5.2. Events handling
An Event can be defined as an invitation to one or several attendees participate to a meeting or some local activities you want to schedule and eventually be reminded about.
Both alternatives are be-handled in a similar way.
Let us follow the process of inviting an attendee to a meeting to get some practical references and have a better understanding of what we are speaking about:
User A sends an invitation to User B.
User B accepts the invitation.
There are several ways to create an event using KMail in Kolab mode. The user may:
Point to the Actions->New Event option of the KMail in Kolab mode Main Menu
Click on the New Event icon of KMail in Kolab mode Tool Bar.
Double click on the Calendar View at the date and time she wishes to schedule the event.
All three alternatives will result to the Edit Event dialog being displayed on your screen:
Let us have a look at some of the features of this dialog. We will not describe all of them as it is already well documented in the KOrganizer Handbook which can be consulted by pointing to the Help->KOrganizer Handbook option of KMail in Kolab mode Main Menu.
Recurring Event: We select this option if the event happens regularly. The exact schedule will be specified in the Recurrence tab window.
Reminder: If selected, Korganizer will remind the user about the event.
Show time as: The duration of the event may be shown as Busy or Free in your schedule.
Categories:You can assign the event to one or several categories.
Access: Private tasks should only be visible to you.
After having filled the General part of our event as shown above, click on the Attendees tab to add one or several participants to the event and display the following view:
You can add Attendees the following ways:
Click the New button and Enter the Name and Email of the participant in their respective fields.
Click the Address Book button and select a contact in your Contacts list.
Note that we had to move this event to another time-slot , the participant giroday2 being marked as occupied between 14:00 and 17:00 (period painted in red).
To change the time-slot can be made manually by giving a new Start and End times or automatically by pushing the Pick a date button which will check the availability of your participants and choose an appropriate time-slot.
The Request response option being selected, as organizator of the meeting we will be able to follow its development by checking the status (Needs Action, Accepted, Declined, etc...) of each participant.
We have now to define the recurring cycle of our event before sending it to our attendees. Click on the Recurrence tab to display the following view:
The options proposed here, don't need to be describe in detail, as they are quite obvious. You can choose the frequence of the recurrence, as well as the day of the week, you want the event to be registered. The Exceptions date option are the date you don't want the event to happen.
We are now, ready to send the invitation to our Attendees. Just click on the OK button to do so, you will be prompted to confirm the sending of the invitations to the participants of the event:
Choose the Yes option, to inform your participants concerning the meeting you have just created. Let us now have a look at what happens on the giroday2 system when the user receives this invitation.
After checking in hers mail giroday2 will be able to read the invitation we have sent as it is displayed in the view above. You can see that the user has got four options:
Accept: By clicking on this option the user let the invitation be registered in hers calendar, and send an Acceptation email to the organizator. Her status will be updated to Accepted
Accept cond.:The invitation is registered in the user's calendar, and an Tentatively Accepted email is sent to the organizator. The participant status is updated to Tentative.
Declined:The invitation is not registered in the user's calendar, and a Declined email is sent to the organizator. The participant status is updated to Declined.
Check my Calendar...: A useful option that present the invitation in a dialog, allowing the user to view hers calendar at the same time. The user may then choose directly from this dialog on of the three options described above.
The Meeting Request dialog displayed when the user click on the Check My Calendar Option.
giroday2 has now accepted the invitation. As described above, the event is automatically registered in hers calendar and an acceptation email sent to giroday who is the organizator of the event.
At this stage giroday2's calendar looks like the following view:
The icons on the event means respectively: Reminder, Recursive, replied.
We will now follow the reply, and see how it looks in the organizator (giroday) INBOX folder.
As you can see in the view above, the only option proposed to the organizator of the meeting is to register the reply from the participant into hers calendar by clicking on Enter this into my calendar.
The status for giroday2 as participant will be updated from Needs Action to Accepted. A useful feature for the organizer of the meeting to keep in control.
If the user makes some change (time-slot, text, etc...) to an event that involves other participants, she will be prompted to send an email to the attendees, as shown in the following view.
By right clicking on the event in the calendar view, the user get access to a context menu allowing her to Show, Edit, or Delete it, as well as to enable or disable the Reminder (Toggle Alarm).
The Event Viewer let us have a complete and clear overview to a particular event as well as give us access to the participants' data by simply clicking on their name. From the Event Viewer it is also possible to send an email to any of the attendees by pushing the envelop icon in front of the names of the Attendees:
Let us now have a look to another kind of event.