| Oracle® Calendar Resource Kit, Release 2 (9.0.4.2) Part Number B10894-04 |
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View PDF |
| Oracle® Calendar Resource Kit, Release 2 (9.0.4.2) Part Number B10894-04 |
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|
View PDF |
Oracle Calendar is a feature-rich and intuitive time management solution that enables you to keep track of your schedule from anywhere, anytime. In addition to full integration with Microsoft Outlook, Oracle Calendar provides you with all the benefits of Oracle Collaboration Suite and an unbreakable software infrastructure.
This Resource Kit provides installation instructions, frequently asked questions and basic troubleshooting procedures for the Oracle Calendar clients and Oracle Sync Server. For detailed instructions on using Oracle Calendar, see the online help packaged with each Calendar client.
This chapter contains the following topics:
This section describes the key features offered by Oracle Calendar and includes the following topics:
Agenda views
Oracle Calendar offers several agenda views to facilitate navigation of information. The Oracle Calendar desktop client also offers an ÒIn-TrayÓ view, which enables you to view, accept and reject new meetings and events. Oracle Connector for Outlook also supports the use of the Microsoft ÒOutlook TodayÓ view, giving you an overview of the day's meetings, events and tasks, as well as quick access to new e-mails, voice mails and faxes.
Task management
You can manage and sort all your tasks by priority and completion status, set Reminders, add text details and attach documents to a task.
Notes and events
You can set daily notes and events to keep track of everything from colleagues who are out of the office, to statutory holidays, or even a family member's birthday.
Configurable alerts
Oracle Calendar enables you to set reminders for agenda entries, as well as notifications of newly created, modified, and deleted entries in your agenda through e-mail, wireless and voice clients.
Address Book
The Oracle Calendar desktop client and Oracle Connector for Outlook Address Book provides you with an overview of all your contacts' information, sorted by Business, Personal, or any other category you'd like to specify. You can also add notes to contacts if you want to be reminded of birthdays or other special events.
You can schedule meetings and events with other Calendar users, regardless of the platform or calendar client they are using.
Administrators can designate any shared property as a resource, available for all connected users to book on a first-come-first-serve basis. You can perform a search for a resource based on a set of parameters (i.e. location, size, resource type etc.) and "invite" the resource as you would any other user, thereby booking the resource and making it unavailable for other users to book during that time.
Oracle Calendar also supports the booking of resources that require approval from an administrator. If you book a resource that requires approval, an e-mail will be sent to the resource's administrator who will then approve or reject your request.
Conflict checking
Oracle Calendar's time-saving conflict checking and resolution capabilities are able to ease the process of scheduling meetings and decreases the likelihood of absent invitees. When scheduling a meeting using the Oracle Calendar Web client or desktop client, all you have to do is select the Check Conflicts button to get a display of any incompatibilities with invitees or resources. If a conflict is found, you can use the Suggest date and time feature to have the system suggest a series of available times for all parties, so that you don't have to manually resolve the conflict by reviewing everyone's availability to reschedule the meeting. The AutoPick feature included with Oracle Connector for Outlook offers similar functionality.
Group view
Before you create a meeting, you can use the Group View to quickly check what date and time best suits the schedules of the invitees, as well as verify that a particular meeting room will be available for your desired time slot. You can also view everyone's agendas in a combined view that displays the time of the included users and resources, with unavailable time marked in red and mutually free time clearly indicated.
Oracle Calendar's real-time technology ensures all connected users are able to check the availability of other users with complete accuracy. This is because all requests are accessed directly from the calendar server, and do not require users to ÒpublishÓ their information (i.e. accept/decline meetings) before their true availability is displayed. For example, Bob does not have access to his Calendar for a few hours because he's on a plane and during this time Allison and Peter attempt to schedule him for two separate meetings. Peter will never schedule Bob at the same time as Allison, because as soon as she creates her meeting invitation, Peter will see it when he opens Bob's agenda, even though Bob hasn't responded to Allison's invitation.
When creating a meeting, or modifying an existing meeting, you can choose to have the meeting recur using any number of intervals, including daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or yearly. You can also set the meeting to recur on specific days by using the date editor.
You can control how much of your agenda can be accessed by other users. For example, you can grant access rights John Smith to view all your agenda entries marked as Normal and at the same time, you can grant access rights to Jane Doe to view all your agenda entries marked as Normal and Personal. You do not have to grant access rights on a per user basis. You can choose to grant all users the same access rights.
You can grant designate rights to other users allowing them to create, modify, and reply to calendar events on your behalf. When granting designate rights, you can choose which type of calendar entries a particular designate has permission to create and modify. For example, you can grant John Smith rights to modify your meetings, notes, day events and tasks and grant Jane Doe rights to only modify your tasks.
Oracle Calendar provides two ways to synchronize your calendar and contact data. The first is Oracle Calendar Sync, a desktop-to-cradle solution that enables synchronization between the Oracle Calendar desktop client and Palm and Pocket PC devices. The second synchronization option is Oracle Sync Server, a solution that employs the SyncML protocol to synchronize application data such as calendar and contacts over the Internet. Oracle Sync Server synchronizes calendar data between all Oracle Calendar server and any SyncML-enabled device.
With a wide variety of access options both online and offline, including a Web client, Connector for Outlook, desktop clients for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris and integration with wireless and synchronization applications, you can maintain constant control over your calendar from anywhere, anytime.
Oracle Calendar is comprised of the calendar server, Oracle Sync Server and the following clients:
If you are not sure which Calendar client best suits your needs, see the Calendar client comparison table in Which Calendar client should I use?
Oracle Connector for Outlook brings the Microsoft Outlook desktop client together with the powerful Oracle Collaboration Suite back end, offering the integrated e-mail, contact and task functionality that Outlook users are familiar with, and adds real-time calendaring, fax and voice mail, as well as access to Oracle Collaboration Suite's other features such as wireless & voice, file services, Web conferencing and search capabilities.
See Oracle Connector for Outlook for more information about the product, system requirements, installation instructions, frequently asked questions and troubleshooting information.
The Web client provides you with all the tools you need to effectively manage your time in an application you can access from anywhere through the Internet. Mobile users can use the Web client's intuitive interface to schedule meetings with other users, check for conflicts, book resources, create notes and manage tasks. Agendas can also be published for people without a calendar account, offering added functionalities such as sending a schedule to a partner or publishing resource availability for all employees
See Oracle Calendar Web client for more information about the product, system requirements, installation instructions, frequently asked questions and troubleshooting information.
Oracle Calendar desktop client is an intuitive, full-featured thick client providing the quickest, most complete access to your calendar data, with extensive personal information management functionalities and unparalleled group and resource scheduling capabilities. With support for the latest Windows and Mac platforms, as well as Linux and Solaris, Oracle Calendar desktop client fits into any heterogeneous environment enabling users on different operating systems to schedule with each other seamlessly.
See Oracle Calendar desktop client for more information about the desktop client, system requirements, installation instructions, frequently asked questions and troubleshooting information.
Oracle Calendar includes Oracle Calendar Sync for Palm (for Windows and Macintosh) and Pocket PC. Oracle Calendar Sync enables you to synchronize your Oracle Calendar data with your PDA. You can synchronize meetings, daily notes, day events, contacts and tasks with your handheld, and updates can be uploaded back to Oracle Calendar through the device's synchronization process. Oracle Calendar Sync takes PDA functionality beyond personal information management, by allowing you to access information such as meeting attendees/resources and attendee status.
See Oracle Calendar Sync for more information about Oracle Calendar Sync, system requirements, installation instructions, frequently asked questions and troubleshooting information.
Not sure which Oracle Calendar client is right for you? The following table highlights important similarities and differences between Oracle Connector for Outlook, the Oracle Calendar Web client and the Oracle Calendar desktop client.
Table 1-1 Feature comparison between Oracle Calendar clients
| Feature | Oracle Calendar Web client | Oracle Calendar desktop client | Oracle Connector for Outlook |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calendar | |||
| Real-time access to information | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Group scheduling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create appointments and meeting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create day events | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create tasks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create contacts | No | Yes | Yes |
| Display free/busy time | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Suggest common free time when inviting attendees | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open another user's Agenda | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Act as a designate in another user's Agenda | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Resource scheduling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Support for resources requiring approval | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Access and manage journals and sticky notes | No | No | Yes |
| Add personal notes to calendar entries created by other users | No | No | Yes |
| Schedule Web conferences | Yes | No | Yes |
| Access and manage mail including server-side rules and an Out-of-Office assistant | No | No | Yes |
| Reminders | |||
| Send e-mail reminders | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Send wireless reminders | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tasks | |||
| Set task categories | No | No | Yes |
| Set priorities for tasks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Manage tasks as a designate user | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Categories | |||
| Set meeting and event categories | No | No | Yes |
| Set contact categories | No | Yes | Yes |
| User preferences | |||
| Enable automatic sign-in | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Global calendar access | Yes | No | No |
| Other features | |||
| Text searching | No | Yes | Yes |
| Work offline | No | Yes | Yes |
| Share contacts | No | Yes | No |
Oracle Sync Server offers direct two-way synchronization with the Oracle Calendar server over any standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connection, opening up the calendar infrastructure to any SyncML-compliant device or application with Internet access.
See Oracle Sync Server for more information on Oracle Sync Server, device-specific considerations and instructions on how to configure your SyncML-enabled device.
