21 Using Calendar Pop-up Reminders

Oracle Communications Instant Messaging Server is integrated with Oracle Communications Calendar Server to provide automatic pop-up reminders to Instant Messaging Server users for both calendar events and tasks. This chapter describes how to use this feature. It contains the following main topics:

Topics:

• Pop-up Reminders Overview

• Configuring Calendar Server and Instant Messaging Server to use Pop-ups

• Configuring Calendar Pop-ups in a Server Pool

• Administering the Calendar Agent

Pop-up Reminders Overview

This section contains information about Calendar pop-up reminders in the following topics:

• Pop-up Reminders Operation

• Pop-up Reminders Architectural Flow

Pop-up Reminders Operation

Users can receive Instant Messenger pop-up reminders for upcoming events and tasks on their calendars. To enable these pop-up reminders, the following must occur:

• You must configure Calendar Server to use a notification service, either JMQ or ENS, and the Instant Messaging server to enable pop-up notifications.

• The end user must enable calendar reminders in Instant Messenger.

  Note:

  Instant Messenger 9 uses Java Message Queue as the default calendar agent for calendar reminders instead of ENS. Use of ENS for calendar reminders is deprecated starting with Instant Messaging Server 9.

With pop-ups enabled, when an impending event or task nears, the alarm set in the notification service causes Calendar Server to send an email notification and Instant Messaging Server to display a pop-up reminder.

Pop-up Reminders Architectural Flow

If configured, Instant Messaging Server pop-up reminders follow this architectural flow:

1. The Instant Messaging Server JMS subscriber subscribes to Calendar server events and notifications in the notification service, either JMQ or ENS.

2. Calendar server publishes an event or task notification in text/xml or text/calendar format to the notification service.

3. The Instant Messaging Server JMS subscriber receives the calendar event or task notification and then generates a message in text/calendar format.

4. The Instant Messaging server sends the message to the calendar owner, if the end user is online.

5. If the recipient is available, Instant Messenger generates an HTML pop-up reminder on the end user's desktop based on the message. If the recipient is not available, the Instant Messaging server discards the message.

Configuring Calendar Server and Instant Messaging Server to use Pop-ups

For server-side configuration, see "Configuring Calendar Agent with Calendar Server 7".

Configuring Calendar Pop-ups in a Server Pool

To configure Calendar pop-ups to work in a server pool deployment, you only need to configure one server's Calendar agent in the pool. A pop-up will be delivered for each configured Calendar agent in the pool.

Administering the Calendar Agent

The Calendar agent is an Instant Messaging Server component that provides pop-up functionality to Calendar and Instant Messaging users. In addition, using tools provided with Instant Messaging Server, you can start, stop, restart, or check the status of the Calendar agent as well as monitor its activity through log files. For more information, see "Stopping, Starting, Refreshing, and Checking Instant Messaging Server Components".

For information about Calendar agent logs, see "Managing Logging for Instant Messaging Server".