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OverView
Basic Introduction On Main Page
Customer View:Will it work for you? What organizations should, or should not, try Shared Calendars? |
Features:A User's Overview. How Shared Calendars will work for the people you give accounts. |
Who Should NOT use Shared Calendars?
Shared Calendars works off your web server. While it is very easy for users, it takes some effort at first to install. Many of our competitors produce calendars that focus on providing many people calendars, but each individual has just one calendar and rarely looks at anyone else's: if you are sure that you do not want to "share" calendar information,If you mostly work on your own, from one computer, and you want a quick
calendar solution, Shared Calendars is not not your best answer.
(See what happens when we run a company without a marketing department.)
Who Should Use Shared Calendars
Shared Calendars falls between the simplest quick-fix calendars, and very expensive customized solutions. It is ideal for businesses or organizations that would like their members to be able to use calendars over the web, for businesses that would like their calendar to act as a lightweight project manager, and organizations where people work together. Shared Calendars makes it very convenient to separate your entries into categories, sharing some and keeping others private. It is ideal for groups where some members would like a simple calendar, and others would rather learn a more complex and powerful schedule, task and calendar program. Finally, Shared Calendars was written to be easily customized.- An Office where people work on projects together
- An organization where people work from home
- Anyone who needs a custom solution
- ISPs providing multiple installations
Easy To Learn, Power as You Need It
At first, you can use Shared Calendars as a shared, web-browser based "wall calendar" -- not much more difficult to use than a paper calendar. As you need a new function, you're likely to find it. At first you can ignore capabilities like the following, and later find:
entering complex events ( ex: meeting the 2nd Monday each month with email reminders )
creating and sorting Tasks
creating a schedule
searching for free time available for a meeting between you and co-workers
creating a public calendar viewed as a normal web page (if your admin agrees)
Sharing Calendars
Our name comes from our specialty : setting up multiple calendars based
on any criteria you like, rather than one calendar per person. Permissions
are set on a calendar-by-calendar basis, and you can give different individuals
different access to each calendar.
For example, I can set up 'Personal - Stephen', 'Work - Stephen', 'This Project' and 'That Project'. Everyone trusted on the various projects I would give appropriate access, so that together we can update events. When I view, I can view any combination I have read permission for: so I can focus on my job, or just my personal life, or look at projects shared with co-workers.
You can look at more than one calendar at once, and quickly change the
calendar or combination of calendars that you are viewing.
Calendars, Tasks and Scheduling
Calendar Events
Our calendar is similar to a wall calendar. The basics are very easy to use: Write in events in the appropriate shared calendar. Look at any combination of shared calendars you like, either as a month summary, or look at the details for a day. When you 'Add' a new event, just fill in the top section, giving it a Header, Time and so on, and assigning it to one of the 'Shared' Calendars.If you find yourself desiring to enter something more complex, like a lunch meeting every Monday or a birthday every year, look farther down the form and the option is likely to be there.
Tasks
Unlike Calendar Events, Tasks are not associated with a particular date or set of dates. Instead, they remain on your Task list until you complete or delete them. You can create Tasks on their own, or you can assign a Calendar Event to be on the Task list as well.Scheduling
Scheduling is an additional option. Among the Calendar Events that you can view, many can occur at the same time: you can see what options you have and what your coworkers are doing. You may place some of these events on your schedule: your schedule locks your time, so only one event can be placed during any 15 minute interval. You can also request other people to schedule a Calendar Event.Combine Project Management With Your Calendars
Most competing calendar or schedule software gives each user a single calendar. So, everyone at the office may be running their calendar on the same piece of software, but it's not convenient to keep track of relevent infomation. Shared Calendars lets you create multiple calendars, with unique security for each: so you can place your information in convenient structures. You can create a Personal Calendar for when you are going to lunch, or a 'Project 1' calendar that is viewed by all the team members. Overlapping events can be freely viewed in Calendar mode; or you can lock down your schedule in schedule mode.
Used this way, Shared Calendars can acts as a lightweight and low overhead
project manager.
Easy To Customize
Some customization is extremely easy: for example, you can add headers
and footers, making the page look as you like.
Beyond the simplest cosmetic changes, Shared Calendars is written in PERL. Licensed users may make customized changes to their own copies. While of course we can't take responsibility for changes you make, it is our hope that you will find Shared Calendars easy code to modify. Some changes, such as adding new fields to an entry, are extremely simple. If Shared Calendars can't do exactly what you want as packaged, we hope you'll find it easy enough to modify.
Boutell.Com also does contract programming work. Shared Calendars is designed as a base, from which customized Calendar or Project Management tools can be built quickly, cheaply, and with the benefit of a stable and tested core. Please contact us with your calendaring goals.