google calendar & php icalendar
Dave from the Faculty of Science has emailed us about a new calendaring solution they have implemented for booking public rooms, using google calendar. He explains some of the rational…
in part because it is easy to for several people to manage calendars and bookings. It also uses common standards so if SFU adopts a new calendaring system we should be ablebe able to integrate quickly.
I think this is one of the most innovative solutions of information managment I have seen come emerege from the the SFU webscape for some time. It will be interesting to see if there are any benefits to other groups (like our own).
One of the great features of google calendar, is the ability to subscribe to multiple ones, allowing for easy customixzing and ‘remixing’ of calendar information. If every department, faculty, school and service unit WERE to adopt a similar solution, the learners would be able to customize their own calendars by subscribing to each relevant source. I realize google may not be the way to go here but open standards definatley are. Dave continues…
This uses php icalendar http://phpicalendar.net/documentation/ on fraser to grab/parse 3 ics files from google- everything is live- and sometimes slow). People did not like the look of the default google embedded calendar http://www.sfu.ca/science/calendar/ssb7109.html (it only shows start times and only one calendar at a time). People can also subscribe to view events via ical or Sunbird.
Nice. This allows users to subscribe using the tools and technology that THEY prefer. I look forward to discussing this and finding about more as user feedback comes in. Kudos Sciences!