Calendar

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The calendar module allows you to manage appointments. Those can be business-related or private. It can display birthdays from the contacts and show people's vacations, and much more. This chapter explains the calendar module, including it's configuration. Thanks to Patrick Malaison for providing the initial version of this chapter!

Contents 1 The views 1.1 Today 1.1.1 Details 1.1.2 Edit 1.1.3 Delete 1.1.4 vCal 1.2 This Week 1.3 This Month 2 Creating an Appointment 2.1 Date and Time 2.2 Location and Subject 2.3 Participants 2.4 Create Appointment 3 Configuring your Calendar

The views

Once you click on the Calendar tab you will be presented with the default view for your calendar. By default this screen will be the Daily view. This screen includes many items, some of which can be customized. The customization will be explained in the Settings Module.

The Sub menu located immediately below the menu bar allow you to create a New Appointment and to browse between the different views, we will get to this in just a moment. On the right side of the screen are tools to help you use the calendar:

• The first box indicated who's calendar you are monitoring, usually your own.
• The second box allow you to select any other user that you would like to inquire about their schedule.
• Next is a Monthly Calendar. You can switch month back clicking the arrows located on each side of the month. The next line indicate the year, you can change the year on the same fashion you do the months. To select a specific day of the month, just click on the date in the calendar.
• The next box allows you to quickly jump to a specific date by entering it in the appropriate boxes and clicking the "Jump to Date" button.
• Lastly, you are presented with the color legend for the calendar.

Let's have a look at the different views that you can access in this module.

Today

In this view, you see an overview of the day that is displayed on the first line after the 2 menu lines. You can change the day shown by clicking the Back or Forward link on each side of the date. The default view will show time from 8:00AM to 5:00PM in 30 minutes increments by default, please refer to the Settings Module Documentation to change those values.

When you have an appointment, it will show up as shown in the picture above. Here is an explanation based on this example.

From To 

The start and end time will be shown on the same line. The time slots occupied by that meeting will not show up. Here the meeting starts at 2:00 PM and ends at 3:30 PM

Description 

Self-explanatory, the description of the meeting or event.

Location 

Where the meeting is to be held.

Action 

There you'll have links to action that you can perform on that item. These actions include: Details, Edit, Delete and vCal. They will be explained now.

Details

Clicking on the details button will show you the details pertaining to this event in your calendar. Let's have a look at the details for our example:

Edit

This is the screen that you will see if you click the Edit button on the Today view for a specific appointment. As you will see later, it is very similar to the New Appointment screen both in look and functionality. Please refer the New Appointment section for more details on how to use this screen. The only difference is in the button to submit your changes, it is called Edit Appointment, you click on it when you are finished entering your modification and ready to submit the new appointment. You can click on Cancel at any time to cancel your changes and return to the previous page.

Delete

If you wish to remove an entry from you calendar, you click on the Delete link for the item you want to cancel. You will be presented with a screen very similar to the Details screen, except for the Delete Appointment button at the bottom that you click to submit the cancel request.

If it is an appointment that you created yourself, it will be automatically deleted once you click on the Delete Appointment button. If it is an appointment that was created by someone else, you'll will have to decide if you want to delete it only for yourself or for everybody that is part of this meeting. Once again, be careful with the Delete process has there is no additional confirmation message.

vCal

This Week

This is the screen that will show you a weekly view of your agenda. You can move to different week by clicking the Back and Forward link on each side of the dates at the top of the screen. If you would like to go to a specific day, just click on the corresponding date.

You can view the details of any meetings by clicking on the item in question. You will then be presented with the Details view as described in the Today view section. You can click the back button at the bottom of the meeting detail window or use any of the navigation links at the top to continue.

This Month

This view, has its name implies shows a monthly view of your agenda. The left end column shows the week number out of 52. As with the weekly view, to see the detail of any specific item, just click on that item. You can also move from month to month using the Back and Forward link surrounding the month being displayed. You can access a specific week by clicking on that weeks number on the left or a specific day by clicking on the date you wish to access in the same fashion.

Note: You can only Delete and Edit appointments from the daily view. If you want to do either of these action while in another view, you will need to first go to the schedule for that specific day as explained above.

Creating an Appointment

In this section, you will learn how to create appointments. Several options are available and will be covered here. First let's have a look at the New Appointment screen.

Now let's look at the different sections of the screen one by one.

Date and Time

In this section, you need to enter the date and time of the meeting. There is also 3 check boxes to consider in this section.

• Entire Day: Check this is this is going to be an all day event.
• Vacation: Check if you are going on vacation and wish to have your on-line agenda reflect this fact.
• Private Appointment: If you check this box, other user will see that you are unavailable but will not be shown any details about your appointment.

Location and Subject

In these 2 boxes, enter the location of the meeting, for example 'Board Room', or 'Doctor Doolitle's Office'. In the subject box, enter a description of the meeting for you and others to know what it is about. You could even enter the agenda there.

Participants

The first check box in this section is to indicate if you are going to attend this event or not. Next you have a list of user in your system (i.e. employees). You can select more than one person by holding the Ctrl key on your keyboard. To add them in the list on the right, click on the Add button. Use the same process to remove them from the Participants list.

The Overview Participants button allows you to quickly assess any conflicts before trying to create the appointment. In the following example, the first person on the list has something planned from 9:30AM to 4:30PM.

The External Participant box allows you to include the names of other people involved in the event that are not part of the employee list. Remember that those people will not be automatically notified of the meeting. Repetition

This section allows you to create appointments, meetings or other entries in your calendar that are repeated at regular interval. These intervals are:

• None: Default value, this indicate a one time only event
• Work Days: The event will repeat every workday (Monday through Friday)
• Daily: This event will repeat every day, including Saturday and Sunday.
• Weekly: Indicate a weekly event, for example the Friday status meeting.
• Monthly: A once a month affair, making sure your time sheet are completed by month end at the end of every month.
• Yearly: A once a year event that you need to remember, a wedding anniversary or birthday for example.

The "Within Time Frame (inclusive)" date selection boxes indicate the last date that this event will occur.

Create Appointment

The last section of this screen , to create the appointment, click on the "Create Appointment" button or on the "Cancel" button if you decide not to create the new meeting.

Successful creation: if all goes well, your appointment will be added to the system and people that are invited will see the newly created item in their own calendar and will receive an e-mail if you have this option enabled.

Conflicting schedule: If one of the people invited to join the meeting has a conflict in their schedule, you will be presented with the following screen:

At this point, you need to decide what the next step will be, you have three options offered to you:

• Book: This option will book the meeting regardless of the conflict created. This will in fact "double" book the people having a schedule conflict. Some time it is necessary to do so, for example, you are planning a team meeting and one member as a private appointment (to the dentist maybe...) but you need to have the meeting regardless.
• Do not Book: This will have the same effect as hitting cancel on the creation screen and will clear the data and remove the meeting from the schedule.
• Change: This will bring you back to the previous screen and allow you to modify the meeting in order to resolve the conflict. The best way to avoid conflict is to use the "Overview Participants" function that will let you see the schedule of the people you are inviting to your meeting.

Configuring your Calendar

To personalize your Calendar, you need to access the Settings page by clicking the "Settings" tab on the menu bar. Once that page opens, find the Calendar section and click on the "Settings" link. The following page will open:

Check "I will participate in the appointment" by Default 

If you mostly create appointment for other people, for example your Manager or, you may prefer to de-select this option. If you do and you need to create an appointment that you will be part of, you will need to remember to click the box on the new appointment screen.

Send Reminder Email 

Checking this box will force the system to send an e-mail to all people involved in the meetings that you are creating. In addition to seeing the meeting in their schedule, they will also receive an email with the meeting information. Note: Please note that this option is not enabled by default

Show birthdays in calendar 

If you select this option and the birthdate of the users is entered in the system, you will be able to see those. Birthdays from the contacts module will shown as well.

Calendar View From To 

Those 2 field allow you to change the hours shown in your calendar, by default, these values are 8:00 to 17:00. They can be modified for the start from 5:00 to 12:00 and the end of day from 13:00 to 24:00.

Interval Length 

By default, the daily view shows an entry for every 30 minutes. It can be modified to show interval of 15, 20, 30 or 60 minutes.

Default View in Calendar 

This will decide what view will first presented to you when you access the Calendar module. The choices are Today, Week or Month.

Holiday template 

The Calendar Module allows you to choose different holiday template depending on your country. Use the drop down list to make your choice.

vCal creation method 

You can create vCal files from appointments. This allows you to choose between the creation of a file you can download, or the file being automatically attached to an email. In this case the webmail module will open with a message you can then send.