Standard Department Calendars

This Web page is about tstandard Department Event Calendars -- for department events, contacts, and meetings -- and departmental resource calendars -- for Room Reservations and shared resources for scheduling resources such as cameras, projectors etc. For Event Calendars see Department Events Calendars and the UIC Events Calendar.

Note: creating the type of calendar that is primarily 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.

Eventcals must be created by the ACCC.

Here is how the Reach Member Creates the departmental calendar.

1. Go to the Internal Reach Wiki.
   1. Go to the ACCC Home page, http://www.accc.uic.edu/, click on the purple Help button at the top of the window, click on the REACH Consulting link under "Other Resources".
   2. On the REACH page, click on the REACH Internal Page link in the table of contents, or just scroll to the bottom of the page.
   3. Click on the Reach Internal Page link.
2. Log into the Reach Wiki using your UIC netid and ACCC common password.
1. Click on Tools and Useful Pages under Available Information.
2. Click on Communication and Calendaring.
3. Click on the Create-A-Calendar link.
4. There's a Bluestem login, using your UIC netid and ACCC common password. This login will make the calendar you create belong to you by default, and be opened with your netid and common password.
5. This opens the UICalendar Utilities Web page; see figure 1.
   1. The UICalendar Utilities main page gives you 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.

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; Ada Byron Lovelace will create a Room Reservation calendar for Room 176 BGRC. (Which is my office.) And she's going to be nice enough to give me designate access for scheduling it.

1. Click on Create a new Room-Reservation Calendar.
   
   
2. My office is room 176 BGRC. Ada 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"; Ada types: Judy's Office 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. Ada chooses 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; see the Room-Reservation Web page for more information.)
   
   
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 login to the room's calendar 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.

Figure 2: Defining a Room Reservation Calendar Click on the Edit button to make changes in the definition of the BGRC 176 calendar. You can change the building, room, department, contact phone, location description, contact person, contact email, and the owner. (The owner has to be someone at UIC who has a UICal account.) 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.

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.

In this case, you will probably want to make every event to have Access Level of Public. (It's a public calendar, after all.)

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'".
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), enter the netid of someone who has a UICal account to be the owner of the calendar. Your netid is there by default. This can be changed at any time. And remember, if you do change it, you will no longer be able to login to the Event calendar.
5. Then click Create Calendar. The created calendar's info will look like figure 8 .

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.)

To allow the people who need to modify the UICal departmental calendar the right to read and write in it, the owner of the calendar must log in to the calendar and assign each person who needs access designate access rights to the calendar; full designate rights for people who need to read and write in it.

• 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 have to 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.

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 Ada's Favorites, so she only has to select the name from her Favorites list in the future.
   1. BGRC 176 is a resource calendar, so click the radio button beside Resource search.
   2. I found that typing: BGRC 176 in the Search 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 to click the radio button beside Name search and type: accc_docum.deptcal in the Search box. Nothing else I tried worked.
5. Now to open the BGRC 176 calendar as a Designate, all Ada has 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 her own agenda, Ada clicks 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 some reason, the Oracle Calendar Version 9 Web client does not allow you to log into a Resource calendar, either a Room resource or a Shared resource. So you cannot login to turn on the Global Web Access yourself. If you want your resource calendar to be viewed on the Web, the calendar's owner should send email to uicalendar@uic.edu and ask us to turn it on. Be sure to include the name of the calendar.

When we tell you that Global Web access is turned on, you need to get the URL of the Global Agenda; this you can do yourself.

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 left side above the tool bar saying E-mail Agenda to a friend, 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.

From: judygs@uic.edu
Subject: Global Agenda
Date: 2/22/08 4:15 PM
To: judygs@uic.edu

BGRC 176 has sent you the following Agenda link:
https://uical.uic.edu:443/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=web&web=gbl
&viw=%b6%bb%ba%b9%84%b8%b2%bd%aa%8d%cf%
86%86%94%91%85%86%84&xen=%e4%ee%
ed%ed%f4%ed%ed%ee%ef

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 my office.)

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.

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 Notice that in the Level area in the middle right, the Access: is set to Public. Then, in the UICal Global Agenda of this item in figure 7, the title "Meeting with Sam" appears in the online 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".

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".

..

Because department/event calendars are normal UICalendar calendars, you can log into them on the Web. This means that their owners can turn on Global Web viewing themselves.

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 grey 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.
4. Continue as in Setting Up Global Web Access to a Departmental Room or Resource Calendar.