Oracle Calendar FAQ’s
1) Q: How do I see when a resource is available?
A: To view the resources agenda:
· Click on the Open an Agenda button
· Type “r: <your dept name>” (this is not case-sensitive) or click on the Search Button à Resource Tab and Search by Resource name for your <your dept name>
· Click OK
· Select the Resource Agenda you wish to view
· Click OK
2) Q: How do I schedule a resource?
A: Resources are scheduled just like people, but adding the resource to the invitee list is slightly different. Whether generating a group view or adding the resource to an invitee list in a meeting or event type: “r: <your dept name>” or click on the Search button à Resources tab, and search by name for <your dept name>. Select the resource(s) you want to schedule and click OK.
3) Q: How do I open someone else’s agenda?
A: Click on the Open an Agenda button in the toolbar and type in the person’s name, partial name (First or Last Name), or UWNetID
4) Q: What are Access Rights?
A: Access rights are how you determine how other users can interact with your agenda. The default access rights are applied to anyone who you do not give specific rights to. By adding a specific user to your access rights list, you can control how that person interacts with your agenda. Designate rights differ from viewing rights, if you give someone designate rights, but no viewing rights, they will be able to see what is on your agenda when they open it as a designate, but will be unable to see items on your agenda when they open them as themselves. (see What is a designate?)
5) Q: What is a designate?
A: A designate is someone whom you have given rights to manage your calendar for you. Depending on the rights you have given this person (See: What are Access Rights?) they can create meetings for you and/or reply to meeting requests for you. Basically, a designate is some one who can work in your calendar on your behalf. (A good example of a designate would be an assistant).
6) Q: Someone told me I have designate rights to their calendar, now what?
A: To act as someone’s designate, you must open their calendar as a designate. To do this click on File à Agenda à Open as a designate. If you have been made a designate of multiple agendas choose the agenda you wish to open from the list. When you open a person’s agenda as a designate you are working in the calendar on the behalf of the designator. Be careful, if you only open their calendar (i.e. from the Open an agenda button on the toolbar) you will not be working in that person’s calendar as a designate.
7) Q: How do I reply to a meeting request?
A: There are several ways to reply to meeting requests.
A. Right click on the meeting and choose from (I will attend; I will not attend; I will decide later)
B. Open the meeting and click on the Reply tab and choose one of the above options from the dropdown list. In this view, you also have the ability to set the time as free or busy, so even if you choose not to attend a meeting, you can mark that time as busy.
C. Right-click or double click on the meeting in the In-Tray and take the appropriate action from one of the above steps.
8) Q: How do I set my working hours?
A: To set your normal working hours:
· Open Tools à Options
· Expand the Scheduling menu
· Click on Hours
· Set the Start and End times under the “Normal Hours” heading.
· If your normal hours are the same for each day of the week, click the “Apply to All” button
· If your schedule differs by day, choose another day from the drop down list and set the hours accordingly.
9) Q: What are Extended Hours?
A: Extended hours are the times that you will allow someone to invite you to a meeting outside of your normal hours.
10) Q: When ever I look at my agenda in daily or weekly view it starts at 12 a.m. how do I change that?
A: To set the default start time for you daily and weekly views:
· Open Tools à Options
· Expand the Agenda menu
· Click on Display
· Set the Star and End times under Display Hours
· Click OK
11) Q: I don’t want the In-Tray to open automatically when I open Oracle Calendar, how do I change this?
A: Change the setting for in-tray in Options:
· Open Tools à Options
· Expand the “General” menu on the left
· Click on Startup
· In the lower selection box titled “In-Tray Startup” click on the radio button next to Do not open In-tray
· Click OK
12) Q: What is the Offline Agenda and how do I use it?
A: The offline agenda synchronizes with the live agenda on the Oracle server. If your computer is not connected to the network, or if the live server is not available, you can choose to connect to the Offline folder to access your calendar in the last state it was in when you connected to the Oracle Server. If you make changes to the offline folder, they will synchronize the next time you connect to the live server.
13) Q: How do I access my calendar from home, or if I do not have access to my computer?
A: Oracle Calendar also uses a Web client. This calendar can be accessed by anyone who has a UWNetID and has an account on the Oracle server. You can access the calendar directly by going to: http://calendar.cac.washington.edu or you can browse to it from the Office of Development and Alumni Relations Intranet Site by selecting “Oracle Calendar” from the Calendar menu.
14) Q: How do I compare several agendas to find free time?
A: Use the “Open Group Agenda” feature
· Click on the “Open Group Agenda” button in the toolbar, or click File à Group View à Open
· Type in the names of the people whose agendas you want to compare. You can also add resources to this as well (see: How do I schedule a resource) or type in a group name (see: How do I use groups) here as well.
· Once you have the complete list of users whose agendas you want to view click OK
· TIP: Use the navigation arrows or the date picker to browse different days to view.
· TIP: Uncheck the mark next to a users name or initials to exclude their information from the combined times, if you wish to not include them in the meeting.
15) Q: How do I create groups? (Why would I want to do that?)
A: Groups are helpful if you are consistently typing in the same group of user names on a consistent basis.
· Click on Tools à Manage Groups
· Click “New” to create a new group
· Give the group a name
· Select if you want the group to be private or members-only. (TIP: Members-only groups can be used by the other users of that group; Private groups can only be used by the creator. Only the Creator can edit groups)
· Add members to the group by typing in their names or using the search button.
· Click OK.
· TIP: Edit groups by highlighting the group in the Manage Groups list and clicking on the “Edit” button.
16) Q: What’s the difference between inviting someone to a meeting & scheduling a meeting for them as a designate?
A: The difference between inviting someone to a meeting and setting up a meeting for someone as their designate is Ownership. When you invite someone to a meeting, you “own” that meeting and are the only person who can edit that meeting. If you remove yourself from the invitee list, it becomes very difficult to edit/change/delete that meeting; as no other users can manipulate that meeting.
If you have been given designate rights to create meetings for someone, you can open their calendar as a designate (see: Someone told me I have designate rights to their calendar, now what?) and create a meeting for them. The person whose calendar you are creating the meeting retains ownership of that meeting, allowing them to make changes to the meeting when they log on. The designate also maintains the ability to edit the meeting as long as they open the calendar as a designate.
