13 Managing Calendar Alerts

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.

About Calendar Alerts
About Reminders
About Notifications
Setting Up Wireless Services
Filtering E-mail Alerts
Configuring the E-Mail Alerts Banner

About Calendar Alerts

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.

Figure 13-1 CWS Alert Process

Description of "Figure 13-1 CWS Alert Process"

About Reminders

Reminders are messages sent a specified amount of time in advance of an event, to alert users to the upcoming events in their agendas.

Types of Reminders

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.

Configuring Reminders for Users

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".

Specifying a Format for Reminders

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.

Controlling the Behavior of Reminders

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.

About Notifications

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.

Types of Notifications

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.

Configuring Notifications for Users

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.

Specifying a Format for Notifications

E-mail notifications are passed to the SMTP server with the same text formatting used by the calendar clients.

Controlling the Behavior of Notifications

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.

Setting Up Wireless Services

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 Manual

Filtering E-mail Alerts

The 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

Configuring the E-Mail Alerts Banner

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.