Getting Started with UICalendar Calendar and Scheduler

UICalendar is a calendar and scheduling tool that uses the Oracle Calendar clients and an ACCC central server to provide all the calendaring services of an Outlook Exchange server or of the ACCC's Meeting Maker software.

There's a Web client that you can use from anywhere. UICal will also work with your PDA or perhaps your cell phone, maybe even wirelessly, and there are clients for Windows, Macs, Solaris, and Linux. You don't have to choose; you can use all of them! And because the calendar itself is held on an ACCC server, you won't lose it if your PC crashes or if the dog runs off with your PDA.

Any member of the UIC community, faculty, staff, and now registered students, can use UICalendar at no cost.

UICal also allows you to give other individuals the right to view or even manage all or parts of your calendar for you.

So, what sorts of things might you put into your calendar?

Classes?

In UICal, they would be recurring Meetings because they occur on specific days at specific times, and you're busy when you do them.

Doctor's appointments?

Again Meetings.

Birthdays?

Recurring Day Events in UICal, because they occur on specific dates, they're recurring, but they don't necessarily take up your time.

The tasks you've completed in the course of a day at work or a daily journal?

Daily Notes are for you.

A work or class project?

A Task, which may either be ongoing or have a specific start or end date. Tasks are also labeled by priority, by whether they've been started yet, and by what percent completed they are.

Need a reminder?

You can set reminders for any type of UICal event -- Meeting, Day Event, Daily Note, or Task. If you just want to set a reminder and a time is involved, then use a Meeting; otherwise, a Daily Note would make sense. You can set UICal to give you reminders at a specific time (or times) by popup or email.

Having trouble setting up a meeting with someone?

Have UICal email them a URL for your UICal global agenda, which shows when you're busy and when you're free. And since it's just a URL, they don't have to have a UICal account to see it. (And it's up-to-date; it displays your current UICal data.) If you can't find a time to meet that way, there isn't one! Or better yet, if you both have UICal accounts, then you can open your agendas up in a group calendar together.

This set of Web pages is aimed at the use of UICal by individuals, but UICal has a lot to offer departments and other units as well.

• Scheduling departmental meetings
  • Define groups of people to use for recurring meetings
  • Check for conflicts and suggest alternate times if necessary
  • Easy searching (including UIUC, someday)
• Scheduling rooms and resources
  • Designated resource administrators
• Publishing events and departmental calendars
• Publishing departmental address books
• Keeping track of contacts

New Event Calendars:

There is a new function now available for Departments -- Event Calendars: Departments can request a department calendar that is authorized to publish public items that will be included the all-campus UIC Event Calendar. The ACCC creates new, specialized, department event calendars for these public items. They are called Event Calendars, or Eventcals.

The new functions available through Event Calendars:

• Easily display events from your Event Calendar calendar in the all-campus UIC Event 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.

See UICal Departmental Event, Room, and Resource Calendars for instructions on how to create and share departmental event, room, and resource calendars.

The ACCC site license for UICalendar/Oracle Calendar allows any member of the UIC community to use UICalendar's personal and group calendaring system without charge. You can probably open your UICalendar account by yourself, using the ACCC Account Creation Web page. Account creation is simple, provided that you have the following requirements:

• You must have valid UIC status -- be in the online phonebook (ph) -- and have a current UIC i-card ID (wait at least one hour before attempting to open your account).
  
  
• Faculty or staff must have a selected netid and have had it entered in their phonebook entry. Students have their netids assigned to them automatically.
  
  
• If you have not visited the new ACCC Password Changing Utility Web page yet to select a common ACCC password, you will be asked to do it as a step in opening your UICalendar account.

Create your UICalendar Account

Passwords for UICalendar accounts can only be set using the new 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, and UICalendar.

If you have already have an un-expired ACCC Common password, it will be used as the password on your UICalendar account. If you don't, you will be asked to select one in the process of opening your UICalendar account.

Change your ACCC Common Password

When you change your ACCC Common Password after you have been using UICalendar, you will most likely have to change your UICalendar Off-line password before you can log into a Mac, Windows, or Linux native client. See Offline Agendas.

There are five ways to use UICalendar; you can use one or any combination. All five are described in these Web pages. (For more information on each of these methods, check out the links in the lilac area at the top of this page -- and the other pages in this group.)

• Oracle Calendar Web Client -- UICalendar on the Web on the Web (URL: http://uical.uic.edu )
• Oracle Calendar client for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Solaris (Server Name: uicalendar.uic.edu, Node Number: 1000)
  
• Oracle Calendar Outlook Connector for Windows
• Oracle Sync -- Wired sync conduits for Windows Mobile, PocketPC, Mac/Palm, and Win/Palm PDA
• Oracle Mobile Data Sync -- Wireless sync for some cellphones and for Windows Mobile, PocketPC, Mac/Palm, and Win/Palm PDAs

The UICalendar on the Web interface, http://uical.uic.edu UICal on the Web is the simplest way use UICalendar; it's a good way to check it out to see whether you want to use it seriously. The Web interface is very easy to use and is nearly full-featured. Even in you normally use the UICalendar client or the Outlook Connector tool, you will probably also occasionally use the Web interface because it allows you to view and manage your UICalendar calendar anywhere that you have access to a Web browser and an Internet connection.

Downloads for all the native Oracle Calendar clients are on a single Web page: UICalendar Downloads

UICalendar Oracle Calendar clients are available for Windows, Macs, and Linux. They are very similar in appearance and use to the UICal on the Web interface, but are a bit easier to use. Download and install information is given in Download and Install section of the UICalendar Client Basics page.

The UICalendar Outlook Connector is useful for people who already use Microsoft Outlook's calendaring features. The UICalendar Outlook Connector allows you to use Outlook to display and mange your UICalendar calendar database. One step in the Outlook Connector installation process imports your current Outlook calendar into UICalendar. Please note that the ACCC does not support the use of Outlook, either for calendaring or email, and does not at this time support the UICalendar/Oracle Calendar Outlook Connector. Download and install information is given in Download and Install section of the UICalendar Outlook Connector page.

UICalendar provides all the scheduling services of an Outlook Exchange server, provided that all the people and resources in your groups have UICalendar accounts and have their scheduling information entered in UICalendar. The Oracle Calendar Outlook Connector also supports synchronizing PDAs with most types of third-party PDA sync software.

Sync conduits, both wired and wireless for PDAs and cell phone allow you to use UICalendar on your cell phone or PDA. Sync conduit downloads are at: UICalendar Downloads
We strongly recommend that you back your PDA/cell phone up before trying to use a UICalendar/Oracle Calendar sync conduit. (Or you can sync your PDA with UICal through Outlook if you're using the Outlook Connector; see above.)

Oracle has a basic tutorial on each the five ways to use Oracle Calendar:
     Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g End User Tutorial
On the tutorial site, click in the box with the minus sign beside Oracle Calendar in the tan column on the left to expand the Oracle Calendar table of contents. (We don't have the other parts of the Collaboration Suite.) Then click in the box with the minus sign beside the method of using Oracle Calender that you are interested in to expand the table of contents for that method.

The Oracle Calendar Sync is an example of wired sync and the "Pocket PC" is an example of Oracle Mobile Data Sync or "wireless Web sync". It's useful to take a look at it if you use a PDA or smartphone even if it's not a Pocket PC. (As I look at them now, the how to install info for Pocket PC is "under construction", as is the entire entry for Oracle Calendar Sync. Hopefully, they really mean under construction and they'll have something there soon.

UICal Access rights control who can see your schedule and send you meeting invitations, and, for advanced users, are used to appoint designates who can manage your schedule for you. (We should all be so lucky.)

The default UICalendar access rights has been changed so no one can see your UICal calendar or Task information or invite you to a meeting 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), or on the Web (by turning on your Global calendar) and then sending people the URL for your global agenda.

The smallest UICal permissions that you can give (above none, that is) to allow individuals who have a UICal account to see a calendar for you with the times that you are busy marked out or to allow everyone with a UICal account to see that type of calendar. There are higher levels of access that you can give to specific people with UICal accounts, up to and including, full access to edit and manage your UICal calendar and tasks for you. You can also turn on a Web view of the calendar with your busy times marked out and send the URL for it to anyone on the Web, regardless of whether they have a UICal account. (See the Web client page for more information.)

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.

Note that the permissions you set in any UICal client apply to all UICal clients. It's easiest to set permissions in the native UICal client or the Web client, and it's hard to set permissions with the Outlook Connector. I recommend using the Web Client when setting permissions if you normally use the Outlook Connector.

• Questions and problems should be sent to uicalendar@uic.edu.
  
  
• New email discussion group: uical-l@uic.edu. To subscribe, send an email message to listserv@uic.edu with the following command as its body:
  subscribe uical-l your name
  Substitute your own name for "your name".