/htbin/eventcal/eventcal.fcgi?&defaultcal=deptcaltes.deptcal
  where you substitute the name of your department calendar for deptcaltes.deptcal.
• The Eventcal calendar owner can automatically use the calendar's EventCal Web interface; he or she must authorize everyone else who will work on the calendar.
• Items submitted on an EventCal Web interface are included in the UIC Event Calendar immediately.
• You can take advantage of the extra fields and display properties that Eventcal has to offer.
• Other calendars are automatically be invited. ("Other calendars" include the UIC Event Calendar and a college Eventcal if one exists.)

Here we have a choice of okay and really, really good.

Global Calendars for Standard Departmental Calendars

The Okay: Like any UICal calendar, the owner of an event or room, or resource departmental calendar can turn on its Web Global Agenda, which allows the departmental calendar to be shared with anyone on the Web. The only problem is that the URL is very long and involved, so you will have to have it as a link on another Web page; you will not be able to give out the direct link.

The Global Calendar for GRC 176 It's hard to read, but I think you can see that the "Meeting with Sam" appears in the online public calendar for the Monday, Wednesday, Friday event. I left the Access Level of the Tuesday, Thursday event in the calendar at the default Access Level of Normal, so all that it says about this item is "Busy".

Events Calendars

The Really Good: A departmental Events Calendar, where the events are displayed in the UIC Events Calendar. The URL is the same as is used to edit it, without the "s" in the https.

A Departmental Event Calendar Obviously, the UIC Events Calendar isn't for day-to-day, department-only events, so there probably will be fewer items. This is the plain ACCC Test calendar; even it looks good.

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