Using Netscape Calendar Resources

These instructions were written for Netscape 4.7x at Wake Forest University.

Need to establish a shared group calendar? This can be handy to have advisees sign up for appointments or for faculty to sign up for meetings with candidates.

Netscape Calendar "resources" are handy ways of allowing groups of users to share a calendar, adding their names to a set of appointment times. I first used this to allow members of two departments to conveniently sign up for appointments with a visiting candidate.

First a little nomenclature:

• A resource is just a shared calendar.
• A designate is a person that is allowed to view and/or change the calendar.

There are four stages stages of the process:

1. Create the resource: Contact the IS help desk at x4357 to request that a "Netscape Calendar Resource" be created with a name of your choosing. They will give you a resource name and password that you will use to name "designates" who can use the shared calendar..
2. Enter the designates: Add users via the procedure described in Adding Designates to a Netscape Calendar Resource. Be sure to add your own name!
3. Put in available appointment times: If you want to have preset appointment times before others begin using the calendar, then you should first log on to the calendar resource as a designate and add the appointment times you want, following the procedure described in Accessing the Reynolds Candidates Calendar.
4. Have users sign up for appointments: Invite those you have given designate access rights to make their own changes, typically signing up particular appointment times. The procedure is described in Accessing the Reynolds Candidates Calendar.

Limitations

Set up as we have described it, any designate can add or delete appointments, so this works best if you can trust your designates not to zap your nicely entered appointment times.

Rick Matthews