Guest users have the ability to view, search, and export public calendars and events. On some calendars, guest users can suggest new events.
Logged in users have the following extra resources at their disposal:
The calendar uses ONID accounts for all logins. To sign up for ONID or change a forgotten password, please see the ONID home page at:
Additionally, the OSU calendar supports OSU's Single-Sign-On (SSO) for websites. Once a person logs in to an SSO-enabled site (such as the calendar), they can use other SSO applications without logging in again. The number of websites using SSO is small, but growing. For more information about Single-Sign-On, see:
Each calendar page has a Login link, usually on the right side of the page. The exceptions are in the Advanced view under month and week, where the Login link is at the bottom of the page.
After a few hours of inactivity (not opening any new pages), SSO sessions are automatically logged out. The exact amount of time can vary; but the important thing to keep in mind is: If a person fills out a new Event and doesn't submit it within a few hours, they could lose their work.
There are several personal preferences that a logged-in user can set which affect the navigation and layout of the calendar.
To set preferences, click the Preferences link listed under your name, or go to the URL:
The personal preferences are:
This preference sets the default view that a user sees; all other views are still available. When this preference is combined with the Basic interface, all views are List, and the Day, Week, and Month options determine the date range to include in the list.
There are several tools available for calendar navigation, depending on whether a person is using the Advanced or Basic interface.
The mini-month tool is present on most calendar pages. The top bar displays the current month and year; clicking this link shows the entire month. On either side of the date are links to the previous and next month.
Each day is a clickable link to view only that day's events. There is a small link at the beginning of each week to view that week's events.
Days with events are underlined. "Today" is drawn with a border around it.
The current view range (a single day, a week, all month, or an arbitrary range) is shaded with a gray background color.
When using the Basic interface, there are additional links below the mini-month:
The keyword "today" there, in place of a date, means that those links will always show the current info - today, this week, this month.
The search box is viewable on most pages. On the Basic interface it is in the left sidebar; on the Advanced interface, it is in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Search can be accessed directly at:
See Searching below.
Below the search box is a list of layered calendars, or layers. See Layers for more information about what these are; essentially they are additional sources of events for the current view. To remove a layer or several layers from the current view, uncheck the box next to the layers to be removed, and click "Show Selected." If your browser is Javascript-enabled, there are handy links for "Select All" and "Unselect All."
This link opens up the list of all publicly viewable calendars, and for logged-in users, non-public calendars they have access to as well.
This select box is a quick navigation tool that includes the complete list of Featured Calendars as well as any calendars the currently logged-in user has access to. This box will automatically load a calendar if a new one is selected, or if Javascript is not available, a user can click the Go button.
Two settings affect the way calendar pages are displayed; interface dictates the types of navigation available to the user, and view controls how events are displayed.
The Basic interface is a clean, simplified interface for viewing calendar events in a sequential list.
The Advanced interface features additional options for quickly jumping between calendars and date ranges, and the view types described below.
The type of interface viewed by default can be chosen by the calendar administrator, or overridden by the user (see Preferences). The default interfaces for new calendars is Basic.
Day view is a block layout showing the duration of each event, much like the Outlook calendar. It is most useful for personal calendars, or calendars with a small number of simultaneous events per day.
Week view is a grid similar to Day view, except that 7 days can be viewed side by side. The duration of events is not shown, only starting times.
Month view is a broader overview, laid out like a wall calendar.
List view shows all events for a given date range sequentially.
By default, search includes events starting on today's date and later, appearing on any calendar.
Any words entered in the search box are required. To match a phrase as part of a search, enclose it in quotes:
training "Central Web Services"
Note that the search engine ignores words less than 3 letters long, unless they are part of a quoted phrase.
To narrow the scope of a search, or change the date range to include past events, use advanced search. The basic search page links to the advanced search, or the direct URL is:
Advanced search allows a user to restrict search terms to certain fields, a fixed date range, and/or certain calendars.
Like other calendar views, searches are viewable as both iCal and RSS. But there are some considerations for both.
RSS Feeds are used all over the Internet to share information between websites. Your OSU Calendar already includes an RSS feed. You don't need to do anything to set it up. All you need to know is the short name of your calendar. The RSS feeds of the calendar allow you to share event information such as event title, date, and description with other websites.
Practically any page that you see in the OSU Calendar includes an RSS feed. The RSS feeds in the OSU calendar are very flexible and easy to use. The simplest way to get an RSS feed is to click on the RSS feed icon 
located on the top of the calendar pages next to the calendar title. This icon will give you an RSS feed of the current page you're viewing. If you are viewing today's event, the RSS feed will include today's event. If you are viewing a month's event, the RSS feed will include all the events of this month.
If you are a power user and want the RSS feed of the page you're currently looking at in the OSU calendar, you just have to add "/rss20.xml" at the end of the url. For example, if my calendar is "pharmacy", I would use the url: http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/list/pharmacy/rss20.xml.
To access the RSS feed that includes only the events happening today, and your calendar's short name is "pharmacy", you would use the following url: http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/today/day/pharmacy/rss20.xml. The short name of your calendar is found in the url.
You can use an arbitrary range of dates when using the RSS feed. You can easily specify that you want an RSS feed that includes events from today + X more days. To access this RSS feed you would use: http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/today+X/list/pharmacy/rss20.xml. Instead of using "pharmacy" in the url, you would use the short name of your calendar. Instead of today+X you would use today + 2 where 2 is the extra number of days you want.
For example, if you want today + 7 days of events (a week) you would use: http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/today+7/list/pharmacy/rss20.xml. Instead if you are interested in a month's worth of events, you would use: http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/today+30/list/pharmacy/rss20.xml.
From the basic interface (see Views), logged in users will find a link to submit an event in the Tools section of navigation bar. Guest users cannot submit events from the basic interface.
From the advanced interface (see Views), a submit event link may be offered below the calendar name in the following calendar views: Day, Week, Month, List, Detail, and Manage. The link will only be offered if the current user has permission to submit events to the calendar being viewed. (see Permissions and Users)
Because different calendars can have different event submission requirements, the following process is recommended.
Submitting a Featured Event to the OSU Events Calendar:
Submitting a non-featured event:
The Event Submit Form requires at least one calendar to be specified.
If submitting an event via the Featured Event submission form, the user must check one or more of the featured calendars listed. Each checked calendar will become a Primary Calendar of the event - pending approval (see Queue Process).
If submitting an event via the standard event submission form, the user must select a single calendar from the Calendar pull-down select box. The selected calendar will become the event's Primary Calendar - pending approval (see Queue Process).
Additional calendars may optionally be specified. Each calendar selected in the Additional Calendar(s) select box will become a Secondary Calendar of the event - pending approval (see Queue Process).
The main distinction between primary and secondary calendars is that primary calendars take ownership of the event once approved. If the event ever needs to be modified, a primary calendar administrator is required to either edit the event directly or approve a revision submitted by someone else.
Every event submitted is subject to approval by each calendar it is submitted to. The event will not appear on a calendar until an administrator of the calendar has approved it.
Modification of an event is subject to approval by a Primary Calendar of the event. When approved by a Primary Calendar administrator, the new revision will immediately be propagated to all calendars that the previous version was approved upon.
Events will be auto-approved on any calendar the submitter is an administrator of.
Required fields are indicated by a red asterisk. Each calendar may have custom requirements for event submission (see Calendar Preferences). If a user chooses a calendar from the Calendar pull-down box different from the initial selection, additional fields may be flagged after a submit attempt.
The following fields are always required:
An event may be edited by an administrator of its Primary Calendar, or another user with event submit permission to the calendar. If a user has permission to submit an event revision, an Edit link will be displayed on the Event Details view of the event. All fields except for calendars may be edited.
Once events are created and approved, they may be added to additional calendars. From the Event Details view, users are shown a list of calendars that the event appears on. If the user is logged in, they will also be presented the option to add the event to one of their calendars.
The user may choose from any calendar that they have administrative privileges to. (See Permissions and Users) Once submitted, the event will be added to the selected calendar as a Secondary Calendar.
A remove link is displayed next to each Secondary Calendar that the user is an administrator of. Clicking remove will remove the event from the secondary calendar only.
A delete link is displayed next to each Primary Calendar that the user is an administrator of. Clicking delete will remove the event from ALL calendars and delete it from the system. This delete only restriction ensures that all events always have at least one Primary Calendar to maintain ownership of the event.
Events can optionally be specified to repeat for any number of days. The Calendar currently supports the following types of recurrence:
All recurrence types can end after after a specified number of occurences, on a specific date, or continue
On the Calendar Edit screen (Advanced Interface -> Details -> Edit, or http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/<calendarname>/edit) there are several pieces of calendar information that an administrator can set.
Users that are admins on several calendars may see another input here, Parent Calendar. Defining a parent calendar is purely for organizational purposes in the calendar list:
The following image shows "Chemical Engineering", "Mechanical Engineering" and others with a Parent Calendar of "Engineering":
Most of the calendar preferences correspond to a Personal Preference of the same name. Note that in all cases, a Personal Preference will override a calendar preference.
There are a few calendar-only preferences:
On the Edit screen with Calendar Information and Preferences is the Calendar Layers interface. This tool lets administrators add Layered Calendars.
Layered calendars ("layers") are useful for displaying the complete contents of one calendar in another calendar (the "base calendar"). The events on the layers can't be changed, but they are displayed alongside regular calendar events. The OSU Events calendar, for example, is the base calendar for these layered calendars:
Each of these layers is its own calendar with separate administrators approving events.
Layers can be assigned a color to easily identify their events; the colors could be unique to indicate different types of events (as in the Featured Layers), or they could be the same, to make them visually distinct only compared to the base calendar.
To add a layer, select the calendar to be layered and a color from the drop-down menu.
This same tool can change the color of an existing layer, or remove a layer by checking its Remove option.
Once a calendar has been configured with contact info, preferences, and layers, most of the long-term management tasks will happen via the Manage screen. Advanced -> Manage or http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/<calendarname>/manage. On that page are the Approval Queue and the User Access list.
The approval queue is used to manage any events that have been submitted to a calendar by non-admin users. Events in the queue are pending approval.
The queue shows a few details about the pending events, such as title, start and end time, when the revision was submitted, and if this is the event's primary calendar. The pending event's title is a link to preview the complete details and perform one of the actions Nothing, Approve, Reject, Reject and Delete, or Reassign.
It is also possible to manage a list of pending events at once. From the Manage screen, check the boxes next to the events to manage, and click the Manage Selected button at the bottom of the list. This opens a single preview page with each selected event on it, followed by each of the 4 options (3 options if this is a secondary calendar for an event, since Reassign is not possible). The default action on this screen is Nothing, so it is safe to use this mass preview to pick and choose which events should be approved or rejected.
The User Access List is below the approval queue on the calendar management page. Each row contains a Name, Username, Access level, and Remove checkbox. The last row has an empty username field, for adding users.
There are 3 defined Access levels for users:
To change a user's permissions, update the "Access" drop-down and click "Update Users." If the "Remove" box is checked, the user will be removed, regardless of the "Access" setting. Multiple users can be change/deleted in this way, but only a single user can be added at a time.
If a calendar administrator has set his or her personal email preferences to receive mail, they will receive a notice according to Email Frequency of any pending events on any calendars which they are an administrator of. Currently these notifications can only be disabled in User Preferences, so it is not possible to only receive notifications for some calendars.
Central Web Services is responsible for keeping the top-level calendars organized and making sure they meet the following guidelines:
We attempt to mirror the OSU organizational structure as much as possible.
For groups with a demonstrated need, we may at our discretion grant them the ability to create additional calendars.
Calendar administrators are free to choose any description name for their calendar (barring conflicts with policy above).
Calendar names should reflect the name of the organization. In the case where an organization has multiple calendars, the calendar's function should be included.
URLs will be assigned on calendar creation, and cannot be changed.
We will retain events on Active calendars for a minimum of two years after the date of each event.
Data will be indexed for searching a minimum of 1 year in the past and 2 years into the future.
Personal calendar data will be purged when the associated user account has been deleted.
Calendars that have not been modified for a period of 1 year are eligible for deactivation.
To maintain a consistent look and feel across calendar.oregonstate.edu, only a subset of HTML markup is allowed in event and calendar descriptions.
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
541-737-1000
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