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Calendaring: How to view all your Moodle course assignments in Ninermail, OWA or MS-Outlook – Shortest

2012/01/05 plagwitz 3 comments

Start in Moodle here, then do steps –1 to 2. Open NINERMAIL, continue with steps 1 to 8:

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, lms, Screenshots, step-by-step-guides Tags: calendaring, FAQs, moodle, ms-outlook, OWA

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

How to stay up to date by receiving RSS like email newsletters in MS-Outlook

2011/11/21 plagwitz Leave a comment

Why subscribe?
1. RSS is a great way to get your information both fast and filtered.
2. For advanced filtering of RSS feeds, try Yahoo Pipes.
3. However, WordPress makes this even easier by allowing for a wealth of atomic searching and filtering options. Choosing the right template (and content strategy), if you click on any of the linked items in either the category list or tag cloud on WordPress,
5. the resulting page will include an RSS link , or simply add “/feed” to the URL of your category, tag or even search result page, to get a feed that you can subscribe to.
How to subscribe?
1. MS-Outlookmakes subscribing to RSS more convenient since you do not need to go to a separate application like an RSS-Reader. Read your RSS with your email, think of the RSS feed as an email list, but personalized to your interests.
  1. You can subscribe to the “RSS feed” link like so:
  2. For historical reasons, I still use Google Reader, but I rely on Outlook’s advanced automated content download (including full text posts and multimedia attachments) and well-understood archiving, search and export features to not miss podcasts which I want to collect for potential use as teaching content: When Outlook fails, as with some RSS formats, you can still try and resort to the Internet Explorer Feed store:
2. If you use OWA: you can read feeds, but not add them through the OWA interface. If you are staff, you can still add them in Outlook first. If you are a student and restricted to NINERMAIL, you need to use a different feed reader. I recommend the free web-based Google Reader.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-infrastructure Tags: blogging, google-reader, ms-outlook, OWA, rss

Calendaring: How to view all your Moodle course assignments in Ninermail, OWA or MS-Outlook – Short version

2011/11/21 plagwitz 2 comments

In Moodle:

With Firefox (3.6 here), go to Moodle Calendar: https://moodle.uncc.edu/calendar/view.php?view=upcoming&course=1
Right-Click on and choose “Copy Shortcut”:

In Ninermail/OWA: click “Calendar”, right-click “My calendars” , click “Add calendar’, click radio-button “From internet”, paste URL you put in clipboard into textbox, click button “OK”, right-click calendar added, click “rename” and call it “Moodle”
Alternatively, in Outlook Desktop: go to “calendars”, right-click “shared calendars” , click “add calendar’, click “from internet”, paste URL you put in clipboard into textbox, click button “OK”, right-click calendar added, click “rename” and call it “Moodle”
Want a longer explanation?

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, lms Tags: calendaring, moodle, ms-outlook, OWA

Calendaring: How to view all your Moodle course calendars in one place (like live@edu, Google calendar or MS-Outlook)

2011/11/16 plagwitz Leave a comment

UPDATE: this does work, just make sure to give it some time to update AND to have actual appointments in the time window (length of that window is a setting you can change in Moodle) that you are trying to display.
Static inclusion of syllabus deadlines in your calendar
1. Go to your Moodle Course / “Go to calendar…” / select from dropdown: “Upcoming Events”: “All courses”/ click on “Export Calendar/. Open with MS-Outlook (fails in IE8).
2. Here is showing how: screencast demo loading Moodle’s iCal into MS-Outlook (desktop).
3. This is a static export of all your Moodle calendar information – taught and enrolled courses combined (despite showing in each of your courses. The dropdown: “Upcoming Events” does default to the current course, though).
4. The utility of this (= what “all” comprises, and how helpful the event information is) depends on how the course designers use the Moodle calendar functionality – or allow Moodle to do it for them: For setting a start/end (= deadline) for any assignment or assessment automagically adds this event to the Moodle course calendar.
A potentially even more useful dynamic subscription(that will reflect late-breaking changes, like extended deadlines in your courses or additional assignments)
1. you can get if you right click on and choose “Copy link” from the context menu.
2. I have not found a way to feed the Moodle iCal link manually into MS-Outlook 2010 (Shared Calendars / Add Calendar / From Internet) or OWA (different problem comes and goes. Just subscribe while problem is gone ). In MS-Outlook, you can subscribe to this link via menu:tools / tab:internet calendars / button: new / dialogue new internet calendar subscription / paste the URL you copied.
3. Don’t forget to rename your calendar to something more useful than the default, like “My classes”, by right-clicking and choosing “Rename”in OWA or “Properties” in Outlook2010.
5. Your syllabus deadlines are now always only two clicks away in your Ninermail:
  1. click on “Calendar”
  2. click on checkbox “Moodle”.
What seems not possible with any current version of Moodle is editing/updating your calendar in MS-Outlook and having the changes synch with Moodle, or any import actually – only the opposite direction works. So the tool is more useful for students (who don’t need to edit) than teachers (but still a nice aggregator of teaching information for the latter).
More on Calendar you can find in the official 1.9 Moodle calendar doc and FAQ.
I would prefer to use other calendaring software, but the export options of the Moodle (1.9 and 2.)) calendars are limiting. So I also find myself adjusting the settings when using the Moodle calendar:

Adjusting these settings may also fix the following error in OWA which reads like ICS link is invalid/broken, but may only mean that no events where returned for the time window that Moodle defaults to (with performance reasons, which, however, does not apply if Moodle does not have to return *any* events to your request). In other words: Try expanding the time window for events, e.g. to include the full term.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure Tags: calendaring, moodle, ms-outlook

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Resource Calendaring: How to use the Scheduling Assistant in OWA

2011/08/31 plagwitz 10 comments

The scheduling assistant lets you find a common free time for all the (resource and human) participants of your meeting request.
The scheduling assistant shows you start/end meeting time and free/busy information.
The default shows only work hours:
You can show more than work hours (useful for some resources):
You may also be able to see the meeting subjects.
You can spot scheduling conflicts in advance, instead of sending a meeting request that will have to be denied.
For some resources, you can make a recurrent/repeating meeting request: . note that you will lose the begin/end markers:

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, service-is-library Tags: calendaring, ms-exchange, ms-outlook, resource-mailboxes, resource-scheduling, scheduling assistant

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Calendaring: How to use the Global Address list/Address Book for LRC Resources in OWA

2011/08/31 plagwitz 1 comment

Open the GAL for Resources by clicking on “Resources”, like here :
Use (1) default filtering, (2) “LRC” (3) search, to see all resources, including (4) equipment:
use (1) room filtering, (2) “LRC” (3) search, to see only (4) resources that resemble “Rooms” (including “Offices” held):
after (1) searching “LRC”, (2) pick the desired resource, (3) add it to the resources recipient list, (4) click “ok” to close the address book (which will send you back to your meeting request)
1. if there are several equivalent resources you could use (like any of our voice recorders), you can quickly compare their immediate availability using the scheduling window in the right pane
2. if you need a better overview over availability of the resource, and other participants, add multiple resources to the to-list and compare their availability using the “Scheduling Assistant” which features a full legend and easy-to-read begin/end markers for your chosen begin/end times
In the address book, you have a limited (to today) preview of the (3) schedule of the resource, which can aid you in deciding which resource to add to the resources-list
1. Alternatively, for a more expansive schedule, add all equivalent resources (e.g. lights) and decide later in the scheduling assistant which one to send the meeting request to

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, service-is-library Tags: calendaring, global-address-list, ms-exchange, ms-outlook, resource-mailboxes, resource-scheduling

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Resource Calendaring: How to book an LRC resource by making a Meeting Request in OWA

2011/08/31 plagwitz 13 comments

A meeting request is – as you can see from its icon: – an email with calendar information.
In OWA, start writing a (2) meeting request, like an email, from the (1) menu: ”new” (click not on “new” directly, but on the arrow next to “new” to unfold the menu:
By default, the meeting will show you as the organizer in the calendar. In addition, on default tab : appointment, like in an email, you may want to add subject (like your course number), and a message body (e.g. “to make audio recordings with 20 students”).
Start adding “resources” (do not send “to” a room or equipment piece, and send “to” people only if you need them to staff the room or operate the equipment for you) by clicking it:
This will open the window: Address book (read more on the Address book), find and select your “LRC” resource in the list of LRC bookable resources and click “OK”:
Switch from default tab : appointment to tab: scheduling assistant , and set the meeting (1) start and (2) end day/time, to when the resource is (3) available: (read more on the Scheduling Assistant)
from the default tab : appointment, click button: send.
For what happens next, see responses and calendar.
For a high-level overview, see this LRC calendaring How-to