2007 | Thomas' Work Space

How to poll for the best meeting time using Meeting Requests

2011/11/21 plagwitz 1 comment

Please also see the follow-up user-perspective video here: How to respond to a poll for the best meeting time using Meeting Requests.
A traditional issue around the LRC is getting busy teachers to agree on a common workshop time. Ideally, the scheduling assistant would automate this by allowing you to see the common free time slot in their busy timelines. However, this requires that the university calendaring system has already been widely adopted. In the meantime, meeting requests can still greatly facilitate finding this most common free time, by serving as a poll.
To find the most popular time slot, send a number of alternative meeting requests with the instruction: “If interested in the workshop, please accept those times during which you could attend. I will only not cancel the most popular meeting time”. (Make sure that respondents know that they can “Edit response before sending” to include a message, or else this will skew the tally).
At the end, you can easily tally the response in your calendar, and, as the meeting organizer, cancel the unpopular ones:
And you can spare everybody one final summary email: “ Mark your calendars!” . The interested parties’ calendar has already be marked.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, documentation, service-is-training Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, meeting-requests, ms-exchange, ms-outlook, scheduling, scheduling assistant

Does your OWA look different from others’, but you do not want the low vision version?

2011/10/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

If you log in on http://mail.uncc.edu and see this:
do this

Click on Options in the upper right corner
Click on Accessibility on the left side of the screen
Uncheck the box for ‘Use the blind and low vision experience’
Click Save at the top of the screen
Sign out in the upper right hand corner
Go back to mail.uncc.edu and login normally without checking the ‘light version’ box, and you will see this:

Not sure how you managed to inadvertently set it to “low vision”, but this is how to fix it, per our helpdesk.

Categories: e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, accessibility, outlook, OWA

How not to book LRC equipment: Avoid scheduling conflicts by not using “Show times as free”

2011/10/18 plagwitz 1 comment

Appointments and Meeting requests default to “Show time as busy”.
Before you change this, like so: . Note this “Gotcha”: “If you have already specified that this is an all day event, Save As is set automatically to Free “.
consider this: a scheduling conflict can easily result, if people coming after you cannot see the resource as “busy”, they might inadvertently book over your booking:
Remember this is a platform for collaboration, not for spreading confusion: If you leave your appointment as “busy”, per the default, voilà, others can see that the resource is busy, and work around it:

Categories: e-infrastructure, service-is-library Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, Gotchas, ms-exchange, outlook, resources, scheduling

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Resource Calendaring: How LRC staff can group calendars in Outlook 2010

2011/09/28 plagwitz 1 comment

You can save the currently loaded calendars as a preset or “group” from the ribbon in the calendar view of outlook 2010, like so:
The group and its members will be added to your calendar tree, and you can load all members with one click, like so:
Then you can create multiple presets which correspond to your typical workflows: E.g. when you do not have to check the availability of equivalent sets of equipment, you may want to have an easy overview of staffing in the LRC:
Note that – while we have to load individually the calendars of other mailboxes we own –, calendar groups we create in Outlook are automagically mirrored in OWA

But the calendar names get lost in the process? And: the batch select checkbox is missing. And: only up to 5 calendars can be viewed in OWA simultaneously. And: OWA does not support overlay mode for calendars.):
It would be great if calendar groups, with the help of ActiveSync, even worked their way through to mobile devices, but apparently they do not:

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, e-infrastructure, service-is-library, training Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, ms-exchange, outlook, resources, scheduling

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Resource Calendaring: How to display a Room/Staff/Tutor calendar aggregate at the reception desk using live@edu

2011/09/28 plagwitz 1 comment

The LRC needs an overview aggregate calendar of its many rooms and services for clients in the entrance area. This should be always on display on the higher one of the reception area dual screen computers when screens are in extended mode
From the calendar mailbox in OWA , these calendars can and have been published to the internet.
1. LRC assistants can load and bookmark multiple (published or shared) calendars in their OWA, but there are limitations
  1. We do not want to clutter LRC Assistants OWA with LRC calendars more than we have to.
  2. OWA displays calendars (currently = 2011) only side-by-side, there is no overlay (=aggregate) mode like in Outlook 2010, and only up to 5 simultaneously, again unlike Outlook 2010 (30) (Students do not have Outlook (although it is being considered installing it on student staffed computers).
2. A standard web browser allows for display of only one (HTML) calendar at a time in a web browser.
3. ICS compatible applications like live@edu

can display many (=aggregate) ICS-based calendars in overlay mode.
In addition, it is easy to change the display color (like in Outlook 2010) and display color (unlike in Outlook 2010, for me at least).
In live@edu, this looks promising:
To display more meaningful/less misleading subjects than “Busy” for pseudo-rooms (“offices” like LRC assistants or language tutors), add a subject (office name “LRC Assistant”or max class-level tutored).
To have LRC assistants easily and consistently load this aggregate calendar view,
1. we need to give tutors the password to uncc-lrc credentials – being “friends” not enough (which makes their own access to SkyDrive which we finally achieved yesterday useless – unless they log in as themselves and as uncc-lrc in 2 different browsers)
2. However, I have not found a way to aggregate calendar ics files and display them without password (ideally in Joomla)
3. Workaround: use a AutoIT auotmation script that runs when LRC Assistant logs in form the All users Startup Folder.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, e-infrastructure, Reception-desk Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, live@edu, ms-exchange, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling

How not to book LRC equipment: Scheduling conflicts

2011/09/23 plagwitz 3 comments

Do not send a meeting request to an item for a time when the item has a prior meeting request.
The tab: scheduling assistant within the meeting request you edit is there to tell you when items have prior meeting requests.

A “blocked” timeline denotes a prior meeting request: The item has already been booked (solid block) or requested (hatched block) during the start and end time of your meeting. Do not crash their party.
“blank” timeline means “item is free”. Go ahead: You can request a meeting with this item between your start and end time.
Once you have this overview, you can easily remove, by right-clicking on the resource, extra resources that you cannot book or could, but which you do not need:

Once the university has mail-enabled your cloud-accounts on campus, we will have a computer decline such conflicting requests automatically, and force you to start over with a new meeting request. It will be still worth your while memorizing the above: You can save time and avoid disappointment.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-infrastructure, service-is-library Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, live@edu, ms-exchange, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling

Protected: Exchange 2010 Resource Mailboxes: Running Log

2011/09/22 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, FAQs, live@edu, ms-exchange, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Resource Calendaring: How students can view resource "Calendars from the Internet" in web browser and OWA

2011/09/20 plagwitz 5 comments

Want a shorter version?
Students, unless specifically TBA:invited, will encounter a permission problem when trying to view calendars like staff.
Instead, students can use the scheduling assistant to view a basic version of the resource’s calendar. This works “out of the box”.
Students can also view an advanced version of the resource’s calendars (one-time, or bookmark this link in your web browser – hope you know how to synch your bookmarks between all the devices you use…). This requires little work: click on the “view” link in the “student calendar” column of our list of LRC resources that you can book or check out, to see the current calendar in your web browser:
For students who check the calendar of a resource regularly (e.g. to see when the LRC main classroom is available for your self-access/the tutor in your language, for help), it is better to “bookmark” the resources’ calendars in NINERMAIL. Here is how:

Copy the URL for the calendar you just opened, from the web browser address bar:
Go to NINERMAIL, click on the lower left “Calendar-icon” to unfold the “My Calendars” list in the left pane, then right-click on “My Calendars”, choose “Add Calendar” .
In the “Calendar URL” field, paste URL of the calendar you just opened, but replace “html” at the end with “ics”: , click “OK”.
For on-premise users in OWA (seems OWA stirs on-premise users to the superior intranet calendars, which would be good. But what if the intranet calendar has not been shared with this user, but internet sharing is intended?), This may not work as advertised (neither with protocol http and webcal) OR just need a lot of time (~12hours?) to synchronize,while it works (both with protocol http and webcal) when subscribing from Windows Live? . Most importantly for us (as we have now tested), it works for students with accounts in the cloud from NINERMAI.
OWA remembers your internet calendar subscriptions, and you can easily display or hide them, using the checkboxes it provides. To keep an overview over your calendars added from the internet, you need to rename them, by right-clicking on them, like so: