Oracle® Calendar Administrator's Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1.1) Part Number B14472-02 |
|
|
View PDF |
Oracle Calendar offers two kinds of alerts: reminders and notifications. This chapter contains general considerations relating to the server-side implementation of reminders and notifications. See also the documentation for Oracle Mobile Collaboration, which provides reminders and notifications through a number of channels including voice notifications, fax, and Short Message Service (SMS).
This chapter contains the following sections.
The Corporate-Wide Services daemon (unicwsd
) is responsible for delivering reminders and notifications through e-mail and wireless services, shown in Table 13-0. When it has an alert to deliver through e-mail, it sends the alert by SMTP to the mail server specified by the unison.ini
[CWS] smtpmail_url
parameter (if present), which delivers the message to its intended recipient. When it has an alert to deliver through SMS or any other technology supported by Oracle Mobile Collaboration, the CWS calls the sendalert
program specified by the unison.ini
[CWS]
smsnotifyprogram
and [NOTIFY] alert_url
parameters (if present), which delivers the message to an instance of Oracle Mobile Collaboration.
For more information about these server parameters, see "Calendar Server Parameters" in Chapter 3 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual.
Reminders are messages sent a specified amount of time in advance of an event, to alert users to the upcoming events in their agendas.
Some Oracle clients offer reminders that pop up or appear in the user's agenda in advance of a meeting, these types of reminders are implemented on the client side. The calendar server is only involved if reminders are sent by e-mail or through Oracle Mobile Collaboration. Server side reminders (SSR) are messages used to remind the user of an upcoming meeting. They are usually sent a few minutes before the start of the meeting.
Server side reminders can be configured for a user. For example, a user can choose to receive reminders for normal events but not for daily notes by setting their preferences from a client application. These options can also be set for a user, using the uniuser
utility. Example:
% uniuser -user -mod "S=Kundera/G=Milan" -m "REMINDER-SERVERALERT=TRUE/REMINDERDAILYNOTE-SERVERALERT=FALSE" -n 23
For a complete list of the reminder attributes for users, see "Calendar User and Resource Parameters" in Chapter 1 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual. For full information on use and syntax of uniuser
, see "Calendar Server Utilities" in Chapter 6 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual.
Reminder attributes can also be set for all users using the user profile file user.ini
. For more information on how to use a default user profile, see Modifying User Defaults in Chapter 7, "Managing Calendar User Accounts".
The format of the reminder delivered by the calendar server is determined by template files installed in $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/etc/reminder
, according to the delivery mechanism (e-mail or wireless) and language of the user (if set). These files may be customized, but if you plan to modify a reminder template file, note that the data in these files must be stored in the UTF-8 character set.
To convert a string to UTF-8, use the unistrconv
utility or use a UTF-8 editor. For more information about the use and syntax of the unistrconv
utility, see "Calendar Server Utilities" in Chapter 6 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual.
CWS operation
You can control the frequency with which the Corporate-Wide Services daemon/service checks for reminders using the unison.ini
[NOTIFY]
checkreminderinterval
parameter, and the amount of time that the CWS will spend checking any given node for reminders using the [NOTIFY]
limitremindercheck
parameter.
Old reminders
Reminders will not be sent for any event if the time the event was created is past the beginning of the reminder period. For example, if a new meeting is created with a start time five minutes from now, and a reminder set to be delivered ten minutes before the start time of that meeting, that reminder will not be sent by the calendar server.
In any other case, if the CWS finds that the scheduled delivery time of a reminder is before the current time, that reminder will still be delivered up to 30 minutes after the intended delivery time. You can customize this value using the unison.ini
[NOTIFY]
ignoreoldreminders
parameter. Moreover you can customize the priority of Server Side Reminders by adjusting the [CWS] prioritizedjobs
parameter. For more information about these server parameter, see "Calendar Server Parameters" in Chapter 3 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual.
Language of Reminders
When the Oracle Calendar server sends out a reminder, the language chosen is based on the user's Oracle Internet Directory language preference. For example, if a user's preferred language in Oracle Internet Directory is French, reminders for this user will arrive in French. See also, Language of Notifications, in this chapter.
Notifications are messages sent when a meeting or event is created, modified or deleted, to let the attendees know of the change to their schedules.
E-mail and wireless notifications are handled differently.
When a user creates, modifies, or deletes an event using an Oracle Calendar Client, one may choose to notify the attendees by e-mail. This e-mail is passed from the client to the server which will queue the request in the CWS for delivery.
Wireless notification, however, is not decided by the user creating, modifying, or deleting the event. Instead, users can specify in their calendar clients (if their clients support the feature) whether they want to be notified through wireless services when meetings or events to which they are invited are created, modified, or deleted.
Alerts can be disabled on a per user basis. Alerts can be suspended for a configurable period of time in the day. Alerts that are sent during this period are either discarded or held until the suspension period ends. Users can also select which type of calendar entries should trigger an alert.
You can configure notifications for users using the Oracle Calendar administrator web GUI, or by using a command line utility.
Oracle Calendar Administrator
Use the Oracle Calendar administrator to set alert parameters for a user.
Click the Calendar Management tab.
Click on the Users secondary tab.
Search for the user you want to modify using the search box.
When the user is listed click the corresponding Pencil icon in the Actions column.
Click Alerts in the menu on the left.
Make the necessary modifications, and click Apply.
Command Line
To set alert parameters for a user, use the uniuser
utility with the -user
and -mod
options. For example, to get notifications for changes made to meetings:
% uniuser -user -mod "S=Kundera/G=Milan" -n 23 -m "ALERT-NOTIFMEETING=TRUE/ALERT-SUSPENDRANGEACTION=HOLD/ALERT-SUSPENDRANGE=23:00-06:30"
For a complete list of the alert attributes for users, see "Calendar User and Resource Parameters" in Chapter 1 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual. For more information about the use and syntax of the uniuser
utility, see "Calendar Server Utilities" in Chapter 6 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual.
Alert attributes can also be set for all users using the user profile file user.ini
. For more information on how to use a default user profile, see Modifying User Defaults in Chapter 7.
E-mail notifications are passed to the SMTP server with the same text formatting used by the calendar clients.
Disabling e-mail notification in some clients
You can disable e-mail notification entirely in the Oracle Calendar Desktop clients by setting the unison.ini
[LIMITS]
mail
parameter to FALSE
.
Limiting the number of recipients
To avoid strain on your mail server, you can limit the number of recipients for any given notification message using the [LIMITS]
maxmaildistr
parameter in the $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/misc/
unison.ini
configuration file.
Language of Notifications
When the Oracle Calendar server sends out a notification, the language chosen is based on the sending user's client software language. For example, if user A sends a notification to users B and C, and user A's client software language is French, then the notification will be sent to users B and C in French. See also, "Language of Reminders", in this chapter.
When deployed with Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle Calendar server is automatically configured for wireless services during installation. The wireless service is not a supported configuration with Oracle Calendar standalone deployments.
This procedure requires that you know the host name and port number of an instance of Oracle Mobile Collaboration. If you do not have this information, you can find out using the Wireless system management area of Oracle Enterprise Manager. For more details, consult the Oracle Mobile Collaboration documentation.
To manually set up wireless services:
Stop the CWS daemons on all Calendar servers running the $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/bin/unistop
utility with the -cws
option.
Edit the $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/misc/unison.ini
file on each host.
Set the following parameter values:
[NOTIFY] alert_sms = TRUE alert_url = <alertURLstring> [CWS] smsnotifyprogram = $ORACLE_HOME/OCAL/sbin/sendalert
Restart the CWS daemons on all Calendar servers by the $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/bin/unistart
utility.
Note:
For more information about accepted values for the parameters listed above, see "Calendar Server Parameters" in Chapter 3 of Oracle Calendar Reference ManualThe CWS includes MIME headers in all e-mail alerts to allow users to easily filter them, either to specific folders or to another application, such as a pager delivery system. All e-mail alerts include the following MIME header:
X-Oracle-Calendar: 1
All e-mail reminders include the following MIME header:
X-Oracle-Calendar-Reminder: 1
Oracle Calendar e-mail notifications and reminders are sent with a banner that appears at the end of every e-mail. By default in English, the banner reads:
-- Powered by Oracle Collaboration Suite.
This banner can be removed, or configured with customized text.
Removing the E-mail Alerts Banner
To remove the e-mail alerts banner:
Open the $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/misc/unison.ini
configuration file with a text editor.
Change the [CWS] banner
parameter to FALSE
:
[CWS] banner = FALSE
Save the file.
Restart the Oracle Calendar server so that this modification takes effect.
See Also:
"Calendar Server Parameters" in Chapter 3 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual, for more information about the[CWS] banner
parameter,Customizing the E-mail Alerts Banner
To customize the e-mail alerts banner:
Open the $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/etc/banner/banner.<language>.txt
file with a text editor. In this specification, <language>
is the abbreviation of the desired language.
Modify the file to reflect the desired text that you want to appear in the banner for e-mail notifications and reminders. The banner files must contain UTF-8 text. To convert strings into UTF-8 format, use the unistrconv
utility.
Save the file.
See Also:
"Calendar Server Utilities" in Chapter 6 of Oracle Calendar Reference Manual, for more information about theunistrconv
utility.