Appointment Editing Dialog

This dialog opens when you create a new appointment open an existing to modify.

This dialog has three pages:

1. Date, Time & Location
   All settings about time space coordinates plus settings for reminders
2. Participants
   On this page you invite users to an appointment
3. Details and Comments
   Everything else like a text field for additional details ...

Above of the three page you should give a title to the appointment.

• Location in time and space
  This should be almost self explaining, apart from two buttons:
  • An Non Blocking Appointmentis an appointment which won't taken into account on the allocation display. This might be useful for appointments which where added for the purpose to send reminders (e.g. Exchange Backup medium)
  • An Appointment with only date specified is what may be called an "full time" appointment. That is an appointment which has no Time specified. Hence in the calendar it is displayed on top of the time table. This might be useful for birthdays, holidays of users etc.
  
  
• Repeated Appointments Beside the usual repeat options like daily weekly and monthly Minkowsky offers a couple of other repeat options:
  • you may selected daily but expect certain days of the week
  • on working days
    like daily, but not on Saturday or Sunday. The is no almost obsolete, since you can select daily and exclude Saturday and Sunday
  • on fixed day in month
    This is a variation on the monthly scheme. If the base appointment is on the 3rd Tuesday in the month all repetitions will be on the 3rd Tuesday of their month.
  • every ...
    If you are not satisfied with the other repeat option defined your own. Minkowsky let allows to define an arbitrary repeat interval in units of Hours, days, weeks, month or years.
    Please note that using this option may slow down the Minkowsky server. For the advanced: The value of the the repeat interval may be a broken number.

  You may define an end date for the repeating this appointment. Otherwise it will be repeated unlimited

• Reminders and invitations
  Its possible to define up to 100 Reminders or invitations for an Appointment. Reminders will either be send by e-mail to recipient or using an popup window (Minkowsky sends always a mail if the recipient is not loged in)
  Reminders and invitations may not only send to local users of Minkowsky but also to external Participants, as long as their e-mail address is given in the address book.
  
  Technical note:
  In order to get reminders in a popup window it is necessary to run an additional program in the background. Its called mrr and located in MINKOWSKY_HOME/client/. It is advisable to start this using the Autostart mechanism of your desktop. On KDE1 and KDE2 system Minkowsky is able to install the Autostart program. However it must be allowed by the System administrator on installation time.

This page has three parts. On the right there is the list of participants.
On the upper left there is the selection list of participants
On the lower left there is the allocation display

The Program distinguishes five types of participants, which are also colour coded:

1. The Initiator
   is always the user who first added the appointment to Minkowsky. He always has full Access to the appointment The Initiator is coded in red on the list of participants and the allocation display
2. The inviting persons
   The initiator is not necessarily the one who officially invites to an appointment. Think of an secretary adding an appointment an behalf of the boss. Hence the secretary is initiator but the boss is inviting. There may be more than one user marked as inviting person. Inviting persons are coded in orange on the list of participants and the allocation display
3. Participants
   All other users who will/should/must attend to the appointment. Participants are coded in green on the list of participants and the allocation display
4. external Participants
   Minkowsky is able to manage external participants as well,as long as Minkowsky can find them in the address book. This has two advantages: First all users know which external participants are to expect. Secondly Minkowsky can send them Invitation and Reminders as to anybody else on list of participants (as long as their e-mail address is in the address book). External participants are code in blue on the list of participants.
5. Information only
   Maybe you want inform someone that you have an appointment without the necessity to attend. Hence you can add this appointment as information only to his/her calendar. Information only "participants" are code in black on the list of participants

Besides the colour code the different types of participants differ in their default access permission. Information only "participants" can get only read access. The default for the other type can be defined on the subpage called default permissions This default permissions can be changed by all users themselves. The system defaults allow inviting persons almost full access, normal participants full read access and write access only on comments.

If the Permission are set wrong this can be corrected by clicking on the Permission string Likewise the type of a participants can be changed.

The List of Participants

The list of participants has five columns

1. The type of the participant, abbreviated by on letter (the abbreviation is motivated from German): I=Initiator, E=Inviting Person, T=normal Participant, A=External Participant, i=Information Only.. The Colour of the letters follow the Colour code.
2. The full name of the participant
3. The current consent status of the participant. Possible values are:
   • unknown
   • confirmed
   • cancel the participant will not attend
   • uncertain the participant is still uncertain whether he/she may attend
   • shift ?the participant requests to shift the appointment
4. The Access Permission granted to the participant. For Details on the Permission string see the chapter on Permissions ion Appointments.
5. The remove sign is used to remove a participant from the list

The Allocation Display

In the allocation display displays the times on which the participant are already allocated by other appointments. this is done for the initiator, the inviting persons and then participants separately. However with in a type all times merged together. The display uses the colour code defined above.

Like for the participants the allocated times of the location of the appointment is displayed in brown on the allocation display.

• Details
  

  This is a text field in which you can more information on the appointment.

• Other Properties
  • Each appointment must be assigned to a group as the administrative group. This is allows to have Administrators with only limited responsibilities (limited to one or more groups). For more ion this topic see Groups and Permissions.
  • An Appointment may be marked as private or group only, A private appointment can only be viewed by the participant. All other users see just a coloured rectangle an the calendar.
    For group only appointments all participant and all members of the administrative group can view the date.
  • Last not least you may assign a priority to an appointment. However, this value is for informational purpose only. Minkowsky does not evaluate it any further than just displaying it.
• Comments
  

  When modifying an appointment you also may add a comment on it. Fill out the upper text filed and press the Add button. Your comment will show up on the comments below together with your name.