Netscape Calendar Server 4.0: Administrator's G uide

Managing Resources

This chapter describes the various tasks involved in creating and managing organizational resources in your implementation of Netscape Calendar. Resource management is similar to user management in terms of functionality and administrative controls.

The following topics are dealt with in this chapter:

 

Creating Calendar resources

 A resource is an inanimate object, such as a conference room or a piece of equipment, that has its own calendar. When creating an event in their calendar, users can invite resources in the same way that they invite other users. Resources are managed by local users who act as designates. Resources can either be set up to permit more than one reservation at a time, or on a first-come first-served basis to prevent double-bookings.

Resources can also be used to create a calendar for tracking related enterprise-wide information, such as company holidays or employees' travel schedules. For example, to create a Travel Planner for your organization, add a resource to the node and name it "Travel Planner". Whenever an employee is scheduled to travel, he/she will create an event in his/her personal calendar and invite the resource. The result is a calendar for the resource Travel Planner containing all entries related to employees' travel.

 

Creating a new resource

  1. Select Resource Management | New Resource from the Calendar Server Manager.

  2. On the "New Resource" form, enter the information in the displayed fields, ensuring that values are provided for:

    Resource Name

    Resource Password

    Password Again

    Node-ID

    SYSOP Password

  3. To add the resource to an organizational unit, select from the choices in the drop-down menu following Add New Resource to:. (Note: To create a new organizational unit, select Users & Groups | New Organizational Unit from General Administration and follow the on-line instructions.)

  4. Click Create and Edit Resource to create a resource and immediately add it to a Calendar node. A form will display the status of the resource creation.

 

Managing Calendar resources

  1. Select Resource Management| Manage Resources from the Calendar Server Manager to open the "Manage Resources" form.

  2. To select a resource, or a group or resources, follow the same procedure as that detailed in the "Finding User Entries" on-line help. Note, however, that the search filter for a resource is restricted to LDAP search filters, or an asterisk (*) or blank if you wish to display all entries in the directory.

  3. Click the name of the resource you wish to modify to open an edit form.

  4. Make the desired changes to the resource record and click Save Changes to complete the modification.

  5. To remove a resource, click Delete Resource.

You may also view and modify various Calendar resource attributes from the command line using the unires utility. See Appendix G for full instructions on the use of this utility.

 

Managing resource defaults

A Calendar administrator may wish to define a default resource profile prior to adding resources to the database. Changes are applied only as resources are added to the database.

Note
The default value is assumed if a parameter is not set in the /users/unison/misc/resource.ini file.

 

To define a default resource profile:
  1. From the Calendar Server Manager, select Resource Management | Manage Resource Defaults to open the "Manage Resource Defaults" form.

  2. All configuration parameters for the resource profile are displayed under the section heading "GEN".

  3. To edit the default profile, click GEN to open the "Section Editor".

  4. All configurable parameters are displayed with the default value in an edit box. This value can be changed according to the information and limits defined in the following section "Parameters for resource profile."

  5. To make changes to a value, delete the old value and type the new value in the edit box.

  6. To return to the default profile or values, click Reset.

  7. To add a new parameter, click Add Key(s) and, in the pop-up window, enter the number of parameters you wish to add. The specified number of boxes will be added to the bottom of the form for the insertion of the new parameters.

  8. To remove a parameter, click Delete Key and enter the key to be deleted in the pop-up window.

  9. Once you have made all required editing changes, click Save Changes.

 

Parameters for resource profile

The information that can be specified is:

 

Assigning designates

 Designate and other access rights are assigned using the default resource profile when the resource is added to the node. They can also be set later using the Netscape Calendar Client to log in as the resource and modify Access Rights.