Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Notification of Calendar Events

Collapse
Posted by Dirk Gomez on

Here's my take on noticiation.

Firstly, just like in forums, there should be instantaneous, daily, bi-weekly notifications whenever a calendar item is created or (!) updated.

Secondly we need a reminder. The reminder needs to be sent *prior* to the event, that is why we need the timezone awareness. A straight-forward way to do this is should be:

  • The server knows in which timezone it is. (acs-lang has a timezone parameter)
  • The user knows in which timezone he is usually - there probably is a user-dependent parameter somewhere hidden in acs-lang. He may be travelling tho!!

The reminder page could tell the user: "We will send you this event by 10:00 am your default timezone. Please change time and timezone according to your needs."

The user knows better where he currently is, and when he wants to receive the respective email. He also quite likely knows whether a particular event is local to his timezone or local to the server's timezone or local to the creator's timezone.

I think both the interface and the code for this solution should easy to implement. We can work on the all-encompassing solution after that :)