A User's Guide to Ximian Evolution
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# Scheduling With the Evolution Calendar

Of course, you'll want to use the calendar to do more than find out what day it is. This section will tell you how to schedule appointments, set alarms, and determine appointment recurrence. If you have installed the Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange, you can also read the Section called Taking Full Advantage of the Exchange Server When Scheduling Appointments in Chapter 7 to learn about how to take full advantage of the collaborative group scheduling functions available on the Microsoft Exchange Server.

## Creating appointments

To create a new appointment, select File->New->Appointment or click the New Appointment button on the left end of the toolbar. The New Appointment dialog will pop up with the menu bar, tool bar, and window full of choices for you.

> Shortcut: If you don't need to enter more information than the date and time of the appointment, you just click in any blank space in the calendar and start typing. You can enter other information later with the appointment editor.

Your appointment must have a starting and ending date — by default, today — but you can choose whether to give it starting and ending times or to mark it as an All day event. An All day event appears at the top of a day's appointment list, in the grey header under the date, rather than inside it. That makes it easy to have appointments that overlap and fit inside each other. For example, a conference might be an all day appointment, and the meetings at the conference would be timed appointments. Of course, appointments with specific starting and ending times can also overlap. When they do they're displayed as multiple columns in the day view of the calendar.

Evolution supports the use of timezones. If you share calendar files with friends or co-workers, it is quite possible you will need to configure your timezone. To configure your timezone:

1. Click Tools->Calendar Settings

2. Click the Globe button in the Time section, located in the General tab.

3. Each red dot represents a major city. Click a dot and click OK to select your time zone.

You can also configure timezone information specific to the Start and End time in each appointment. To do that, simply create a new appointment and click on a globe to customize the timezone that the time exists in. For example, if you live in New York but have a telephone meeting set for noon with someone in California, you need to make sure that you're not calling each other a few hours off. Setting time-zones on a per-appointment basis helps avoid that potential confusion.

> Multiple Simultaneous Appointments: If you create calendar appointments that overlap, Evolution will display them side by side in your calendar. However, Evolution cannot help you do multiple things at once.

You can have as many Alarms, any time prior to the appointment you've scheduled. You can have one alarm of each of the following types:

Display:

  A window will pop up on your screen to remind you of your appointment.

Audio:

  Choose this to have your computer deliver a sound alarm.

Program:

  Select this if you would like to run a program as a reminder. You can enter its name in the text field, or find it with the Browse button.

> Reminders Without Evolution: If you have stored reminders in a local calendar, they will work from the moment you log in. However, for reminders stored on an Exchange server, you must run Evolution at least once after logging in. No matter where the reminders are stored, you can quit Evolution and still be reminded of an upcoming appointment.

Classification only applies to calendars on a network. Public is the default category, and a public appointment can be viewed by anyone on the calendar sharing network. Private denotes one level of security, and Confidential an even higher level.

Evolution can handle free/busy scheduling Using the Ximian Connector on a Microsoft Exchange 2000 server. For more information about Ximian Connector, see Chapter 7.

To set your appointment to be free or busy, simply click the box in the Show Time As section in the Appointment Editor.

Evolution lets you categorize your appointments, which can help if you lead a busy life. The bottom section of the Appointment tab is where your categorization is done.

> Adding a New Appointment Category: You can add a new category to your category list by clicking on Edit Master Category List and single-clicking on Click here to add a category.

The purpose of categories is to let you view all appointments which have similar activities. To do this, change Any field contains to Has category and enter your category at right.

Clicking on the Categories button opens up the category list. To associate a category to an appointment, simply click the check box.

Once you've selected your categories, click OK to assign these categories to the appointment. The categories you selected are now listed in the text box to the right of the Categories... button.

The Recurrence tab lets you describe repetition in appointments ranging from once every day up to once every 100 years. You can then choose a time and date when the appointment will stop recurring, and, under Exceptions, pick individual days when the appointment will not recur. Make your selections from left to right, and you'll form a sentence: "Every two weeks on Monday and Friday until January 3, 2003" or "Every month on the first Friday for 12 occurrences."

Once you're done with all those settings, click on the disk icon in the toolbar to save and close the appointment editor window. If you want, you can alter an appointment summary in the calendar view by clicking on it and typing. You can change other settings by right-clicking on the appointment then choosing Edit this Appointment.

## Sending an RSVP with the Calendar

Evolution can be used to schedule group meetings and help you manage responses to meeting requests.

When you create a meeting or group appointment, you can specify the attendees in several categories, such as "chair" or "required." When you save the appointment listing, each attendee will be sent an email with the appointment information and gives them the option to respond.

> Simple Announcements: If you don't need to collect attendance information when you're scheduling an event, and would rather just announce it, select Actions->Forward as iCalendar. That will open a new email message with the event notification attached as an announcement. Recipients will be able to add the event to their calendars with one click, but won't automatically send you email about whether they'll attend.

To schedule a meeting:

1. Select Actions->Schedule Meeting. The Scheduling and Meeting tabs open.

2. If you have multiple Evolution identities, choose the one you'll use by selecting an item in the Sent By field.

3. Click the space labeled Click here to add an attendee to enter the names and email addresses of people you will invite, or click the Invite Others to select them from your addressbook.

4. Save the Appointment.

An email is now sent out to all the recipients, inviting them to your event.

## Replying to a Meeting Request

Meeting requests are sent as iCal attachments. To view or respond to one, click on the attachment icon and view it inline in the mail window. All the details are shown about the event including time and dates. Then you can choose how to reply to the invitation. Your choices are:

- Accept

- Tentatively Accept

- Decline

Click OK and an email will be sent to the organizer with your answer. The event will also be added to your calendar if you accept.

Note, however, that if you add a meeting to your calendar, there are some limitations: only the organizer of a meeting can add participants in a meeting. Your only options, as a participant, are to accept the meeting, or decline it.

Once you have added the meeting to your calendar, you can make changes to your copy-- change the description, mark yourself the organizer, invite more people, and so forth-- but be aware that if the original organizer sends out another update, your changes may be overwritten.

> There Can Be Only One: A meeting can have only one organizer. You can designate yourself the organizer of the meeting, but unless you coordinate that action with the organizer you are replacing, you could create confusion in the scheduling process. If you want to invite additional people to a meeting without changing the organizer, it's best to forward the first organizer's message to the additional participants.

## Getting Responses to Meeting Requests

Once you get a reply to your meeting invitation, you'll need to view it inline in the email. Click the attachment and select View Inline. At the bottom, you can click OK to update your attendee list.

## Scheduling Meetings and The Free/Busy View

In addition to the standard meeting scheduling tools, you can use the Free/Busy view to check whether people are available in advance. At this time, the Free/Busy feature only works with Microsoft Exchange servers. However, you can still use iCal event invitations to coordinate schedules with other people no matter what server you're using.

To access the free/busy view:

1. Open or create an appointment in the Calendar window.

2. Click Actions->Schedule Meeting

3. Open the Scheduling tab.

Figure 6-1. Appointment Scheduling Window

Invitee List

The Invitee List lists off the people who have been invited to the respective appointment. It also shows their RSVP status.

Schedule Grid

The Schedule Grid shows the invitee's published Free/Busy information. This is where you compare people's schedules to find free time to schedule the appointment.

Meeting Scheduler

The Meeting Scheduler allows you to schedule the meeting in the Free/Busy window.

### Scheduling an Appointment

To schedule an appointment, you'll first need people's free/busy information. If you're using the Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange, all of the information is already available to you in the Global Address List. Otherwise, each person will have to email you their schedule files and you will have to incorporate them into your calendar.

Regardless of how you get the information, Ximian Evolution will display it in the Scheduling tab. The pending appointment time will appear in white with bold black borders. Each attendee's free and busy times appear color-coded next to their names in the attendee list.

Adjust the meeting time, either by dragging the meeting borders or by using the Autopick buttons to choose a time automatically, then click Save and Close. Attendees on an Exchange server will have the appointment updated automatically; others will receive email notification of any change in plans.

Read the Section called Taking Full Advantage of the Exchange Server When Scheduling Appointments in Chapter 7 to learn about how to use this feature with the Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange.

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