Calendar Server is integrated with Sun Java System Instant Messaging 6.0 (or later) to provide automatic pop-up reminders for both calendar events and tasks.
This chapter describes:
This section contains the following topics:
Users can receive Instant Messenger pop-up reminders for upcoming events and tasks on their calendars. To enable these pop-up reminders, two things must happen:
The administrator must configure Calendar Server and Instant Messaging Server to allow pop-up notifications.
The end user must specify email reminders in the Options tab of Communications Express, which sets an alarm in the Event Notification System.
The end user must enable calendar reminders in Instant Messenger.
With pop-ups enabled, when an impending event or task nears, the alarm set in the Event Notification System causes Calendar Server to send an email notification and Instant Messaging to display a pop-up reminder.
A Calendar Server administrator can choose to configure either email notifications or pop-up reminders or both for end users. For example, to turn email reminders off, set the following parameter in the ics.conf file:
caldb.serveralarms.binary.enable= "no"
If configured, Instant Messaging pop-up reminders follow this architectural flow:
The Instant Messaging JMS subscriber subscribes to Calendar Server events and notifications in the Event Notification Service (ENS).
Calendar Server publishes an event or task notification in text/xml or text/calendar format to ENS.
The Instant Messaging JMS subscriber receives the calendar event or task notification and then generates a message in text/calendar format.
The Instant Messaging server sends the message to the calendar owner, if the end user is online.
If the recipient is available, Instant Messenger generates an HTML pop-up reminder on the end user’s desktop based on the message.
This section includes the following configuration instructions:
The high level list of tasks necessary to configure Instant Messaging for Pop-ups that follows is for your convenience. To configure Instant Messaging, refer to the Instant Messaging documentation available at:
http://docs.sun.com/coll/1309.2
Install the new package SUNWiimag.
Before you can use Instant Messaging for Pop-ups, the Instant Messaging package must be installed using the Java Enterprise System installer.
On the machine where Instant Messaging is installed, change to the following directory:
cd /etc/opt/SUNWiim/default/config
Edit one or more of the parameters in the iim.conf file as shown in the following table.
The parameter values shown assume you want pop-up reminders for both events and tasks. If these parameters do not already exist in your iim.conf file, add them.
Change to the directory where the imadmin command-line utility is located:
cd /opt/SUNWiim/sbin
Start the Calendar agent using imadmin:
imadmin start agent-calendar
The Calendar agent is an Instant Messaging component that provides pop-up functionality to Calendar Server users. Using tools provided with Instant Messaging, you can start, stop, restart, or check the status of the Calendar agent as well as monitor its activity through log files.
If you have scripts that include the stop, start and refresh commands, add the calendar agent to them.
For more information about imadmin and the Calendar agent, see the Sun Java System Instant Messaging 7 2005Q1 Administration Guide.
Confirm that the ics.conf parameters shown in the following table have the values shown. If they do not, or you wish to customize them, perform the following steps:
Log in as an administrator with permission to change the configuration.
Change to the /etc/opt/SUNWics5/cal/config directory.
Save your old ics.conf file by copying and renaming it.
Edit the ics.conf parameters as shown in the following table:
Parameter |
Description and Default Value |
---|---|
caldb.serveralarms |
Enables calendar alarms to be queued. The default is “yes” (enabled). |
caldb.serveralarms.contenttype |
Output format for alarm content. The default is "text/xml". |
caldb.serveralarms.dispatch |
Enables calendar alarms to be dispatched. The default is “yes”. |
caldb.serveralarms.dispatchtype |
The type of server alarm to dispatch. The default is "ens". |
caldb.serveralarms.url |
This is the URL for alarm retrieving alarm contents. The default is "enp:///ics/customalarm". |
Save the file as ics.conf.
Restart Calendar Server.
cal_svr_base/SUNWics5/cal/sbin/start-cal
To receive pop-up reminders for Calendar Server events and tasks, end users must configure their Instant Messenger as follows: