a LuxSoft product

LuxCal Event calendar

Administrator's Guide

Table of Content

  1. Introduction

  2. Managing the Calendar

    1. Event Categories

    2. Calendar Users

    3. Calendar Database

    4. CSV File Import

    5. iCal File Import/Export

    6. Calendar Settings

  3. Advanced functions

    1. Changing the Lay-out of Events

    2. Event Check Mark and To Do List

    3. Proposing / Approving Events

    4. Sidebar with Upcoming Events or Todo List

    5. Color-coding of Events

  4. Calendar Settings - Description


1. Introduction

After the LuxCal calendar has been installed or upgraded, using the installation_guide.html, this Administrator's Guide is meant to help the calendar administrator to set up the more advanced functions of the LuxCal calendar and to maintain the calendar so that it's functionality meets the needs of the users in the best possible way.

2. Managing the Calendar

Managing the LuxCal calendar is the responsibility of the calendar administrator, who has all calendar access rights.

In order to define users, to set up categories for the calendar, to change configuration settings and to add events, you must select Log In in the navigation bar at the top right corner of the screen. Enter the administrator name or email address and password you specified during the installation, and log in. On the right side of the navigation bar the administrator drop down menu will be displayed.

a. Event Categories

A good place to start in managing your calendar is to create a number of categories for your events, each with its own color. Adding categories with different colors - though not required - will greatly enhance the views of the calendar. Categories can be for example: meeting, important, holiday, birthday, etc.

The initial installation has only one category which is named "no cat". To manage categories, select Categories in the administrator drop down menu. This takes you to a page with a list of all categories where you can add new categories and edit or delete current categories.

When adding / editing events the defined categories can be selected from a pull down list. The order in which categories are displayed in the pull down list is determined by the Sequence field on the Categories page.

The field "Repeat" can be used to pre-define recurring events. A category "birthday" or "anniversary" can be set to repeat every year. If a repeat value is specified, all events defined in this category will repeat as specified. The repeat value specified here will overrule possible user 'repeat' settings.

When activated, the field "Event needs approval" will activate the propose/approve feature for events in this category. For a detailed description, see "Proposing / Approving Events" in section 3 below.

The checkbox "Public" can be unchecked to exclude certain event categories from being viewed by the "Public User" and from the RSS feeds.

A check mark can be activated which will be displayed in front of the event title for all events in this category. The user can use this check mark to flag events, for example, as "approved" or "completed". Events in this category will appear in the ToDo list, which can be opened from the calendars navigation bar.

The fields Text Color and Background define the colors used to display events in the calendar assigned to this category.

b. Calendar Users

The Users menu in the navigation bar allows the user(s) with 'manager' rights or the calendar administrator to add and edit users, their rights for using LuxCal and their user interface language. There are two main areas that can be edited, i.e. the name / e-mail address / password area and the access rights area. Possible access rights are: "None", "View", "Post Own", "Post All", "Manager" and "Admin". It is important to use a valid email address for each user to be able to receive email notifications of due dates of events. For each user the default user-interface language can be specified. Whenever a user logs in, the user-interface language will be set to this language.

The initial installation has two users defined. One is the Public Access user, who initially has "view" access and the other is the calendar administrator, with the administrator name, email address and password specified during the calendar installation. The administrator has all access rights.

Unless the calendar administrator has given "View" access to Public Access users, users must log in to use the calendar using their name or email address and password. Depending on the type of user, a user can have different access rights which can be set by the calendar administrator.

If the administrator has enabled user self-registration on the Settings page, users can register themselves via the Login page. Self-registered users have the access rights specified by the administrator on the Settings page.

Explanation of User Rights:

c. Calendar Database

The Database menu in the navigation bar allows the calendar administrator to start the following functions:

d. CSV File Import

CSV (Comma Separated Values) text files with event data can be imported into the LuxCal calendar. This function can for instance be used to import a CSV file with event data exported by MS Outlook. The dialogue to import CSV files is opened by selecting CSV Import from the admin drop-down menu in the navigation bar.

The CSV file contains one line per event and each line contains a number of fields each separated by a comma (or any other unique character). The order of the fields in each line of the CSV file is: title, venue, category id, date, end date, start time, end time and description. The first line of the CSV file is ignored by the import function and can be used for column descriptions (default in MS Outlook exports).

Sample CSV files - with different date/time formats - can be found in the files/ directory of the LuxCal Calendar installation and have the file extension ".csv".

e. iCal File Import/Export

Events from iCalendar files can be imported into the LuxCal calendar. The content of the iCal file to be imported must meet the [RFC5545 standard] of the Internet Engineering Task Force. The LuxCal calendar can also export events into an iCal file which can be downloaded by the calendar administrator. The dialogue to import/export iCal files is opened by selecting iCal Import / iCal export from the admin drop-down menu in the navigation bar.

This function can for instance be used to back up the events of your LuxCal calendar, or to exchange events with other calendars, e.g. to import public holidays available in iCalendar format on the internet. Please note that some LuxCal event fields are not supported in the iCalendar format (e.g. private event, notify, email addresses) and consequently are not copied to the iCal file. Some iCal event repetition rules are not supported by the LuxCal calendar; these events will be displayed and earmarked as such, but will not be added to the calendar.

Various sample iCal files can be found in the files/ directory of the LuxCal Calendar installation and have the file extension ".ics".

f. Calendar Settings

The Settings page in the administrator's menu on the navigation bar can be used to easily change the calendar's configuration settings which are stored in the settings table of the database. These settings, for instance, define the calendar title, the time zone, the language file to be used for the user interface, the default initial view when the calendar is started, the number of weeks/months displayed in the various views, the date and time format, etc.

IMPORTANT: Currently the TimeZone is set to "Europe/Amsterdam". If you are in a different time zone, change the TimeZone to your local time zone. See the PHP Supported Time Zones for possible values.

3. Advanced Functions

The normal day-to-day use of the calendar is explained in the help file which can be viewed by selecting 'Help' (or the question mark) on the right side of the calendar's navigation bar. There are however a number of more advanced functions which can be enabled / configured by users with manager rights or by the calendar administrator.

These advanced functions are described hereafter.

a. Changing the Lay-out of Events

On the Settings page, the admin can specify which fields of the event body are in use and in which order they will be displayed in the various views. This can be done via the 'Event template' under kbd>Views by specifying a sequence of numbers in the range 1 - 7, where each number represents an event field.

Possible fields in the event body:

Fields (numbers) which are not specified, will not be visible in the calendar views. Extra fields 1 and 2 are custom free-format fields for which the admin can specify a dedicated label on the same Settings page under Events. If the these fields have been specified, the field label as well as the content will be displayed. In the calendar views active fields which are empty will not be shown. The Event window will of course always show all active fields, including the empty fields.

Example: Event template "43126", with the label for Extra field 1 set to "Department", will for instance result in the following event body lay-out (explanation between brackets):

 Department: Sales (extra field 1 with label "Department")
 Emmett Brown will be working on-site for the BTTF project. (description)
 Venue: Hill Valley (venue)
 Category: Absent (event category)
 (Notify: 4 day(s)) (This line is not displayed, because no email notification was requested)

On the Settings page, the fields 'Hover box event fields' under Views, 'Event fields - mini calendar hover box' under Mini Calendar and 'Event fields - sidebar hover box' under Stand-Alone Sidebar can be used by the admin to specify the event fields to be displayed in the various hover boxes. The order of the specified numbers determine the order of the displayed fields.

a. Event Check Mark and To Do List

On the admin's Categories page, when adding/editing an event category, if you select "Check mark" and specify a label and a check mark, events in this category will have a check mark displayed just in front of the event title in the various views. For the owner of the event and users with "manager" rights this check mark is a hyperlink and, when clicked, will open a window to check/uncheck the check mark. This feature can be used for instance to mark an event as "complete" or "done". Events with a check mark will show up in the To Do list, which - when enabled by the administrator - can be selected from the calender's navigation bar.

b. Proposing / Approving Events

On the admin's Categories page, when adding/editing an event category, if you select "Events need approval", users with post rights can - in this category - create events which are not visible to other users until a user with at least "manager" rights has approved the event. Until the event has been approved, no other user will see the event and both the originator and users with manager rights will see the proposed event in the various views displayed with a red bar on the left side. Once a user with "manager" rights has approved the event, the event will become visible to all users and the event will be locked and cannot be edited anymore by the originator. A user with at least manager rights can still edit the event. Of course, if you don't like the words "proposing" and "approving", you could for example also consider the words "booking" and "confirming".

c. Sidebar with Upcoming Events or Todo List

A stand-alone sidebar with upcoming events or a Todo list (see above) can be integrated in your web page. The advantage of the sidebar, compared to embedding the calendar in an html iframe, is that the sidebar is displayed in a <div> container and can be freely styled to match the style of your web page. Further detail on how to add one or more stand-alone sidebars to your web page can be found in the installation_guide.html. Examples of what a sidebar can look like can be found on the LuxSoft Demo page.

d. Color-coding Events

When defining user accounts, a background color can be assigned to each user and when defining event categories, a text color and a background color can be assigned to each category. On the admin's Settings page, under Events, the admin can select whether the color of the event titles in the various views should correspond to the color of the user (the originator of the event) or the event category assigned to the event.

4. Calendar Settings - Description

The calendar settings which are automatically generated during the installation process are stored in the settings table of the database. All settings can be changed by the calendar administrator via the Settings page in the drop down menu on the navigation bar at the top right corner of the screen.

For those interested in technical details: The following are explanations of the PHP variables stored in the settings table of the database:


 - End of Administrator's Guide -

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