Netscape Calendar Client

The CSE Department has a number of resources that are available to be reserved. These resources include conference rooms, projectors, and laptop computers. Netscape's Calendar Client allows for scheduling these resources and also other Calendar users in the CSE Department.

Netscape's Calendar Server allows a user to schedule resources for a particular day or a predetermined frequency, i.e., "Every Tuesday for 10 weeks". This software also allows all users to view when resources are scheduled and checks against scheduling conflicts.

Netscape Calendar Policies

All CSE Faculty and Staff will be permitted to reserve conference rooms and portable projectors under the control of CSE (DL 263, 298 and 698) by using the Netscape Calendar scheduling facility. DL280, DL480 and the Chair's conference room will continue to be scheduled through the front desk or Marty Marlatt. Because many of the rooms are used for classes, class schedules will be entered by the ninth week of the previous quarter. This will minimize the chances that your scheduled time will be overridden.

The software to be used, Netscape Calendar, provides a number of features. For example, scheduling a room could also include inviting attendees, and sending, accepting and refusing invitations. However, for these features to be useful all faculty and staff members would need to maintain an online personal schedule and they would have to check Calendar regularly to see if they have been scheduled for a meeting. Until that becomes a reality, we will use only the scheduling components for rooms and equipment. Notification of meetings to individuals should occur through a separate email.

The priority for reserving conference rooms is, from highest to lowest:

Visitors to CSE from outside
Graduate student exams (PhD, MS final defense, Candidacy)
Departmental meetings including committee meetings
Research seminars (888s and others)
Other miscellaneous meetings (lunches, etc.)

The portable projectors were purchased for use by instructors. The first priority for their use is classroom instruction. If they are not in use for classroom instruction, the priorities for conference rooms apply.

Resolving a Conflict

The first procedure to use in resolving a conflict is to contact the person with whom you have a conflict. The scheduling system allows you to include your name in the reservation. Since reservations are limited to faculty and staff, you should be able to contact the individual and ask for an accommodation.

If the parties involved cannot work out a solution or the person is not available, send email to help@cse.ohio-state.edu for the operations manager's review.

Conference room reservations in categories 3-5 may be bumped for an outside visitor.

Scheduling By Others

Persons other than CSE Faculty and Staff who wish to reserve a conference room must do so by calling the CSE main office as they have done in the past. Licensing costs prohibit us from making online centralized access generally available to graduate students or to undergraduate students. Netscape Calendar Client can however be used by anyone to keep their schedule offline which means they are not available to other users.

Checking Out Equipment

The laptops, projectors, and power cables are kept at the CSE Helpdesk. To check out department equipment you must present a valid BuckID and you will be asked to sign for the units on pick-up and return. Please note that reservations are made for the equipment well in advance so there is no guarntee when it comes to availability.

Once you are sure you have the calendar client installed, you are ready to login for the first time. To bring up the login screen for your Netscape Calendar choose the following options in Netscape.

Communicator rightarrow Calendar

After choosing this option in netscape you should have the login screen shown in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1: Netscape Calendar Login Prompt
Calendar login screen

Proceed to fill in your username and password. You can enter your last name into the User Name: textbox or you can enter your full name. Your initial password should be the same as your unix password. For the ServerName make sure that you fill this text field with:

calendar.cse.ohio-state.edu

Then either click the OK button or hit Enter.

Using Netscape Calendar

After you initially login you should have a window that looks like Figure 5.2.

Figure 5.2: Netscape Calendar ToolBar
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This window has several features to it. For now we will only the objects that allow us to schedule resources. Let's look at two different scenarios:

Scenario 1: You teaching a course for the next 10 weeks and you need to reserve a Laptop every Tuesday and Thursday from 2:00pm till 3:30pm

Scenario 2: You wanted to schedule a conference room for a one time event.

Scenario 1: Scheduling Recurring Use

Opening a Resource Agenda :

Often we want to schedule a resource such as a laptop and want to first see if when it is available for use. To do this, we can open the resource's (or another person's) agenda and then schedule from that agenda.

There are several ways to open an agenda other than your own. You can : Click on the ``Open an Agenda'' button in the above window. Or from the menus of the window above choose

File rightarrow Open AgendaAn Agenda

After you choose one of these options another window will pop up with the title ``Open an Agenda'', as shown in Figure 5.3.

**Figure 5.3:** Opening an Agenda
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We now have to go through several steps in order to choose the agenda of the resource we want to schedule:

Click the search button.
Click on the Resources tab.
Your window titled ``Search Directory'' should now look like this Figure 5.4.

Figure 5.4: Choosing a resource

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Fill in the ``Resources Name'' field with the resource you want to schedule. In this case I wanted to add ``Laptop 1''. Next, click search.
Note: This search will take the wildcard character *. So if I just knew the first 3 letters of the resource name I could type lap* and search for that. This would return all instances of resources that start with lap. This search is not case sensitive either.

Note: You could enter the resource by hand but it has to be in the following format "res:Laptop 1/7". It is much easier to just use the search tool.
Choose the resource you want to schedule in the ``Found'' field and click the ``OK'' button
Click the ``OK'' button on the window titled ``Open An Agenda''.

After you go through the previously mentioned process you should finally have the window shown in Figure 5.5 in front of you.

**Figure 5.5:** Scheduling Window
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To schedule the equipment, the first thing we need to do is click on the ``New Agenda Entry'' button on the window from the previous page. From the menus of the window above choose

Agenda rightarrow New Entry

This should result in the window shown in Figure 5.6.

**Figure 5.6:** Scheduling Windowa Meeting
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Lets now fill out the tab labeled General. Here's how I filled out the following text fields:

Title	Cis Class (Rick Wagner)
Date	02-02-99
Start Time	02:00pm
Duration	01 h: 30
End Time	03:30pm

Adding Resources :

With Netscape Calendar, both resources and people are considered participants. You can add other resources on to a schedule other than the agenda you opened.

To add a resource with the Search button, first click on the button to bring up the window in Figure 5.7.

**Figure 5.7:** Searching for a Resource
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In the text field which says ``resource name'' enter the resource you want to schedule. In the text area underneath the label Found is where the resource should appear if it is found. The next thing to do is click on the resource to highlight it and then click on the button labeled » Add to add them to the schedule.

People are added very much the same way as I just added the resource, the only difference is that you use the People tab instead of the Resources tab.

Once all resources and people are added that you need just hit the OK button associated with the Search window

Now we are ready to choose the frequency with which we want to reserve the Laptop and Projector.

Choosing Frequency for Resource:

Click on the Repeating tab.
Choose weekly from the drop down list on the left.
A number of boxes will appear representing the days of the week. Click on the one that says Thu so that it is highlighted.
In the area labeled ``Start and End Dates'', click the radio button labeled For and choose weeks from the drop down list instead of days.
Change the text box with ``1'' in it next to the label For to ``10''.
In the drop down list under the label Conflicts, choose Display Conflicts.
This will check to make sure that your reservation doesn't conflict with anyone else's reservation.
Click the button labeled OK in the Repeating tab. You will be prompted with the following question:
Do you want to create a list of dates using the current settings?

You must answer Yes to this question or it will only schedule you for the starting date and none of the other repeating times.
Click on the Create button associated with New Agenda Entry on the tab labeled General.

You should now have the laptop reserved according to the scenario described earlier.

Scenario 2: Scheduling One-Time Use

We do not have to open an agenda other than our own to schedule a resource. As a matter of fact, the easiest way to schedule a meeting is to highlight the block of time on your agenda, type the subject for the meeting and then press the enter key. At this point the meeting/event has been scheduled, but without reserving a particular room. To reserve a room, click on the entry using the right mouse button and a menu will appear. From this menu select ``Edit Meeting...''. A window will appear which allows you to edit all of the features and options for this meeting. Click on the ``Room/Res.'' icon at the top of the screen and a list of rooms and resources will appear. Select the resource(s) you wish to schedule, click on the ``OK'' button, and the selected resources will appear in the listbox of invitees to your meeting. You can now click on the ``Schedule'' icon which will verify the availability of the other invitees and will place the meeting on their schedules if you have been given access to do so. All faculty, instructors, and staff have access to schedule conference rooms DL 298, 698, and 263, as well as the laptops and projectors. Agendas for DL 280, 480, and the Chair's Conference room can be viewed, but scheduling must be requested through the CSE office staff.

More help is available.

There are features and options (such as changing your password and allowing or disallowing access to your calendar) available that are not covered in this brief introductory help document. For a more extensive coverage of the available options please choose

Help rightarrow Contents.

For any questions about getting an account for scheduling resources please send e-mail to help@cse.ohio-state.edu.