My kingdom for a usable calendar.
October 7, 2009 2:53 PM Subscribe
Does your college campus have a really great, usable calendar? If so, could you post a link?
I'm on a committee that is discussing our current calendar system, and I'm looking for examples of really great campus calendars. It would seem that most of them, by their nature, are rather cumbersome and clogged with many events which are hard to navigate.
I'm on a committee that is discussing our current calendar system, and I'm looking for examples of really great campus calendars. It would seem that most of them, by their nature, are rather cumbersome and clogged with many events which are hard to navigate.
Maybe instead of using an actual calendar like Google Calendar, you could just have a list of events sorted by day and time? Like you say, an actual calendar would soon get cluttered up with so many events that it would become unusable. I go to Cornell and I love their events calendar, just a simple list of events for each day with links to more information. I use this pretty much every day and could not be happier with it. You can sort by category of event and time. The only thing that would maybe make it better would be to set up an RSS feed for the page so that I get like a listing of all events two days in advance or something. But I could see how that would be hard to do.
posted by peacheater at 4:13 PM on October 7, 2009
posted by peacheater at 4:13 PM on October 7, 2009
We use the calendaring built into Kerio Mail Server, which is essentially an extension of CalDAV. Our users subscribe to calendars (and/or have calendars delegated to them) and load them in iCal or Mozilla Sunbird, both of which work well. iCal's ability to toggle the visibility of calendars on/off allows all our faculty to be subscribed/delegated to *many* calendars but then turn on the visibility of only the ones they are interested in. Works quite well. For small workgroups, it's fairly easy to open up write access to a calendar to a group of defined users. For example, each Department Head is required to keep a Departmental calendar to which all the other members of the department subscribe in a read-only manner.
We even have calendars that are made completely public and which are subscribable as .ics feeds, so that parents and the public can see things like sporting events/scores and school-wide events. The .ics feeds are simply hosted on our webserver and people subscribe using their favorite calendaring software.
Of course, none of this is groundbreaking or new. What we like about it is the easier management that Kerio provides for us and that we don't have to pay for or administer a Microsoft Exchange Server (blech). Apple's iCal Server (even in Snow Leopard Server) is still kind of an anemic joke. It's getting better with each OS release, but it still doesn't come close to some of the group calendaring solutions out there like Kerio, BusyCal, Google Calendar, or Exchange.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 4:49 PM on October 7, 2009 [1 favorite]
We even have calendars that are made completely public and which are subscribable as .ics feeds, so that parents and the public can see things like sporting events/scores and school-wide events. The .ics feeds are simply hosted on our webserver and people subscribe using their favorite calendaring software.
Of course, none of this is groundbreaking or new. What we like about it is the easier management that Kerio provides for us and that we don't have to pay for or administer a Microsoft Exchange Server (blech). Apple's iCal Server (even in Snow Leopard Server) is still kind of an anemic joke. It's getting better with each OS release, but it still doesn't come close to some of the group calendaring solutions out there like Kerio, BusyCal, Google Calendar, or Exchange.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 4:49 PM on October 7, 2009 [1 favorite]
From notes on this very subject I made for my old .edu employer: VTCalendar, developed by Virginia Tech, and deployed here. Free, too.
posted by bhance at 4:58 PM on October 7, 2009
posted by bhance at 4:58 PM on October 7, 2009
The University of Cambridge has a terrific calendar system for talks. I think it was developed in house.
posted by tss at 5:33 PM on October 7, 2009
posted by tss at 5:33 PM on October 7, 2009
Response by poster: These are great ideas, thank you. Part of the problem with our current system is that they are using something from Sungard that integrates with B-B-B-Banner, and in addition to the cluttering problem I mentioned, is supposed to be a train wreck on the input side of things.
Not to mention the political problems associated with calendaring.
posted by mecran01 at 6:48 PM on October 7, 2009
Not to mention the political problems associated with calendaring.
posted by mecran01 at 6:48 PM on October 7, 2009
The one in use at my school isn't bad. Looks like it's through r25
posted by Kellydamnit at 7:26 PM on October 7, 2009
posted by Kellydamnit at 7:26 PM on October 7, 2009
Are you looking for meeting scheduling, event publicity, or both?
UC Berkeley developed its own campus calendar network for the latter. Each calendar in the network is sponsored by an academic department or other unit. The calendars all feed into the central calendar and can also cross-promote events across a smaller subset. From the central calendar page, you can browse events by type (lectures, sports, performance, etc), by sponsoring department, or by time frame (today, this week, this month, all upcoming). It has RSS feeds available, and a Critic's Choice section of highlights chosen by the calendar editor.
I'm not that familiar with the back end - entering and managing events. But all the departments that use it really appreciate the integration.
This calendar grew out of a master's thesis project in the School of Information. They have all of their project documentation online.
There was some talk of making this system available to other campuses, but I don't know if anything has come of it yet.
posted by expialidocious at 10:44 PM on October 7, 2009
UC Berkeley developed its own campus calendar network for the latter. Each calendar in the network is sponsored by an academic department or other unit. The calendars all feed into the central calendar and can also cross-promote events across a smaller subset. From the central calendar page, you can browse events by type (lectures, sports, performance, etc), by sponsoring department, or by time frame (today, this week, this month, all upcoming). It has RSS feeds available, and a Critic's Choice section of highlights chosen by the calendar editor.
I'm not that familiar with the back end - entering and managing events. But all the departments that use it really appreciate the integration.
This calendar grew out of a master's thesis project in the School of Information. They have all of their project documentation online.
There was some talk of making this system available to other campuses, but I don't know if anything has come of it yet.
posted by expialidocious at 10:44 PM on October 7, 2009
I don't know if what we use is that amazing, but it's certainly workable: http://today.wisc.edu
Departments can add in their own events, which sometimes leads to incomplete entries and duplication (particularly for events sponsored by multiple departments), but we have a grad PA who cleans it up.
We've modified it a bit within the last year or so. One thing I'd like (as someone who actually uses it very frequently for work) is for the ongoing events, like exhibits, to be kept separate from the one-time events. Also, within the event listing itself, we don't have a notation for "Repeats every weekend until X date" (e.g. theater performances) or "Part of a larger conference" unless someone writes it manually in the description field.
I work in the office that creates and maintains it, so if you have any questions please feel free to mail me.
posted by Madamina at 6:09 AM on October 8, 2009
Departments can add in their own events, which sometimes leads to incomplete entries and duplication (particularly for events sponsored by multiple departments), but we have a grad PA who cleans it up.
We've modified it a bit within the last year or so. One thing I'd like (as someone who actually uses it very frequently for work) is for the ongoing events, like exhibits, to be kept separate from the one-time events. Also, within the event listing itself, we don't have a notation for "Repeats every weekend until X date" (e.g. theater performances) or "Part of a larger conference" unless someone writes it manually in the description field.
I work in the office that creates and maintains it, so if you have any questions please feel free to mail me.
posted by Madamina at 6:09 AM on October 8, 2009
Response by poster: I was also shown this link via mefi mail: http://calendar.creighton.edu/.
Note: you can show me a great calendar that you're *not* affiliated with too!
posted by mecran01 at 8:39 AM on October 8, 2009
Note: you can show me a great calendar that you're *not* affiliated with too!
posted by mecran01 at 8:39 AM on October 8, 2009
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posted by mecran01 at 4:12 PM on October 7, 2009