Using FirstClass calendars   Help Contents • Web Help • Help Document

Using FirstClass calendars About calendars Types of calendars Opening calendars Viewing calendars   Going to a different date   Changing the appearance of calendar text   Customizing calendar views Calendar events   Responding to invitations   Creating events   Updating events   Deleting events Calendar tasks   Creating tasks   Updating tasks Calendar reminders   Forwarding reminders to pagers Printing calendars Seeing multiple calendars as one   Making calendars available for combining Creating public calendars   Setting calendar permissions   Giving users access to your calendar About calendars Your personal FirstClass calendar is like a personal organizer. It records calendar events and tasks. Unlike a personal organizer, you can permit other people to view and update your FirstClass calendar. This allows everyone to schedule meetings at mutually convenient times. FirstClass calendars work much like conferences; your administrator may create public calendars and give you access to them, or you can create your own calendars and give others access to them. Top Types of calendars FirstClass supports the following types of calendars: personal calendar Your own calendar. You can limit other users' access to your personal calendar by updating your calendar permissions, just as you would update the permissions of a calendar that you created. group calendar A public calendar that lets a specific group of people coordinate their time and tasks. resource calendar A public calendar that represents a specific resource, such as a projector. A resource calendar is updated when users book the resource as part of creating a calendar event. location calendar A public calendar that represents a specific resource, such as a meeting room. Location calendars are updated just like resource calendars. Top Opening calendars To open your personal calendar, double-click Calendar on your Desktop. To open another user's calendar: 1 Select the user in the Directory or Who's Online list. 2 Click Open User Calendar. Top Viewing calendars You can split a calendar into panes, and look at it using the same views, as you do for conferences. While in these views, you can do the same things you do with messages. For example, in list view, you can sort calendar events. In addition, there are the following specialized calendar views: View Additional information month Highlights the current day. week Highlights the current day. day Shows events only, in time slots. Tasks and untimed events are displayed at the top of this view. Calendars / Today list Shows: • events that take place today and tasks that start today or are still ongoing • all calendars that are available for you to display combined. This list is displayed in a separate pane that you can show or hide. To display a pane in a particular view, click the appropriate toolbar button. You can also choose the view at "Display format" in the pane's view properties. Conflicting events are indicated with a red bar. Urgent tasks and events are listed before nonurgent ones. Going to a different date To Do this scroll backward and forward through calendar pages Click the arrows at either end of the date range at the top of the calendar. go to the page containing a specific date Choose the appropriate values from the date fields, then click Go. go to the current month, week, or day Click the link beside the date fields. go from the month view to the week view for a specific week Click the arrow beside that week. go from the week view to the day view for a specific day Click the date. Changing the appearance of calendar text You can change the font family, size, and color in which calendar text is displayed in all views. This doesn't affect the text displayed in open calendar items. To do this, update the following fields on the View Properties form: Font Type the font family name (for example, Verdana). To revert to the default font family, clear this field. Size Select or type the font size. To revert to the default size, click the minus control until Default is displayed. Use color Select the checkbox, then choose the color by clicking it on the color palette. For a custom color, type the red, green, and blue values. Customizing calendar views You can customize your month and week calendar views in the following ways: • display week numbers (month view) • change the day on which the week starts (month and week views). To customize your calendar views, make the changes you want to your preferences. Top Calendar events As is the case for messages, a calendar event that was sent to you is flagged as unread until you open it. Opening an event lets you view all its details. Responding to invitations When you receive an event invitation, open the event, then click the appropriate button: Accept Accepts the invitation. Tentative Accepts the invitation, but indicates that you may be unavailable. Decline Declines the invitation and creates a reply message so that you can provide an explanation. An icon corresponding to your response is placed beside your name in the Scheduling section. Notes If the person who invited you isn't on your local server, she will neither see this icon nor any indication in the event history that you accepted or declined. For this reason, a reply is always created for that person. Depending on your calendar permissions, invitations may appear in your Mailbox instead of your calendar. When you accept an invitation, the event moves to your calendar. Creating events Creating events directly in calendars To add an event to a calendar: 1 Open the calendar. 2 Choose New Event from the Create field. Shortcuts To create an event that starts on a particular day, click the New Event icon beside the date. In day view, click the start time you want. 3 Update the basic event information on the Event form. If you add reminders to the event, this icon is displayed beside the event: 4 Update the Participants section to invite participants, book resources that are in the Directory, and check that there are no conflicts. You can reschedule the event here if there are conflicts. 5 Update the Repeat section, if you want to make the event show up repeatedly on the calendar or set other advanced options. If you make the event repeat, this icon is displayed beside the event: 6 Add content just as you would for a message, if necessary. Notes If a participant has a personal calendar, this event is added to that calendar. If a participant doesn't have a personal calendar, or doesn't permit you to add events to their calendar, this form is sent to the participant's Mailbox as a message. If the user accepts the event, it's added to their personal calendar. Events that you create in a group calendar are added directly to that calendar or to your personal calendar (with copies placed in the group calendar). The group calendar's permissions determine which method FirstClass uses. These events appear to come from the group calendar, not from yourself. Adding events from other calendars You can copy events from one calendar to another. This can be useful for adding events from group calendars to your personal calendar. Copy an event just as you would copy any other object. The event is displayed on the same date as it was in the original calendar. Sending invitations over the Internet If you invite someone who has an Internet address (an address that contains @) to participate in your event, the recipient will receive a message with an iCalendar attachment. This attachment can be imported into the recipient's own calendaring application. Updating events To change details about an event, open it and make your changes. If you change the start date, the event will move to the new date on the calendar. The event is also moved and reflagged on participants' calendars. Caution Try to minimize updating events with participants. Participants can customize their copies of events, and your updates will override that customization. You can safely update the color, category, or reminder information, and this won't interfere with participants' copies of the event. If you delete a participant, the event is removed from that participant's calendar. Exceptions Updates will not be reflected in the calendars of users who were invited as part of a mail list, or are participants of an event created in a group calendar. Changing one occurrence of a repeating event If you open an event which is one of a series of repeating events, you will see fields along the top of the event form that tell FirstClass which events to update if you make changes. You can save all of the repeating events, the current repetition, or all repetitions starting with the current one. Updating received events You can change the color or category of a received event, and change when (or if) a reminder is generated for the event. This customization only affects your copy of the event. You can also click a different response button (Accept, Tentative, or Decline). Others will see the icon beside your name that corresponds to your new response. Deleting events If you are creating a calendar event and decide you don't want it, you can delete it while it is still open, just as you would an open message. If you delete an event that you created previously, the event is removed from all participants' calendars. Exceptions Deleted events will not be removed from the calendars of users who were invited as part of a mail list, or were participants of an event created in a group calendar. Caution Deleting one occurrence of a repeating event deletes all occurrences. Top Calendar tasks Incomplete tasks move to the Today list on their start dates, and stay there until they are completed. Once completed, they show on the completion date in other views. Overdue tasks are shown in red. Completed tasks have a line through them. To see task details, open the task. Creating tasks Creating tasks directly in calendars To add a task directly to a calendar: 1 Open the calendar. 2 Choose New Task from the Create field or click the New Task icon in the Today list. 3 Update the basic task information on the Task form. If you add a reminder to the task, this icon is displayed beside the task: 4 Update the Advanced section, if you want to set other advanced options. 5 Add content just as you would for a message, if necessary. Note If you are creating a calendar task and decide you don't want it, you can delete it while it is still open, just as you would an open message. Adding tasks from other calendars You can copy tasks from one calendar to another. This can be useful for adding tasks from group calendars to your personal calendar. Copy a task just as you would copy any other object. The task is displayed on the same date as it was in the original calendar. Updating tasks To change details about a task, open it and make your changes. If you change the start date, the task will move to the appropriate date on the calendar. Changing task status To change the status of a task, choose the appropriate status at "State" on the Task form. If you choose "Completed", today's date appears at "Completed on". You can change this date if necessary. Completed tasks drop to the bottom of the list. Top Calendar reminders When you create a calendar event or task, you can tell FirstClass to generate a reminder. If you are logged in, a reminder will appear as a Calendar Reminder button on your toolbar at the time you specified when you created the event or task. In the case of a calendar event, this reminder will appear for each participant based on that participant's preferences. To Do this see a calendar reminder Click Calendar Reminder. see details of the event or task Click Details on the reminder form. make this reminder appear again Choose when you want the reminder to reappear in the field beside Snooze, then click Snooze. If you aren't logged in, reminders are sent to your Mailbox as messages. To specify a default reminder time for all events and tasks that you create, and for events to which you are invited, update "Set default reminder" in your preferences. Forwarding reminders to pagers FirstClass can notify you of calendar reminders through your pager, if you have an email-enabled paging system. To forward calendar reminders to your pager, update "Items to forward to pager" in your preferences. Choose Yes or Urgent Only at "Calendar items". Top Printing calendars To display a calendar in a view that is optimized for printing, click Print. You can then print this calendar using your browser's normal print function. Top Seeing multiple calendars as one You can view events and tasks from several calendars combined. For example, if a group calendar is available for viewing combined with your personal calendar, you can open your personal calendar, then view the items from the group calendar in addition to your personal items. Note You aren't actually adding these items to the calendar permanently, and they don't affect what FirstClass sees as your busy times. To combine several calendars into one view: 1 Open one of the calendars. The Calendars list shows all calendars that are available for combining. 2 Click Show Calendar beside the calendars you want to add to the view. If a calendar has a color assigned to it, all items from that calendar will appear with the same color. Clicking Hide Calendar beside a calendar in the Calendars list removes all items belonging to that calendar from the view. To open one of the calendars in the Calendars list, double-click it. Making calendars available for combining To add a calendar to the Calendars list, link it to the calendar. For example, to add a calendar called Our Group Calendar to the Calendars list of your personal calendar, link Our Group Calendar to your personal calendar. To make all items from that calendar appear with the same background color when they are added to the combined view: 1 Select the calendar in the Calendars list. 2 Click Set Color. 3 Click the color you want on the palette. To specify a custom color, type its red, green, and blue values. Top Creating public calendars You can create group, resource, and location calendars just as your administrator does. If you have trouble getting your calendars to work as expected, contact your administrator. To create a public calendar: 1 Open the container where you want the calendar. 2 Choose the appropriate type of calendar from the Create field. 3 Name your calendar. After your calendar is created, you can update calendar properties on the Info form. 5 Set calendar permissions. Tip You can also change permissions for your personal calendar, if you want to change the expiry period for items in your calendar, give other users more or less permission to use your calendar than is normally allowed, or subscribe other users so that your calendar appears on their Desktops. Setting calendar permissions To specify the permissions for your calendar: 1 Open the calendar. 2 Click Permissions. 3 Update the Calendar Permissions form. We recommend that you select "Do not publish in Directory", so that your calendar isn't in the Directory. This lets you name the calendar whatever you want, without worrying about finding a unique name, and prevents users who shouldn't be seeing your calendar from knowing about it. Giving users access to your calendrs You can make your calendar available to users by: • creating the calendar in a container to which they have access or • subscribing them to your calendar. This puts a link to your calendar on their Desktops. To subscribe a user to your calendar: 1 Open the calendar. 2 Click Permissions. 3 Click Subscribers. 4 Enter the user's name at "Add subscriber" just as you would when addressing a message. You can work with the subscribers in this list just as you can in the Directory list. To remove a selected subscriber, click Remove Subscriber. Tip You can click the column headings in the subscribers list to sort the list, just as you can in other lists. This lets you display the subscriber names in alphabetical order. Top