Online Calendar

[falkon]

My grad school group is looking to host web based calendar system on our server to reserve instruments.

Do any of you, perhaps Todd, know of a good one?

Here are some features we'd like:

-ability to email all users simultaneously

-email users by clicking on their scheduled time

-prevent an instrument from being doublebooked

-email administrator to request training for an instrument

-web based administration interface

[grawk]

google apps

[falkon]

Pretty sure that google calendar doesn't let you do any of things I wanted.

[acidbasement]

Have you checked any of these out? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software

I see there are several collaborative calendar programs in there.

[Dreadhead]

I second the Google recommendation. It would support everything you want to do in slightly modified form (set up user group for the group emails and administrator account that forwards etc). That is unless you must have it perform exactly as in the original post which of course you can pay for I guess. Seems dumb to not modify your requirements to me.

Edited August 25, 2011 by Dreadhead

[grawk]

I just don't think there will exist a program that does exactly what you want, so you either pay to have it written, or you just have a group calendar, which google apps does just fine.

[falkon]

You would have thought someone would have written a free customizable web cal. Something like phpBB for forums.

[grawk]

the more specific your requirements the less likely someone's done it for you already...

[jvlgato]

I actually thought of Google calendar as soon as I read your post, too, but didn't reply, since it didn't do exactly what you wanted.

I have used Google calendar both professionally and personally.

At the office, I schedule my patients on Google calendar, and I access it usually on my iPad, but also various Windows PCs online if I'm near a computer, a Mac Mini via iCal in my office for my helper to view, and my android phone on the road. I gave 'view only' permission to a company in Arizona so they can make telephone appointment reminder calls for me.

At home, I have a separate Google calendar which my wife and I share and she accesses it via her android phone and her MacBook Air, and I view it through my iPad and android phone, and online on whatever computer I'm near. My iPad and android phone have two separate calendars in different colors - one for work, one for personal. For the first time ever, I can actually see the things my wife plans for us when she enters something in our calendar on her phone.

And it's all free!!

Probably too much info, but the point is that I'll bet you can set up a calendar which will be accessible and updated in near real time (typically seconds), to several people through many different vehicles and with many different permissions. There's some kind of 'invite' function which I never deal with, but maybe that could be used to email people.

Good luck!

[dsavitsk]

You would have thought someone would have written a free customizable web cal. Something like phpBB for forums.

I wrote a prototype of something that did most of this a few years ago using Apache/mod_python. As I recall, a basic version that "worked" took me a couple of days to do. There were still issues, and it could be broken if you were malicious, but it would work OK if taken care of. Anyhow, the point is, you can probably roll your own if the requirements are not that steep -- it is a pretty simple application. Otherwise, I'd go with Google.