Document Actions
Ye Olde iCal HOWTO
This needs to be updated.
Apple's iCal application uses a simple model for sharing calendars. One person "publishes" a calendar. Only that person can modify that calendar, and they must do so using that instance of iCal. As long as that's the case, everything works fine, and other people can "subscribe" to the calendar, view it, and receive updates.
SchoolBell's model is more complex. More than one person can be
given permission to edit a given calendar. Sometimes SchoolBell
will automatically add events to a calendar, for example, when a person
makes a reservation for a resource, the reservation is added to their
personal calendar.
Here's the problem: if I publish my personal calendar to
SchoolBell from iCal, and then other events are added to my calendar
automatically or by another user, then those events won't be seen on my
local iCal calendar, and they'll be erased the next time I update that
calendar via iCal.
In most cases, to avoid losing events, you should only use iCal to
subscribe to calendars, and use the web interface to add and modify
events. You can publish a calendar from iCal if you are sure that:
only one person has permission to add or edit events on that calendar,
it is not the calendar of a resource or a person who will be reserving resources.
Opening a SchoolBell calendar in iCal
Simply clicking the "Open in iCal" link on a calendar's page creates a
new calendar in iCal that includes events from the relevant online
calendar. This is not particularly useful because it does not
create a subscription to the calendar, so subsequent changes to the SchoolBell calendar will not appear in iCal.
Subscribing to a SchoolBell in iCal
Create a new empty calendar in iCal.
From the Calendar menu, select "Subscribe..."
Drag or otherwise copy the "Open in iCal" link to the "Calendar URL" field in iCal. You probably want to check "Refresh" so the calendar will be automatically update itself periodically.
Hit "Subscribe."
Publishing an iCal calendar to SchoolBell
Select in iCal the calendar you want to publish.
From the Calendar menu, select "Publish..."
You must set the "Publish name" to "calendar"
You probably want to check "Publish changes automatically" and uncheck all the rest.
For "Publish Calendar" select "on a WebDav server"
Drag or otherwise copy the "Open in iCal" link to the "Base URL" field in iCal. You must delete the trailing "calendar.ics" from the URL.
Enter the SchoolBell login and password of a user authorized to add and edit events on this calendar.
Hit "Publish."
Just remember that every time iCal updates the calendar it will delete changes from any other source.
If this all seems overly complicated, it is possible that you don't
need SchoolBell's features and you should simply use iCal's standard
WebDAV publishing. It is much simpler.
Also, Apple's Safari browser behaves oddly with our web interface. Sometimes repeated page reloads are necessary for the page layout to render properly. As far as we can tell, this is a problem with Safari.
Apple's iCal application uses a simple model for sharing calendars. One person "publishes" a calendar. Only that person can modify that calendar, and they must do so using that instance of iCal. As long as that's the case, everything works fine, and other people can "subscribe" to the calendar, view it, and receive updates.
SchoolBell's model is more complex. More than one person can be
given permission to edit a given calendar. Sometimes SchoolBell
will automatically add events to a calendar, for example, when a person
makes a reservation for a resource, the reservation is added to their
personal calendar.
Here's the problem: if I publish my personal calendar to
SchoolBell from iCal, and then other events are added to my calendar
automatically or by another user, then those events won't be seen on my
local iCal calendar, and they'll be erased the next time I update that
calendar via iCal.
In most cases, to avoid losing events, you should only use iCal to
subscribe to calendars, and use the web interface to add and modify
events. You can publish a calendar from iCal if you are sure that:
only one person has permission to add or edit events on that calendar,
it is not the calendar of a resource or a person who will be reserving resources.
Opening a SchoolBell calendar in iCal
Simply clicking the "Open in iCal" link on a calendar's page creates a
new calendar in iCal that includes events from the relevant online
calendar. This is not particularly useful because it does not
create a subscription to the calendar, so subsequent changes to the SchoolBell calendar will not appear in iCal.
Subscribing to a SchoolBell in iCal
Create a new empty calendar in iCal.
From the Calendar menu, select "Subscribe..."
Drag or otherwise copy the "Open in iCal" link to the "Calendar URL" field in iCal. You probably want to check "Refresh" so the calendar will be automatically update itself periodically.
Hit "Subscribe."
Publishing an iCal calendar to SchoolBell
Select in iCal the calendar you want to publish.
From the Calendar menu, select "Publish..."
You must set the "Publish name" to "calendar"
You probably want to check "Publish changes automatically" and uncheck all the rest.
For "Publish Calendar" select "on a WebDav server"
Drag or otherwise copy the "Open in iCal" link to the "Base URL" field in iCal. You must delete the trailing "calendar.ics" from the URL.
Enter the SchoolBell login and password of a user authorized to add and edit events on this calendar.
Hit "Publish."
Just remember that every time iCal updates the calendar it will delete changes from any other source.
If this all seems overly complicated, it is possible that you don't
need SchoolBell's features and you should simply use iCal's standard
WebDAV publishing. It is much simpler.
Also, Apple's Safari browser behaves oddly with our web interface. Sometimes repeated page reloads are necessary for the page layout to render properly. As far as we can tell, this is a problem with Safari.