Calendars In EdWebs

Looking for a robust, yet easy way to list your unit's events on your web site?  We've designed a way to allow you to display Web Services' Calendar Web Tool events on your web site.

Why?

• It's easy.  A) Entering and managing events in WebServices' Calendar Tool is easy.  B) With Contribute, adding these events to your EdWebs site is just a few clicks away.
• It's robust.  UIUC Webtools Calendar listings can be inserted directly into your website, such as in the examples below, without any need to design or program -- it's all been done.
• Events Can Be Shared: Events entered into your Webtools Calendar can (at your discretion) be made available so that they can be included in other WebTools Calendars such as the College calendar.  All without cutting and pasting a thing.  Similarly, you may be able to benefit by including the events of some other University organization.
• Consistency: Using common tools helps the College (and University) provide a more consistent user experience for visitors to our sites.

How It Works

1. You create and edit your calendar using webservices webtools (http://webtools.uiuc.edu).  The data is maintained on their servers. 
2. You provide OET with details about your calendar.  (URL)
3. You open Contribute and embed a special "library" item if you want the Event Listing or merely add a special URL to provide a link to a full calendar listing.  (We're glad to help.)

Just email webmaster@ed.uiuc.edu when you are ready to start your calendar.

Examples within EdWebs

• Colege of Ed Calendar
  • http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/anc/  
  • http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/anc/month/
• OET Calendar
  • http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/oet/anc/all/
• BER Calendar
  • http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/ber/
  • http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/ber/anc/all
• Calendars Embedded in pages.
  • withspeakers http://devwww.ed.uiuc.edu/hedcollaborative/ center column
  • narrow http://devwww.ed.uiuc.edu/hedcollaborative/ right column
  • wide http://devwww.ed.uiuc.edu/saao/ top center

 

Tips on Using Webtools Calendars in EdWebs

Creating Calendars. 

Your website may want more than one calendar.  Maybe one for talks, one for deadlines, and one for a particular speaker series.  This allows them to be displayed separately.  They can all be included in a general calendar also.  This also facilitates other units sharing your calendars.  For example a cosponsor of a series may just want to include the series calendar and not your departmental deadlines.  The college wide calendar may also not want your deadlines, but may want all your other calendars.

If your unit wants to keep it simple and use one calendar, that will work well also.  Just be sure to not share events that won't be of interest to other calendars such as deadlines or events open or of interest to only your unit.  See security in Event Fields to Note below.

Calendar Configuration

Event Calendar > Create/edit > Event Types:  Be sure to check all the event types you want to be included in your calendar.  This will determine which events from included calendars will show up. 

Event Calendar > Create/edit > Includes: Check any calendars you want to include.  the only calendars that are visible are those that the managers allow to be included in other calendars.

Event Configuration and Editing

Check RSS on all your calender events.  This is helpul for sharing your events over RSS feeds.

Do not cut and paste from MS Word or other applications into webtools.  This can cause problems from odd characters etc.  Work from a text editor such as notepad if you want to cut and paste into webtools.

Event Fields to Note:

• Security. If you have events such as deadlines that you don't want to share with other calendars (for their sake or yours) make sure to select "This event can only be viewed in this calendar." 
• Time.  Be sure to pick one of the options.  Even if you don't enter a time, a default time will show up if you select Display start time only or Display start and end time.
• Event Type.  Calendars which include your calendar may only include certain types of events, so an accurate event type is a good idea.  If an accurate category is not available use "other" or "misc".  If the event is of type "other" or "misc", the event type row will not be displayed in EdWebs event detail pages.
• Event Title Link.  This is the url that would provide a more detailed description of the event.  It should not link to other web sites such as the speaker's home page or sponsoring unit's home page.  If an event title link is provided and no information is entered in the description field, Edwebs calendar indexes will link directly to the event title link.  If the desciption field is used, a "more info" link will be added to the description display.
• Description.  While this field does allow HTML (remember to check html if you use it), HTML has some drawback and we don't recommend using it.  The same problems are true of all the HTML fields. Here are the drawbacks:
  • When people import an event into their calendaring software, the html may not be recognized and the HTML tags will be visible in their calendars.  This is true of Microsoft Outlook.
  • Improperly nested html tags or non xhtml tags will break the display page.  You can use the web page for html tidy at http://infohound.net/tidy/ to clean up your html. Paste you html in the input box.  Your cleaned up html will end up in the <body> tag on the response page.
    
  To avoid html, use returns to separate lines.  Instead of links like <a href="http://www.ed.uiuc.edu...">Link Name</a> use Link Name (http://www.ed.uiuc.edu...)

• Recurrence.  This can get tricky.  Double check your calendar display when using recurring events to make sure the events are showing up on the correct dates.