Creating and Using Departmental Calendars

• Creating a Department Event, Room, or Resource Calendar (REACH Only)
• Example 1: A Resource Calendar
• Example 2: A Departmental Event Calendar
• Using the UICal Web Utility: Setting Attributes, Changing Calendar Owner, Assigning Designate Rights, and Connecting an Event Calendar with the UIC Events Calendar
• -- Using UICal to Assign Designate Access Rights
• -- Using the Events Calendar's Web Page to Assign Administrator Rights
• Editing Departmental Calendars
• -- Editing Departmental Calendars Using Designate Rights
• -- Using Designate Access in UICalendar on the Web
• -- Editing Events Calendars Public Events Using the Events Calendar Web Page
• Turning on Global Web Access
• -- Getting the Web Address of the Global Agenda
• Making the Items in Your Calendar Visible to the Public

Note: creating the type of calendar that is used by a department, whether it is for departmental events, or the scheduling of a room or resource, should be done 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 -- who does not have to be the REACH representative -- assigns designate rights to for the calendar. If it's an Events calendar, then you need administrator rights to add Events with the Events Calendar Web page; administrator rights are added on the Events Calendar Web page and only require a UIC netid and password.

REACH people or the calendar's owner can now also connect a departmental event calendar to the UIC Events Calendar.

Here is how the Reach Member Creates the departmental calendar.

1. Go to the UICalendar Utilities page.
   1. Go to the ACCC Home page, http://www.accc.uic.edu/, click on the purple Email button at the top of  page.
   2. Click UICalendar - Utilities under UICalendar.
   3. There's a Bluestem login, using your UIC netid and ACCC common password. This login will make the calendar you create belong to you -- the REACH member -- by default, and be opened with his or her netid and common password.
2. This opens the UICalendar Utilities Web page; see figure 1.
   1. The UICalendar Utilities main page gives a choice of three types of calendars to create:
      1. Departmental/Event calendar -- to publish a Web calendar of events that are of general interest or of interest to a specific group of people.
      2. Room Reservation calendar -- calendars to control access to rooms; these calendars must be registered to official UIC building and room numbers.
      3. Shared Resource calendars -- schedules for shared resources such as projectors, vehicles, equipment, and so on.
   2. And there is a additional option to look up the current departmental calendars for a given UIC department.
   3. It will also by default list any departmental calendars that you already own. If you want to connect one with the UIC Events calendar, select it from the View/edit one of your calendars: drop-down list and click Go. Scroll to the bottom of the next page and click Connect to EventCal.

Figure 1: The UICalendar Utilities Main Menu

There are two subtypes of Resource Calendars -- Room Reservation calendars and Shared Resource calendars. The only difference between the two is that they are created on two different Web pages. Once created, you use them the same way.

So we are going to have only one example; I will create a Room Reservation calendar for Room 176 BGRC. (Which is my office.) And I'm going to give my colleague Ada Byron Lovelace and I delegate permissions to edit it.

1. Click on Create a new Room-Reservation Calendar.
   
   
2. My office is room 176 BGRC. Selects BGRC Benjamin Goldstein Goldberg Research Center from the dropdown list in "1) Building & Room" and types 176 in the Room: box.
   
   
3. Put something descriptive in "2) Location Details"; Judy's Office works for my office.
   
   
4. In section 3), Contact information should be filled in from your phonebook information; change or modify it if you need or want to. (The contact information can be updated at any time; figure 2.)
   
   
5. In section 4), you may optionally associate this calendar with a specific department. I choose ACCC, Academic Computing and Communications Center from the dropdown list. (If your department isn't listed, you are invited to write to uicalendar@uic.edu to have it added.)
   
   
6. In section 5), enter the netid of the person who will be owner of the calendar. By default, your netid is in the box. You can change it to any UIC netid, but a warning. If you change it to someone else's netid, then that person will own the calendar and you won't have any access to it unless the owner gives it to you. Specifically, the new owner will have to create designates.
   
   
7. The current owner can always give ownership of a calendar to a new owner (or make other changes to the page), by editing the calendar definition after you finish defining it; see figure 2.
   
   
8. Click Create Room Resource.
   
   
9. After you create the Room Resource Calendar, the UICal Utility will tell you what its name -- login id -- is; it will be of the form building_nnn.rescal. In spite of what the page will say, you cannot use UICal on the Web to log into a rescal.
   

   Figure 2: Defining a Room Reservation Calendar After you create the calendar, or after the calendar's owner logs into the UICal Web Utilities, you can change details of the calendar, including changing the owner, adding designates, and connecting the calendar to the UIC Events Calendar. You cannot log into a Resource Calendar -- one that ends in .rescal -- with the UICal Web interface. (In spite of what it says in screen shot.) When you do log a Resource Calendar, the only thing you will be allowed to do is set access rights.

10. The bottom part allows you to begin setting the calendar up, which is discussed below in Using the UICal Web Utility. Don't change the owner until you make all the other changes you need to make! Only the owner can make these changes.

Departmental Event Calendars are different than Room Reservation and Shared Resource UICal agendas. They are regular UICal calendars; when the owner logs in to them, they can use them as they would their own UICal agenda, including, of course, assigning access rights.

When you create a Department/Event Calendar, the items you fill in are limited to 32 characters (which can be a problem for the title).

1. In section 1), a Title, which it the "Name" of the calendar, the "Agenda of 'TITLE'", which is limited to 32 characters.
2. In section 2), contact information. Again, this will be filled in with your name, email address, and campus phone number. You can change them if you wish.
3. In section 3), select a department for the calendar, if you wish.
4. In section 4), click Create Calendar.
5. The created calendar's info will look like the top part of figure 3 .
   

   Figure 3. Definition of Department/Event Calendar A Departmental/Event Calendar looks like and works like a regular UICalendar agenda when you log into it, but you should still give yourself and whomever else needs to access to it designate rights and modify it when you're logged into your own UICal account. (Using a native desktop version of Oracle Calendar, not the Web version.)

6. The bottom part allows you to begin setting the calendar up, which is discussed in Using the UICal Web Utility. Don't change the owner until you make all the other changes you need to make! Only the owner can make these changes.
   

The bottom part of the page that is returned when the REACH representative creates a departmental calendar allows them to set a number of options for the calendar. A UICal departmental calendar's owner will get these same options at any time by selecting the calendar from the list of calendars that he or she owns in the UICalendar Utilities page.

Figure 4. Modifying a Department Event or Resource Calendar with the UICalendar Web Utility The UICalendar Utilities allow you to modify a Department Event or Resource Calendar that you own, either when the REACH person defines it, as in this figure, or when the calendar's owner selects it from the list of calendars that he or she owns. Warning: Don't change the calendar's owner until you make all the other changes you need to make! Only the calendar's owner can make these changes.

Warning: Don't change the calendar's owner until you make all the other changes you need to make! Only the calendar's owner can make these changes.

These are the attributes of a departmental calendar that you can change with the UICalendar Utilities.

Basic Attributes:

Lists the current title, department, and ownership information. Click Global Read Access to turn on the calendar's Global Agenda, which allows the Public events in the calendar to be viewed on the Web by anyone.

Calendar Ownership:

The calendar, by default, is created with the REACH person being the owner. If someone else is to be the owner, the REACH person can change it here. Don't do this until you make all the other changes you need to make! Only the current owner can make these changes.

Secondary Owners:

If the principle owner leaves UIC, the secondary owner inherits ownership of the calendar.

Designates:

Departmental calendars are edited in UICalendar by designates. Make at least the calendar's owner a designate. Other people with UICal accounts can be designates also.

1. Type one netid at a time and click Add Designate.
2. After you have added people as designates, they will be listed with a Delete button beside their name; use the Delete button to remove their designate permissions.

• Designates: These are "designates" in the Oracle Calendar sense; they have full access to events in the calendar in UICalendar. If you want more precise control over their access, the calendar's owner should log in to the calendar using their own netid and password and edit the access permissions there.
• Administrators: Designate access doesn't work for public events to be added using the Events Calendar Web page; for that the Events Calendar owner uses the Admin functions link on the Events Calendar's home page. For details, see Using the Events Calendar's Web Page to Assign Administrator Rights.

ical links:

If you want to be able to import items from this calendar into their personal calendar, use this section. For more information, click the ical link help page link.

UIC Event Calendar:

Click Connect to EventCal to connect the Event calendar you just created with the UIC Events Calendar. This means that public items in this calendar will be available for public viewing on the Web in the same format as the UIC Events Calendar, and, additionally, you will have the option of adding them to the UIC Events Calendar directly. The UIC Events calendar is publicly available and prominently linked on the UIC Web home page (the listed Events and the More Events link).

Only the calendar's owner can give people the right to modify a UICal departmental calendar in UICalendar. There are two ways that the calendar's owner can do this. Either with the UICal Web utility or by the calendar's owner logging into the departmental calendar directly using the full login for the calendar (the UICal Web utility can tell you what that is) and his or her ACCC password. Using the UICal Web utility is very much easier; the only good reason to use the log into UICalendar directly method is if you want to set less than full designate rights for the calendar.

Note that designate access rights are only important for Event and Resource calendars that will be edited and displayed using UICalendar. Departmental Event calendars that will be displayed in the UIC Event calendar format are edited with their UIC Events Calendar Web Pages, with administrator access. See Using the Web to Assign Administrator Access Rights.

• You cannot currently log into a Resource Calendar using the UICal Web client.
  
  
• To be assigned designate rights to a UICal calendar (of any sort), a person has to have a UICal account.
  
  
• Don't forget to add designate rights for yourself -- you'll use your own account to make changes to the calendar just like anyone else.
  

1. Login to the UICalendar calendar of the event, room, or resource.
   • The login id is the entire login given in the listing of the calendar's definition; for example, the LoginID for Room Resource for my office is: bgrc_176.rescal (See figure 2.)
   • The password is the owner's ACCC common password.
   • Use a native client.
     
     
     
2. If it's a Resource Calendar, after you -- the owner -- log in, you will be told that you have logged as a resource and that you will have limited capabilities.
   
   
   
3. Select Tools -> Access Rights -> Designate tab.
   
   
4. 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. And don't forgot to add yourself if you're going to be editing the calendar also; the owner has to use his or her regular UICal account to modify the calendar just like anyone else.
5. Select the name of the person you want to give access rights to from the list at the bottom of the tab.
6. Deselect Defaults or No designate rights. The default designate rights for all users is No designate rights.
7. There are other levels of designate rights, but you'll probably want to give the person Full designate rights, which means that the designate can view and modify all Entries. Click Full Designate Rights.
8. Click OK.

The UICal Oracle Calendar native client Web page has information about other levels of access rights.

The public Events in Events Calendars are generally edited with the Events Calendar 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 called administrators.

Administrators of the Web events on Events Calendars do not have to have UICalendar accounts; they just have to have UIC netids and passwords.

The owner of an Events Calendar connected to the UIC Events Calendar automatically has permission to edit the it with the Web interface and also has the ability to authorize other people to edit it; to do this, the owner will use the calendar's Web interface.

To add or delete administrators, the calendar owner can either:

• Go to the calendar's short Web address: http://events.uic.edu?&defaultcal=deptcalname.deptcal, click the Add Event link in the sidebar, log in, then click the Back to search screen link, or
  
  
• Go directly to the following Web address:
  
  https://www.uic.edu/htbin/eventcal/eventcal.fcgi?&defaultcal=deptcalname.deptcal
  
  and log in. Note the https in this second URL. This is the actual Web address that the short Web address expands to, with an https.

Either method will add a Admin functions link to the Web page's sidebar, in the Submitting Events: group.

1. Click Admin functions under Submitting Events on the left hand side.
   • Type the netid of the person to be added as an Administrator in the Add a new user: netid= box and click Add.
   • Add the special netid public if you want anyone with a UIC netid and password to be able to post to the calendar.
   • The owner can delete administrators here also; click Delete beside the line describing the person.
   • If you have added public, you might find that you want to prevent specific people from posting. Type his or her netid in the Ban a user, netid: box and click Ban to do that.
     

Being added to the list of Administrators allows a person to add or modify the entries in an Events Calendar using its Web interface; it does not give the person permission to edit the calendar in UICalendar.

The Administrator who added a calendar event can modify or delete it.

1. Login to your own personal UICalendar account, in this example using the native desktop version of Oracle Calendar.
2. Next, click File then Agenda then Open As Designate; this opens the Open Agenda as Designate dialog box. (See figure 3.)
3. Select the calendar that you want to work with, in this case BGRC 176 Judy's Office, and click OK.

Figure 3: The Open Agenda as Designate Dialog Box (My apologies about the smear; that is a real person for whom I have designate permissions.)

4. If you have full designate rights, after you open the calendar as a designate, it will look exactly like your own calendar (figure 4) and you can use it as if it were yours as well.

Figure 4: The Room 176 BGRC Calendar Opened as a Designate Note that it looks just like any other UICal Calendar.

This can be done; it is just a bit more complicated.

1. Login to your own personal UICalendar account using UICal on the Web, http://uical.uic.edu/
2. Click on the View Agendas menu button, which is the last menu button on the left side of the main menu, a calendar page with a person standing beside it:
3. We're going to add the BGRC 176 calendar to my Favorites, so I only have to select the name from my Favorites list in the future.
   1. BGRC 176 is a resource calendar, so select Resources.
   2. I found that typing: BGRC in the Resource Name box and clicking Find was enough for it to find the BGRC 176 calendar, which appears in the box below the searches. Click on BGRC 176 to highlight it.
   3. Click Add to favorites with designate rights. (Note: if you own the calendar, it will allow you just to Add to favorites; you do not want to do that.)
   4. The calendar will be listed in the Favorites list as "BGRC 176 (D)". The "BGRC 176" is the calendar's title; the (D) is because will be opened with Designate access.
   5. Click OK.
4. Note that to add the ACCC Documentation Meetings calendar, accc_docum.deptcal, to the Favorites, I found that I had select People and type: accc_docum.deptcal in the Find box. Nothing else I tried worked.
5. Now to open the BGRC 176 calendar as a Designate, all I have to do is the following:
• When viewing any UICal agenda, click the arrow to the right of the Select a favorite list and highlight BGRC 176 (D) in the list.
• Then click Go.
6. When you open a Resource, UICal says: Viewing Resource Agenda to Approve: followed by the name of the calendar. I have no idea what that means, but if you have full designate access, you can edit the calendar as you would your own.

To get back to my own agenda, I click on the My Agenda menu button, a single calendar page, which is near the end of the left side of the main menu, beside the group of people.

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

Using the Events Calendar Web interface has its own page, Department Events Calendars and the UIC Events Calendar.

The UICalendar Utilities page can be used to turn on Global Web Access for any departmental calendar. Use the View/Edit option on the Main Menu to open the page for your calendar. In the top section, Basic Attributes, click Global Read Access to turn on the calendar's Global Agenda, which allows the Public events in the calendar to be viewed on the Web by anyone.

Turning on the Global Web Calendar for Department Event Calendars

Because department event calendars are normal UICalendar calendars, you can log into them on the Web. This means that their owners can also use the UICal Web client to turn on Global Web access..

1. The calendar's owner logs in to the calendar using UICal on the Web (https://uical.uic.edu/; see above).
   

   UICal on the Web: https://uical.uic.edu

2. Click the Edit Preferences icon on the right side of the UICal Web toolbar; it's two gray boxes on top of each other with a cursor pointing to the top one.
   

   Agenda of Departmental/Event Calendar a Logged On on the Web

3. On the Security tab/link, click Allow Global Agenda Viewing, and click OK.

When the Global Web access is turned on, you need to get the URL of the Global Agenda; this you can do yourself, regardless of how the Global Agenda was turned on.

1. Log in to your own UICal account on the Web.
2. Open the calendar in question as a designate.
3. When you get back to the UICal on the Web Daily, Weekly, or Monthly View, you will see a link on the right side saying E-mail Agenda, which opens a Web page that allows you to do just that.
   
   
4. Click on this link and send an email to yourself: put your email address in the Enter e-mail addresses: box and click Send.
5. You will receive an email message with a long, strange URL that will give you a read-only look at the busy times.

To: judygs@uic.edu
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:43:43 -0600
Reply-To: " ACCC Documentation Meetings" <accc_docum.deptcal@uic.edu>
From: " ACCC Documentation Meetings" <accc_docum.deptcal@uic.edu>
Subject: Global Agenda

ACCC Documentation Meetings has sent you the following Agenda link:
https://uical.uic.edu:443/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=web&web=gbl&viw=
UEiupfxXOae0wyZa1CEMG75haO7jaY0Z&xen=
ybfivKXdbgQknl%2bb5ubXGA%3d%3d&server=tbtzPzHLjyw%3d&ver=2

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This URL will not expire; it will always display the calendar's current agenda. This is all one URL; I've broken it here so it won't make the width of this page too wide for your browser. You can see from the length of the URL that it won't do for direct distribution; you'll have to use it as the target of a link. (You can click on it to see the Global Agenda of ACCC Documentation.)

If you want the details of the events/items on your departmental calendars to be viewable on the Web, then you have to make their Access Level to be Public when you create them, or go back later and change it to be Public.

Any item entered using an Events Calendar Web page is automatically given the Access Level of Public.

There are two repeating items in the BGRC 176 calendar. One on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and a second on Tuesday and Thursday.

A Event with Public Access Level -- The Monday, Wednesday, Friday Item Set the Access: to Public. Then, in the UICal Global Agenda of this item or the Events Calendar view, the will appear in the public calendar. I left the Access Level of the other item in the calendar at the default Normal. It shows in figure 7 just as "Busy".