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Friday August 2nd, 2013

OIT > Computing > Calendar Service > Getting Started

Calendar Service - Getting Started

Index

Who can use Oracle Calendar?

Faculty and staff are eligible for Oracle Calendar accounts, including students employed by the university (billable to their department.) Subscription is by department only.

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What types of accounts are available?

Users

Oracle Calendar individual staff accounts are created for staff or faculty members at the request of your department. With an Oracle Calendar account you can actively share your calendar and schedule with any other Oracle Calendar user. By default, only "busy" time can be viewed by other users; if you want to share more or less specific information with another person, that is your choice.

If a calendar account is needed for a job position which is often staffed by students or rotating staff, OIT can provide a departmental or "front desk" user account. For the specifics of such an account in your department, contact OIT.

Resources

A resource is an inanimate object, such as a conference room or a piece of equipment, that has its own account on the calendar server. When creating an event in their agenda, users can reserve resources by inviting them in the same way that they invite other users. Resources can be managed by local users who act as designates. Resources can be set up to permit reservations on a first come first served basis to prevent double-bookings, to permit more than one reservation at a time, or to require approval by a resource manager.

Resource accounts can also be used to create calendars for tracking related enterprise-wide information, such as company holidays or employees' travel schedules. For example, a resource can serve as a Travel Planner for an office. Whenever an employee is scheduled to travel, he/she will create an event in his/her personal agenda and invite the resource. The result is a calendar for the resource Travel Planner containing all entries related to employees' travel.

Event Calendar

An event calendar is an administrative calendar account which exists to inform your user base about upcoming events that may be of interest to them. Event calendars are similar to user accounts, but represent schedules such as lab schedules, sports matches, concerts or other events that may be of interest to the public. Public users have read-only access to events recorded in event calendars; using the Oracle Calendar Web client, users may copy events and appointments from the event calendar into their own calendars.

Administrative staff may populate an event calendar by signing in with the account password using one of the Oracle Calendar Desktop clients, or via Designate access.

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Manage Someone Else's Calendar

Some people manage the calendars of other Oracle Calendar users or resources. For these functions, you can assign "Designate" authority to another person. A Designate can operate your calendar on your behalf, creating, confirming or modifying agenda items according to the access rights you have assigned to that person. Designates may also manipulate Resource and Event Calendar accounts.

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Publish a Calendar on the Web

The Global Agenda features allows any account (user, resource or event) to be viewed by the anonymous public, on the World Wide Web. In such accounts, an event which is labeled for "Public" access is viewable in the Oracle Calendar Web Client, using a special URL which displays the current week's agenda. For an example of such an account please view this week's calendar for OIT' MSTB Lab A.

Publishing a Global Agenda for a User Account

  1. Log in to your account using the Web version of Oracle Calendar at http://calendar.uci.edu
  2. Once logged in, click on the Preferences icon.
  3. Click on the Security tab and check the box next to Allow Global Agenda Viewing.
  4. Click OK.
  5. In your Agenda, click on the link for Email Agenda to a friend.
  6. Type in an email address to send a link to your Web calendar. If you want to publish this link somewhere, type in your own address so you will receive a copy of the URL.
  7. The recipient of the email will receive a message with a link to your published calendar.
    Samuel Omeone has sent you the following Agenda link:
   https://calendar.uci.edu:443/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=web&web=gbl&viw=%a4%ba%b8%a9%a8&xen=%e5%e0%eb%f5%e9%ec%ed%eb
  8. The published calendar will show your busy periods, but not what you are doing unless the meetings are set set to Public. This link will show the current week of your calendar.

Publishing a Global Agenda for a Resource Account

Resource accounts can also be enabled to be viewed on the Web. However, this option needs to be enabled on the server by the Oracle Calendar Administrator.

  1. Send an email to oit@uci.edu with the name of your resource. Request that the Resource have Allow Global Agenda turned on for viewing in the Web. This request must be made by the resource owner.
  2. You should receive a reply letting you know it has been enabled. Once Allow Global Agenda has been enabled, log into the Web version of Oracle Calendar at http://calendar.uci.edu
  3. Click on the View Agendas icon.
  4. Check the radio button next to Resource search. Type a search query in the Search field and click the Find button.
  5. Select the Resource you are searching for in the results list on the left and click the View button.
  6. If the Allow Global Agenda feature has been turned on, you will see a link for Email Agenda. Screen image showing email link
  7. Type in an email address to send a link to your Web calendar. If you want to publish this link somewhere, type in your own address so you will receive a copy of the URL.
  8. The recipient of the email will receive a message with a link to your published calendar.
    Samuel Omeone has sent you the following Agenda link:
   https://calendar.uci.edu:443/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=web&web=gbl&viw=%a4%ba%b8%a9%a8&xen=%e5%e0%eb%f5%e9%ec%ed%eb
  9. The published calendar will show your busy periods, but not what you are doing unless the meetings are set set to Public. This link will show the current week of your calendar.

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Sign Up for an Oracle Calendar Account

For an organization who wishes to begin using Oracle Calendar, we recommend the following process:

  1. Identify a Oracle Calendar liaison in your School or department. This person (often a member of the computing support staff) will coordinate with OIT regarding billing, creating accounts, naming resources and determining the appropriate nomenclature for the organization's listing in the Oracle Calendar directory.
    (Many campus units already have functioning liaisons; OIT prefers there to be only one liaison per School.)
  2. Identify local computing support staff to aid in the installation and hands-on support of desktop client software.
  3. Contact OIT to discuss your department's calendaring needs. OIT will work with your department to determine how it fits into the Oracle Calendar organizational schema, and how to represent your department therein.
  4. Send to OIT, via e-mail, a list of UCInetIDs for which Oracle Calendar accounts should be created. This list should also indicate the department in which each account holder works.

What is the lead time for getting started with Oracle Calendar?

New accounts are usually available within one business day after receipt of the account request.

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Cost and Billing for Oracle Calendar

Cost breakdown

OIT pays Oracle for the client and server software licenses and an annual maintenance fee, which covers the software upgrades, online documentation, and technical support.

Departments pay:

Subscription Fee: $7.00 per user account, per year.

This annual fee covers the operational costs of providing the Oracle Calendar service, which covers all software upgrades and fixes, documentation, technical support, and training. It is recharged to the department for each active individual calendar. There is no charge for calendars associated with departmental resources (e.g., meeting rooms, equipment)

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Billing

Activation Fees: These fees are collected quarterly for all new accounts created during the past quarter.

Subscription Fee:

New Accounts: This fee is incurred when a new account is created and is prorated to the end of the fiscal year. It is collected quarterly for accounts created during the fiscal year.

Existing Accounts: This fee is collected at the beginning of each fiscal year for all active accounts.

Inactive Accounts: A department may delete an individual account which has become inactive (e.g., due to staff turnover). The department then retains the license and may reassign it to another individual without incurring another activation fee as long as the annual subscription fee is paid on the inactive account.

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