Forum OpenACS Development: OACS Calender lite

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Posted by Ben Koot on
Hi folks,

On the risk beeing flamed, I ask this question. I have been running a secretary nework for the last 2 years. I monitored what's beeing discussed on international bboards, and came to the conclusion there is a need for a professional calendar application to replace MSOutlook.

Offering a hosted solution will not work, as most companies won't allow it. So it's up to the individual secretary to find a solution to monitor multiple agenda's. Often they create a makeshift solution in Excel, but in general it's one big mess. Managers often haven't got a clue what could be done with a professional solutiton.

Rigging up a full scale intranet or OACS instance is a hard sell. These girls need a simple answer to keep track of time. Is there any way we can create an ACS lite version including Calendar, Fileshare, Logger, and related functionality as an "OACS lite office package" that can be easily installed on a secretaries PC?

Afterall, Phill had his free tools, that many folks around the world are still using today. It could make a great way to promotote the full scale OACS toolkit.

Just a thought

Ben

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2: Re: OACS Calender lite (response to 1)
Posted by Talli Somekh on
Ben, take a look at the Mozilla Calendar. It uses iCal compliant calendar objects and shares calendars via WebDAV.

That is, a user creates her calendar using the desktop MozCal app, then uploads it to a WebDAV server. She can then allow other users to view her calendar by giving them permission. She can view an arbitrary number of calendars this way.

Here is the quote from the FAQ

To share your calendars, you need access to a webDAV server. If you run your own web server, you can install mod_dav, a free Apache module that will turn your web server into a webDAV server. Instructions on how to set it up are on their website. Once you set up your webDAV server, you can publish your calendar to the site, then subscribe to it from any other Mozilla Calendar. Automatically updating the calendar will give you a poor man's calendar server.

This seems like an elegant, easy solution for you in a way that is compatible with OACS. nsDAV should be ready soon, and integration with OACS will come shortly after that.

talli

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3: Re: OACS Calender lite (response to 1)
Posted by Talli Somekh on
I should add that to parse a MozCal .ics file and generate an HTML view for a browser should be relatively straight-forward. The format that MozCal uses it the same as Apple's iCal.

There are plenty of PHP-based web systems that do this already. I imagine that it could be done in the OACS with relative ease.

Any of those freakazoid OSX/OACS hackers wanna give it a run? Maybe those of you with 17 in laptops and copious free time? ;)

talli