ExchangeCalendar

Radboud University's central Calendar is using an exchange server for which the main client is outlook but other clients are also possible.

Each university employee has an email account on this exchange server which is both used for your ru-mail as your ru-calendar. By default your account is:

• Exchange account/mail-address: Givenname.Surname@ru.nl
• Login name to use is either
  • your U-Account preceded with 'ru\' or
  • your Exchange email address eg. Givenname.Surname@ru.nl
• Password to use to authorize this exchange account : U-Account's password.

In Exchange one can share calendars with each other, which makes making appointments easier.

Next to a calendar your Exchange account gives you access to your Exchange Mail . For the iCIS staff is by default the ru-mail forwarded to the science-mail account.

The iCIS policy is that every staff member must at least give full read access to the management assistants so that they can more easily plan meetings, and can see if somebody is at the university or away.

Clients

For basic usage the web client suffices, however for more advanced usage you can better use the Outlook desktop client from Microsoft which is available for both Windows as Apple computers.

Web client

• just go with your webbrowser to : https://mail.ru.nl
• login with
  • login: your Exchange email address eg. Givenname.Surname@ru.nl or your u-, e- or s-number preceded by ru\
  • password: your U-Account's password

Outlook client (windows/macbook)

Outlook is both an email as calendar program. Both are setup at once. To setup see the Email page at the Exchange mail section .

Other clients

For manuals how to set up email or calendar for other clients please visit this page. You can find manuals for:

• Mobile devices
• Macbook Calendar

IMPORTANT: if you use another client than outlook then read carefully how to respond to meetings in the section below, because these clients do not fully support responding to meetings in a correct manner. Only the outlook clients implement this correctly.

Documentation

The following two pdf documents give you a good intro how to work with the outlook calendar:

• Media:Outlook2016-Calendar.pdf : In this workshop we will investigate the Microsoft Outlook 2016 calendar views; customizing the calendar appearance; creating and modifying appointments, meetings and all day events; setting reminders, privacy, and recurrence properties.
• Media:Irregular_recurring_meetings.pdf : Outlook is limited to setting up a meeting series in a rigid pattern. Use this work-around to create a more flexible meeting series pattern. This approach is suitable as long as there is a stable recurrence pattern with a few exceptions.

Appointment or Meeting

When you add an event to your calendar you have the choice between:

• an "appointment" (for just 1 person):
  • an event which is put in only one persons calendar; your own calendar or the calendar of another person where you have editor rights
  • you can always add attendees later, causing the appointment becoming a meeting
• a "meeting" (for multiple persons)
  • an event with multiple persons
  • you can plan a meeting from any calendar where you have editor rights. The owner of that calendar becomes the organizer of the meeting and on his/her behalf all the meeting invites are send.
  • by default the meeting is put as tentative in the other attendees calendars
  • each attendee can the either accept/reject the meeting in which he can choose whether to inform or not to inform the organizer
  • when you accept the meeting becomes fully visible in your calendar (not tentative gray anymore)
  • when you reject the meeting is removed from your calendar

You can also appoint a so called 'delegate' for your calendar which can fully control your calendar. The delegate gets all your meeting invites, and the delegate can accept/reject meetings on your behalf. You can even configure that you yourself don't get any invites and only the delegate gets them. You then fully give the management of your calendar to your delegate. However you always are still able to edit your calendar yourself.

Respond to a Meeting Invitation

src: https://www.cedarville.edu/help/Outlook-Respond-to-a-Meeting-Invitation

When you receive a meeting invitation in Microsoft Outlook, you can respond to the meeting to accept, decline, or indicate that you are tentatively attending.

Meeting invitations will come to your inbox like an email message and will appear as events in your calendar that you need to respond to. Meeting invitations can be opened like emails and calendar events and contain a subject line, information on the people who sent and received the meeting invitation, and any further information on the meeting in the text area below. In addition to responding to the meeting invitation, you can also respond with an email to the meeting organizer or other recipients of the invitation.

How to respond to a Meeting Invitation

In outlook client you can choose one of the following responses:

• Accept: You can attend; Outlook will put the meeting on your calendar.
• Tentative: You may be able to attend; Outlook will put the meeting on your calendar as tentative.
• Decline: You cannot attend; Outlook will not put the meeting on your calendar.
• Propose New Time: You can propose a new time to the meeting organizer; if you tentatively accept and propose a new time, Outlook will put the meeting on your calendar. This option only appears if it is enabled by the meeting organizer.
• Respond: Send an email message to the meeting organizer; Outlook puts the meeting on your calendar as tentative and notes that you still need to respond. This option only appears if it is enabled by the meeting organizer.

Once you select a response, choose one of the options from the dropdown menu:

• Edit the Response before Sending: You can write a message to the meeting organizer to send along with your meeting response (accepted, tentativly accepted, declined).
• Send the Response Now: Outlook will automatically send an email to the meeting organizer with your meeting response (accepted, tentativly accepted, declined).
• Do not Send a Response: Outlook will record your meeting response in your calendar but will not send an email with your response to the meeting organizer.
• Propose a New Time: If you chose "Propose New Time" as a meeting response, you can use the scheduling window to suggest to the organizer a new meeting time.

Accept/reject meeting only in your calendar without sending the organizer a response

As organizer you can invite people for a meeting with disabling the option for requesting an response. The organizer just wants to invite people but doesn't care whether you accept the meeting. An invitee will only see an Accept/Reject/Tentative buttons without dropdown menu. If you accept the meeting it will be put as an accepted meeting in your calendar, but the outlook client will never send the organizer a response email. So the organizer isn't informed who did accept/reject the meeting. But that is ok, because he doesn't care, and just doesn't wants these response emails.

IMPORTANT: unfortunately alternative clients then the outlook client don't implement the request for no response. A solution to this problem is to add '(please do not respond)' as suffix to your meeting request. Then when you receive a meeting invitation with a subject that contains '(please do not respond)' and you use

• apple calendar: then do not accept nor reject the meeting but just don't do anything and leave the meeting tentative, because the apple calendar will always sends a reply message to the origanizer when you accept/reject.
• thunderbird calendar configured for exchange with lightning and tbsync plugins: the accept/reject buttons still have a dropdown menu and don't change to just simply buttons a is done by outlook. This is because thunderbird doesn't recognize the 'do not repsonse' attribute in the invite. However by looking at the subject we see that the organizer doesn't want a response. To confirm with this request we can choose in the pulldown menu accept/reject without sending a reponse. Note that thunderbird also doesn't support the feature 'Edit the Response before Sending' in the pulldown menu.
• thunderbird calendar with lightning plugin but not correctly configured for exchange: in newer clients you don't get the buttons if thunderbird is not correctly configured for outlook, but if you have an older thunderbird version you still can get accept/reject buttons. However they then just don't work, so it doesn't matter whetter you press them or not.

The best solution is just to accept/reject meetings in either the outlook web app or the outlook desktop application. Then everything works!

Copying appointments (within or between calendars where you have editor permission)

• mass copy appointments, src: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5-zizeUQE0

  => select multiple in one agenda -> CTRL-C
  => go to other agenda, click on date of first appointment
  => CTRL-V
  
  note: if you copy in list view then you don't have to click on date of first appointment in the 
        agenda you want to copy to
        

• mass delete appointments:

    go to list view
    select an agenda
    filter items with "BLOCK"
    CTRL-A  and press DELETE  
    
    => all "BLOCK" appointments deleted          

• Drag & drop method, src: https://www.msoutlook.info/question/659

     Hold CTRL and click on all except one of the appointments that you wish to move.
     Click and continue to hold down your mouse button when selecting the last appointment.
     Release CTRL but still hold down your mouse button.
     While still holding down your mouse button, move the selection to the preferred time slot.
     Release your mouse button.

Distribution list and security group

Two kinds of groups:

• distribution list:
  • is a mail group: from your ru-mail you can send emails to a distributionlist;
  • is a calendar group: within the outlook calendar you can plan a meeting with a distributionlist
  • by convention all distributions lists are distinguished by the suffix '-L' in their names
• security group:
  • is a security group: in the outlook calendar you can share you calendar to people in a security group
  • by convention all security groups are distinguished by the prefix 'agendabeheer' in their names

We have configured above groups in such way that :

• the scientific programmers and Simone Meeuwsen can only edit these groups
• only members from the "agendabeheer iCIS instituut" security group can use these groups.

iCIS Policy

Policy: every staff member must at least give full read access to the management assistants

By default people within the Radboud University can only see when you are free or busy, but they cannot see the details of your appointments. People outside the Radboud University cannot see anything.

Every staff member must at least give full read access to the management assistants. The reason for this it that they can more easily plan meetings, and can see if somebody is at the university or away. However for the management assistants it is preferred that they are granted full read and write rights. However you are free to choose whether you want to allow this. Finally to let a section's management assistant plan meetings between people of different sections within iCIS you have to grant full read access to all management assistents. To make this easy for you we have created the group "Agendabeheer iCIS All management assistants" to which you can give full read access and then all management assistents in this group get full read access.

Agendabeheer groups to implement the policy

You have to give full read access to "Agendabeheer iCIS All management assistants" by giving the "Full details" permission in the outlook web client, or the similar "Reviewer" permission in outlook Desktop Client. "Full details" permission and "Reviewer" permission are different names by the two different clients for the same permission.

Optionally you can also give full read and write permission by giving the "Editor" permission to either all management assistants or your section's management assistant. Note: the "Editor" permission name is used by both desktop as web client.

To be flexible in (temporary) change of a management assistant in a section we also created a group per section to which you can give the "Editor" permission:

• Agendabeheer iCIS DaS management assistant
• Agendabeheer iCIS DiS management assistant
• Agendabeheer iCIS Sws management assistant

Give the permission to your section's specific group. Then when the management assistant in your section changes, then this group will be updated by some administrator and you don't have to change anything. Note that otherwise when we would give permission to a specific management assistent that under a change the whole department would have to change their permissions.

Set or change sharing permissions of your calendar

in the outlook desktop application (OPA)

set/change permissions

• Open the outlook desktop application.
• In the bottom left corner click on the calendar icon to open your calendar.
• Right mouse-click on the "Calendar" in the right column to open a context menu.
• In the context menu select: "Sharing permissions..."
• Then an popup window appears:
  • select the person(s) you want to share your calendar with; click the "Add" button to add the person first if the person is not listed yet.
  • in the "Permission Level" dropdown box select the permission you want to give to that person.
  • for the iCIS policy do:
    • "Agendabeheer iCIS All management assistants"  : "Editor" permission
    • "Agendabeheer iCIS Institute"  : "Reviewer" permission

in the outlook web application (OWA)

IMPORTANT:

 Only use the OWA if you want to set or change sharing permissions with a single person.
 - 
 Because when using the OWA to change sharing permissions everyone granted a permission gets an email message!  
 For example if you share read right to the "ICIS institute" using OWA then everyone in ICIS gets an email. 
 -
 So it is better to use the  Outlook Desktop Application (OPA) instead in which 
 you can change your calendar sharing permissions without sending emails!!
 -
 If you don't have the Outlook Desktop Application (OPA) installed, you can temporarily add your account 
 to a colleague's OPA. Change the permissions there, and remove the account again. No emails will be sent.

set permissions

• Login to: https://mail.ru.nl
• Select on the top right "Calendar"
• Left mouse-click on the "Calendar" in the left column to open your own calendar.
• Right mouse-click on the "Calendar" in the right column to open a context menu.
• In the context menu select: "Share calender"
• Then on right side a column opens:
  • choose the person(s) you want to share your calendar with
  • behind each person's name you can choose the permission you want to grant to this person

• click "Send" in the top left corner of the side column

change permissions

• Login to: https://mail.ru.nl
• Select on the top right "Calendar"
• Left mouse-click on the "Calendar" in the left column to open your own calendar.
• Right mouse-click on the "Calendar" in the right column to open a context menu.
• In the context menu select: "Permissions..."
• Then on right side a column opens where you can change the assigned permissions.
• click "Save" in the top left corner of the side column

Permission rights you can choose when sharing your outlook calendar

The outlook desktop client allows you to set sharing to the following permissions:

  +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |   Permission    |                                         Description                                          |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |      Owner      |The Owner role gives full control of the folder. An Owner can create, modify, delete, and read|
  |                 |folder items; create subfolders; and change permissions on the folder.                        |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                 |The Publishing Editor role has all rights granted to an Owner, except the right to change     |
  |Publishing Editor|permissions. A Publishing Editor can create, modify, delete, and read folder items and create |
  |                 |subfolders.                                                                                   |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |     Editor      |The Editor role has all rights granted to a Publishing Editor, except the right to create     |
  |                 |subfolders. An Editor can create, modify, delete, and read folder items.                      |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |Publishing Author|A Publishing Author can create and read folder items and create subfolders but can modify and |
  |                 |delete only folder items that he or she creates, not items created by other users.            |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |     Author      |An Author has all rights granted to a Publishing Author but cannot create subfolders. An      |
  |                 |Author can create and read folder items and modify and delete items that he or she creates.   |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |Nonediting Author|A Nonediting Author can create and read folder items but cannot modify or delete any items,   |
  |                 |including those that he or she creates.                                                       |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |    Reviewer     |A Reviewer can read folder items but nothing else.                                            |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |   Contributor   |A Contributor can create only folder items and cannot read items.                             |
  |-----------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |      None       |The None role has no access to the folder.                                                    |
  +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    src: https://www.marquette.edu/its/help/emarqinfo/permissions.shtml

The outlook web client has a different naming convention for the sharing permissions. The following list displays the mapping of the named permissions in the Desktop client with similar ones in the Web client:

  +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |Calendar permission role in Desktop Client            |Calendar Sharing equivalent  in Web client               |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Owner                                                 |No equivalent - displays as Limited Details              |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Publishing Editor                                     |No equivalent - displays as Limited Details              |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Editor + View Private Items                           |Delegate                                                 |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Editor                                                |Editor                                                   |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Publishing Author                                     |No equivalent - displays as Limited Details              |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Author                                                |No equivalent - displays as Limited Details              |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Nonediting Author                                     |No equivalent - displays as Limited Details              |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Reviewer                                              |Full Details                                             |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Contributor                                           |No equivalent - displays as Limited Details              |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Free/Busy time, subject, location                     |Limited Details                                          |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |Free/Busy time                                        |Availability Only                                        |
  |------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------|
  |None                                                  |Doesn't display in list                                  |
  +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
     src: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/benw/2015/01/21/the-mystery-of-calendar-permissions-explained/

Notes:

• Only in the outlook desktop client you can change your default sharing permission of the calendar. By default this permission is set to "Free/Busy". You cannot change this in the web client.
• In the outlook web client one can choose permissions for "outside the organisation" however these are ignored by the server. People outside the organisation have no permissions.
• Only in the outlook web client one can set the permission to "delegate". This is the same as the "editor" permission but with the extra feature that invites for meetings are also send to the delegate. So the delegate can accept/reject meetings for the person sharing his calendar.