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Kansas State University

Calendar tips and tricks

Information for Oracle Calendar users

The university will transition from Oracle Calendar to K-State Zimbra Calendar on Mon., June 28. You will still be able to access your Oracle Calendar to view past events. In anticipation of this transition, you should begin entering all events occurring June 28 and after to the K-State Zimbra Calendar and may want to follow some of the steps outlined on this page to prepare, including turning off the ability for others to invite you to meetings in Oracle:

  1. Go to Oracle's Tools menu.
  2. Click Access Rights and then click Scheduling.
  3. Uncheck the Can Invite Me To Entries option and then click OK.

Managing and sharing your calendar

Creating calendars

By default, one calendar is created for you. This is the K-State calendar that others at K-State can use to schedule meetings with you. You can create additional calendars to keep track of different activities, events, rooms, or resources, for example, while keeping them separate from your K-State calendar. See Creating calendars for more information.

If you want other people, such as department staff or the campus community, to be able to search for and schedule a room or equipment, you can request that a calendar location (room) or resource (equipment) be created at the Zimbra level by contacting the IT Help Desk.

Sharing calendars

Sharing a calendar allows multiple people to have access to meetings scheduled in that calendar. For example, sharing a calendar would be useful if multiple office staff manage a single office calendar. For more information see Sharing calendars.

Viewing other people's calendar
  • Free/busy times (availability): To only see if someone, a location, or resource is available for scheduling, when scheduling an event, click the 'Schedule' tab and enter their eID or name. Their free/busy blocks of time will show in the grid.
  • Event/calendar details: If you want to see the details of a person's calendar and events, they must share their calendar with you or make their calendar public and provide you with the URL.
Managing calendar messages

Because K-State Zimbra sends a message that arrives in your K-State e-mail inbox to notify you of new shares, new events, modified events and cancelled events, you may want to filter these messages to folders based on the message type or specific text found in those messages. If someone is managing your calendar for you, share these folders with them so they can schedule and respond to appointments and meetings on your behalf. See Managing collaboration e-mail and Sharing folders for more information.

Managing other people's calendar

In K-State Zimbra, you can share calendars and inboxes with others so that they can manage your calendar. However, many people may not want to share their entire inbox in order to have others manage their calendar. See Managing other people's calendars and Managing collaboration e-mail for more information.

Synchronizing with a remote calendar (iCal)

You can synchronize Zimbra Calendar with a remote calendar, provided the calendar is published in the iCal (.ics) format. You can also share a Zimbra calendar via an ical feed, allowing it to be syncronized with calendars outside K-State Zimbra. See Creating calendars for more information.

Scheduling, accepting, and declining events

Scheduling event invitations

When you create a calendar event, you can invite others to the event, schedule locations (rooms) and/or resources (equipment), and even perform a busy search to ensure availability of people, locations, and resources. By default, the event you create is tentatively added to other people's calendars - they do not have to accept or decline the invitation, unless they have changed this setting in Calendar Options.

Note: If you forward your K-State e-mail or use another e-mail client with POP as the incoming server, you MUST configure your forwarding or client to leave a copy of your e-mail in K-State Zimbra else events will not show up on the K-State Zimbra Calendar. See Creating an Appointment for more information.

Accepting and declining events

Invitations are received in your K-State e-mail as messages. By default, calendar events that you are invited to are automatically added to your calendar regardless of your response, unless you have changed this setting in Calendar Options. This time will show as tentative to others viewing your calendar but not that you have accepted the event invitation.

You can accept, mark tentative, or decline event invitations directly from the calendar by right-clicking on the event and selecting your desired response or from the event invitation message, clicking the response button at the top of the message. See Managing collaboration e-mail for more information.

Events that you are invited to will go on your main Calendar (not additional calendars you may have created).

  • Accept: Accepted events will be marked as busy and public, unless the event creator has changed these settings. Accepted events will be darker in color on your calendar. When you accept an event, the event organizer is notified by an e-mail, which you can find in your Sent mail folder.
  • Tentative: Tentative events will be placed on your calendar, marked as Tentative and its color will be a lighter shade of your calendar color. The event organizer is not notified.
  • Decline: Declined events can still be found on your calendar, in case you later change your mind. They are marked as free time and will be a transparent shade of your calendar color. When you decline an event, the event organizer is notified by an e-mail, which you can find in your Sent mail folder. You can also delete the event, but you will not be able to go back later to change your response or see its details.

Because event messages are automatically deleted upon reply (unless you have this set differently in Calendar Options), you must change your response directly in your Calendar. To change your response, open your Calendar and find the event. Right-click on the event and select your new response.

Scheduling locations and resources

Locations (rooms) and resources (equipment) have a K-State e-mail address and can be scheduled the same way you would a person, as long as you know the location or resources K-State e-mail address. If you do not, when scheduling an event, you can search for it under 'Find Locations' or 'Find Resources'.

All locations and resources at K-State have a standarized naming convention:

  • Locations: buildingcode-room-loc@k-state.edu (WB-111-loc@k-state.edu)
  • Resources: departmentcode-description-res@k-state.edu (OME-PROJECTOR-res@k-state.edu)

Not all locations or resources are in K-State Zimbra. If you would like yours to be included, contact the IT Help Desk. See Scheduling Locations and Resources for more information.

Seeing if someone accepted or declined an event

The creator of an event can see an attendee's response by opening the appointment and clicking the 'Schedule' tab or by hovering over the event on the Calendar. Event creators will also receive an e-mail notification of an attendee's accepted or decelined response. Only event creators can see if an attendee has accepted or declined an event.

Options and configuration

Setting calendar options and access permissions

In K-State Zimbra Calendar, by default, all users can see when you are free or busy (though not the specific details of an event on your calendar) and can invite you to meetings. Both these settings can be adjusted in Options, as can whether or not new appointments are automatically added to a calendar. See Setting calendar options for more information

Mobile device configuration

Information is available about how to configure a number of mobile devices to work with Zimbra, but they will not provide the full Zimbra experience. In order to be able to use the full set of Zimbra features at K-State, you should use the webmail client or the desktop client. See Mobile device configuration for more information.

Using other e-mail clients

The K-State Zimbra Calendar is a message-based calendaring system. Meeting invitations are sent as messages and arrive in your K-State e-mail inbox. These invitations are best managed through the K-State Zimbra web client. Other e-mail clients may not process these invitations correctly nor update your Zimbra calendar accordingly. You should read your mail where you feel most comfortable, but it is recommended you use K-State Zimbra to handle meeting invitations. If you choose, you can synchronize your Zimbra Calendar with a remote calendar.

POP vs. IMAP

Using other e-mail clients with POP as the incoming mail server type is discouraged because it removes mail from the K-State Zimbra system. Meeting invitations cannot be processed within Zimbra without a copy of the invitation being left in Zimbra. Appointments may be able to be processed from the calendar view if the mail message resides on the system long enough to be added to the calendar. If you choose POP as your your incoming mail server type, you should configure the e-mail client to leave a copy in K-State Zimbra. Instead of POP, it is recommended you use an IMAP configuration with an e-mail client such as Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or the Zimbra Desktop client.

Forwarding e-mail

Forwarding e-mail either at the eProfile page or through Zimbra filters occurs BEFORE messages are received in your Zimbra account. If you do not leave a copy of calendar messages on the Zimbra e-mail system, appointments WILL NOT be placed on your Zimbra calendar. If you choose to forward your e-mail, configure your forwarding to leave a copy on Zimbra so appointments can be processed within the Zimbra Collaboration Suite and your Zimbra calendar receives the updates.