Use-cases-ox6

Fiddling with appointments

The Calendar module offers so many possibilities that it might be scaring at the beginning. Best let's play a bit with all possible scenarios.

Some might know already our famous Biologist professor Seamus Moleskin. We'll have a look at his work life again. He is a member of the Biology department of a well-known institute. He also has strong bonds to a Brazilian institute and quite often gets invitations to hold lectures in many parts of the world.

If you are the visual type imagine a guy in loose corduroy trousers, a shirt, sneakers, dark grayish hair that is out of shape but half covered by a cap. No, he doesn't wear glasses and he is not so old. He is about end of 40. He likes playing pitch 'n putt and likes his local pub.

[Ms Lucilla has to set up appointment on frog speech]

Momentarily our professor is working on yet another article on his favorite breed of frog. The rather brownish creature with tiny dots. This breed lives somewhere in the Brazilian rain forest. Our professor writes about the threats for the frog caused by the long dry period. He not only wants to publish the article he also wants to hold a speech about it. To reach a wide audience he decides to not only invite his co-workers to the event but also some of his Brazilian colleagues.

Luckily he has a secretary and just has to give her the list of wanted participants, the place, date and time and a resource, in this case a projector. He shared his calendar folder and gave his secretary all permissions as he completely trusts her.

His secretary is Ms Lucilla. Just to introduce her shortly: she works part-time for the professor and part-time in an art gallery, is 50ish and has black dyed hair.

Ms Lucilla gets a handwritten sheet with all information she needs to book the appointment. In the Calendar module she clicks on New in the professor's personal calendar folder.

Entering appointment details

In the Title field she enters Endangered Frog Species – A Speech by Prof. Wonderwhy. In Location she enters Conference Room Botanical Garden in Seafair. Start date and end date is 3rd of July. As it is not a whole day appointment she enters 2pm to 4pm and leaves the All day checkbox empty. In the Remind me field she selects 2 hours. She knows it takes about 1 hour to get to the Botanical garden. That leaves the professor some time to gather his thoughts. She leaves the checkbox Notify all participants by E-Mail activated. In the Comments field she provides some more information about the contents of the speech. It's all very scientific. We won't mention it here.

For this appointment she ignores the buttons Series, Tags, and Folder. To prevent the professor from being booked for another appointment she leaves Reserved in the Display as: field. As this is by no means a private appointment she also ignores the last checkbox.

Adding internal and external participants

Done. Now she opens the Participants tab and clicks on Add. The professor wants to invite all colleagues from the Biology department. That's an easy one. They are listed as group called Biologist department. This group was set up by the institute's administrator. She selects the entry and clicks on Add in the field below. Now she has to invite the Brazilian colleagues. They are external ones and thus are not listed in the institute's internal contacts list. So she clicks on Contact folder... and browses to the subfolder Brazilian institute in the professor's Contacts folder which the professor shares with her. From this address book she picks the names from the professor's handwritten list and adds them.

Adding external participant that isn't listed in contact folder

She notices there is one that isn't listed in the Contacts folder. But as the professor provided the name and E-Mail address of this external contact she just enters the name and address manually. Fine. All people are entered.

Adding resources

Leaves the projector. The professor wants to take a projector from the institute. So she selects the right one from the list and in the Resource field clicks on Add. Then she clicks OK.

Almost done. Just some checks left.

Checking availability

She ignores the Attachments tab and opens Availability. To check if the invited biologists are available she enters the date and time of the appointment, leaves all the checkboxes activated and clicks on Check. She immediately notices that only two of the colleagues are not available for the speech. She ignores that fact and clicks on Save. Maybe the unavailable colleagues can shift their appointments.

Done. As it's already lunch time Ms Lucilla leaves the institute to get a hearty meal before making her way to the art gallery.

[Ms Lucilla enters private appointment]

8 am the next morning. Ms Lucilla is at her desk in the institute. She is in a rather bad mood. Someone in the art gallery told her enthusiastically how flattering the white strands of hair are on her. After calling her hair salon she opens her own Calendar and enters the date of her appointment with the hair maker to make sure she doesn't miss it. She activates the checkbox Private appointment as this is nothing she wants to share with the colleagues in the institute who can view her Calendar.

[Ms Lucilla has to enter serial appointment on owls]

The professor enters her office two hours later and tells her something about gray owls. He waffles on and on. Finally he tells Ms Lucilla that for the upcoming months he needs to regularly meet some owl experts from the institute in the neighboring town. They already agreed on a day and the time.

Ms Lucilla writes down all information and the professor is off to listen to a lecture.

To enter this new appointment she opens the professor's calendar and clicks on New. This time the Title is Exchanging Knowledge on Gray Owls in Alaska. As it's a more informal meeting the Location is Galloping Green Pub, the professor's local. As reminder she sets 1 hour and then clicks on Series. As Start date she enters 7th of August. As the professor wants to meet his colleagues 8 times on a weekly basis she activates the checkbox Weekly and tells the Groupware that the appointment should end after 8 appointments. Then she clicks OK and selects the participants. She needn't check the availability as they all agreed anyway. She saves the new appointment series. Done.

[Ms Lucilla checks status of frog appointment]

She decides to check if someone already agreed to attend the Frog speech. She opens the month view and clicks on the appointment entry. Then she selects Details from the panel section View and opens the Participants tab. Most of them already accepted. One declined and one set Tentative. Only few still have the status Waiting. The one who declined entered a comment saying Sorry, have to hold a speech myself, can't sneak out. The one who set Tentative entered as comment Will try to postpone brown mice excursion.

Ms Lucilla doesn't worry about the few Waiting entries for now. Sometimes it takes a while until all participants set a status. If she knows the professor was invited to a conference she reminds him in regular intervals to set a status for the invitation. He always tends to forget about administrative stuff.

[Ms Lucilla has to modify owl appointment]

It's almost time for Ms Lucilla to go for lunch in order to be in the art gallery in time. The telephone rings and it's Professor Whatsmyname. He is one of our professor's colleagues who was invited to the owl appointment. He says he got the invitation but noticed it's the wrong date. The 7th is a Thursday and he says they all agreed to meet on a Friday - remember, the meeting takes place in a pub... As he's absolutely sure about the day Ms Lucilla says she will modify the appointment. She hangs up and clicks on the owl appointment in the professor's calendar. Then she clicks on the panel entry Edit. Then she changes the date from the 7th of August to the 8th of August and saves the appointment. Done. Time to go to the Italian place round the corner.

8 am the next morning. Ms Lucilla is humming happily on her desk. Her hair is newly cut and dyed and she enjoys the quiet morning hours. She opens an online shop to order five tickets for an open air concert for her and her friends. Then she creates a private appointment in her calendar about the concert and sets a reminder. Time for a coffee and some of those delicious cakes from the coffee kitchen.

[Ms Lucilla modifies appointment using drag & drop]

While munching away Ms Lucilla thinks about the concert. Good that it's on a Friday. It'll surely be a long night out. Has she really entered the appointment on a Friday? She checks her entry. The entry says it's on a Monday. She is too lazy to open it again and to change the entries. In the Month view she just drags the appointment from Monday back to Friday the week before. She doesn't even have to release her cake to do so.

Five cakes later the professor enters her room. This time he talks about the elephant hawk-moth which is brightly colored, mostly pink. He goes into more and more details. He always forgets about Ms Lucilla's disdain for flying insects. Luckily he can't remember all tiny details about this moth. He's even wondering whether its caterpillar is green or brown. Before leaving her office deeply in thoughts he asks Ms Lucilla to enter an appointment for Tuesday next week for him and his two students Ole and Solveigh. Title: Supervision – spider research. As soon as he's gone Ms Lucilla enters the appointment.

[Ms Lucilla deletes an appointment using the rmb menu]

Five minutes later she gets a call from the professor. He says he totally forgot his students are on an excursion. He asks Ms Lucilla to delete the appointment. Ms Lucilla hangs up, sighs, opens the month view, right-clicks on the appointment and selects Delete. Done.

Fiddling with tasks

Friday morning. Ms Lucilla enjoys her coffee and reads the newspaper. It's only 7 am but the telephone rings nevertheless. It's a professor from another institute. She tells Ms Lucilla about a research on the Green frog. To make it short, she wants our professor to write an article about this animal as the professor is famous for his knowledge on frogs.

[Ms Lucilla enters frog task for professor]

Ms Lucilla decides to enter the task and ask the professor later if it's OK. In the Tasks module she clicks on New. She then enters Write article on Green frog. Due date is 29th of August as the article should be published in a magazine's September release. As Start date Ms Lucilla enters today's date. She sets High as priority as the magazine is a very important one. She sets a reminder for the 15th of August as this would leave enough time in case the professor hasn't written anything by then. In the time field she selects 11 am. The professor is not one for the morning hours. In the Comments field she enters her notes from the call: Especially mention the blue Green frog, the diet of the Green frog and its banjo sound. Ms Lucilla also enters the name of the professor from the other institute and the purpose of this task. Then she opens the Participants tab, clicks on Add and enters the professor as participant. Done. Time for another cup of coffee.

10 am. The professor enters Ms Lucilla's office. As he dreamed about blue crabs the previous night he now spits out every bit of information about blue crabs that comes into his mind. Ms Lucilla shudders. She once was pinched by a crab. Sometimes she really wishes the professor wouldn't be a zoologist but tell her about harmless flowers and plants instead. After his crab lecture he asks Ms Lucilla to enter a task for him and leaves her a hand-written note with the details.

[Ms Lucilla enters serial fish task]

The professor's note says Feed neighbor's fish, a red betta with shiny green fins. To be done daily. Reminder 6pm each day. Duration: 1 week. Start date: Monday.

Ms Lucilla opens the Tasks module and clicks on New. As subject she enters Feed neighbor's fish. She sets the priority to High. Though it's a private task she leaves the checkbox Private Task empty as it's not possible to enter a private task for someone else. Besides, the professor doesn't mind about that in this case. She sets a reminder for Monday, 6pm and then clicks on Series. In the Series window she selects Daily as recurrence type, selects Monday as Start date and the Sunday after as End date. Then she clicks OK. In the Participants tab she adds the professor as Participant and saves the new task. Almost done.

Remember, the professor wants to be reminded each single day. But in the current settings he will only be reminded once, on Monday. In this reminder he can set a new reminder for the next day. Ms Lucilla makes a note to remind the professor about this fact.

[Ms Lucilla enters private task per double-click]

Ms Lucilla opens her own Task calendar to check if there are outstanding tasks. There are only two in the list and those can wait. She double-clicks on the free field below the two entries. The New task window opens. She creates a new private task for Tuesday next week, 7pm. Meet up with runners' group in Mosquito Park.

[Ms Lucilla enters butterfly task for professor per double-click from her own tasks folder]

The fax machine spits out a paper. It asks the professor to send his article on the Morpho butterfly. As Ms Lucilla is still in her task calendar she just double-clicks again to set the new task for the professor. When having entered the details she clicks on Folder and browses to the professor's Tasks folder. She saves the task in this folder.

Fiddling with the Infostore

The professor is writing an article about the platypus. As there's so much to say about this mammal, it'll take him at least a week to finish the article. Before he leaves the institute he sends an E-Mail with the first version to Ms Lucilla asking her to upload it tho the InfoStore, to set a task 'Finish Platypus article' and to link the two entries.

8 am. Ms Lucilla checks her E-Mails. She reads the professor's E-Mail with the title 'Platypus'. She clicks on the attached article and then clicks on Save in InfoStore in the panel. As she doesn't want to save the article in her own InfoStore folder she clicks on Folder and saves it to the professor's shared InfoStore folder.

Linking objects

As Ms Lucilla was asked to link the platybus article with the task 'Finish Platypus article', she creates the task first and enters the professor as participant.

She then clicks on Start in the Linking panel section, opens the InfoStore module, clicks on the article and then clicks on Close in the Linking panel section.

Done. The link is now displayed when she opens the task in the H Split view. There's also a blue linking icon displayed next to the task.

She quickly checks if she really linked the correct objects by selecting the task and clicking on Go to. As the InfoStore opens with the correct article selected she knows she did it right.