Nebula Calendar

What's Happening?

Nebula has been using a calendaring system called Corporate Time, developed by Steltor. Steltor was purchased by Oracle during 2002, and Oracle has since implemented a number of changes to the system. These changes are such that it is unlikely Nebula will be able to continue to use Corporate Time in the future. The Nebula Team, in conjunction with other interested parties of C&C, have undertaken a project to review the current situation of calendaring within Nebula, and to make a recommendation for future direction.

To aid in our review of calendaring products for the Nebula system, we've listed the most important functions and features that the application should contain. It is highly unlikely that whatever calendaring software we choose will perform every item our list ~ there simply isn't that much to choose from. There are also technical requirements that must be met. However, if there is a feature you'd like to add, please email us at nebula-support@u.washington.edu with your suggestion.

Functions and Features:

Ability to add, update, delete and view their personal events and tasks
Ability to control access rights to configure visibility globally or at the event level
Ability to grant designate privileges to other calendar users
Ability to schedule, move and cancel recurring meetings
Ability to schedule resources, such as rooms and equipment
Ability to invite other calendar users to meetings and events
Ability to view calendar in day, week and month format
Ability to incorporate attachments or agendas into meeting invitations
Ability to accept and view multiple events for the same time
Automatic conflict detection (after a conflict is detected, e.g. the system automatically presents the user with a list of non-conflicting times or displays individual conflicts)
Ability to create and manage task lists
Task lists integrated with other calendaring functions
Ability to create daily notes/reminders
Ability to synchronize with personal PDA
Web client
Ability to view other users' calendars
Ability to schedule events for multiple years
Ability to perform free or busy time search. Clients display conflicts and allows meeting invitee to manually reschedule times
Ability to create and manage groups and to view schedules according to groups
Ability to print calendars with different format customization: daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, trifold
Intuitive user interface, that includes multiple operational options, including pull down menus, balloon help and drop and drag capability; UI should also allow for keystroke manipulation.
Ability to integrate with addressbooks
Options for email notification of events
Options for alarm notification
Data can be exported/channeled to MyUW web calendar
Software or system can be scaled to wider audience at UW
Users can subscribe to some events that will be automatically merged onto their calendars (e.g., the academic calendar)
Option to notify meeting initiator when a user cancels attendance
Option to notify meeting initiator when a recurring meeting is nearing the last event (so it can be extended)
Ability to export data in a variety of formats
Search capabilities
Report customization (data extraction from past and future meetings)

Technical Requirements:

Can use uwnetid identifiers for account ids
Weblogin/pubcookie for web client
No plain text passwords over network
Local password store, if used, must have strong encryption
Server runs natively on SysMgt supported OS:
- Windows 2000 SP3
- RedHat Linux 7.2
Admin interfaces - CLI
SDK/API for personal calendar event access
SDK/API for calendar management functions
Can report info on recent logins to automatically report on 'unused' accounts (tool or sdk)
Any software license management needs must be easy to validate with report (tool or sdk).
iCal,vCal support for calendar import/export
Support at least 600 users / server
Clustering support for large # of users
Backup/restore of single user calendar

These technical features will also be sought, but may not be strictly required: (open to discussion)

CAP,iMIP,iTIP support (or at least planned)
GUI Admin Interface (native Windows or Web)
LDAP support for groups, user info
Windows domain and/or kerberos auth