New to Oracle calendar? Let us help you get started!
What's my userid and password?
Presently, ITD does not automatically generate Oracle accounts, but they are available to any faculty, staff, or student by simply dropping our Help Desk a note and requesting one. We'll need your Unity ID to process this request!
Once we create your account, you'll receive an email message that gives you your account information, including your calendar login ID - which is your Unity ID. Your initial password is also in this email message. We recommend that you go ahead and change your Oracle password to something other than your Unity password.
How do I access Oracle calendar?
It's easy! First, decide on whether or not you'd like to use a desktop client or the web client. Both are available and your decision to use one over the other depends on your needs and/or you may use both depending on the situation. For example, some people prefer the desktop client unless they are traveling and then they use the web client.
Oracle has desktop clients available for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris desktops. See our downloads page to get the correct client for your environment. You are welcome to install the desktop client on your office, laptop or home computer. If you will be installing connectors or synching to a PDA, refer to our training page for instructions. We currently have documentation for PDA's, Pocket PC's and Outlook Connector.
Or, if you prefer, simply use the Web client.
If I decide to use a desktop client, anything I need to know about initial settings?
Yes! Please refer to our documentation Configuring the Oracle Calendar Desktop Client [windows] [mac] [linux]. This documentation shows you where this information is entered; but below are a couple of specific items to note:
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calendar node: this information is in the initial email message that you received from the Oracle Calendar Manager.
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server: calendar.ncsu.edu
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encryption: it is essential that you turn encrpytion on so that your password is encrypted when it is sent over the network.
- Windows / Linux users choose Affine Cipher
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Macintosh users choose Light encryption
The other question you will be asked during this initial setup concerns the creation of an offline agenda. An offline agenda generates a copy of your agenda and places it on your local machine. Use of an offline agenda is optional; it depends upon your needs; if you are heavily dependent on your calendar to keep track of daily meetings, you may wish to make use of this option. However, if you say "no" now, you can easily change this option; check your preferences or options settings.
Some points to keep in mind are:
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Having an offline agenda allows you to work offline if your network connection is lost or the calendar server is down.
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You can view your agenda and make changes; these will be uploaded to your online agenda once your connection is re-established.
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You can choose to have your offline agenda updated:
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automatically everytime you exit (keep in mind that this process takes a few moments and may slow your exiting the calendar)
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by prompting you everytime you exit (since it takes a few moments, some people prefer to be prompted
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Client preferences for organizational units
Once you have your client installed, there is one more setting we recommend - turning on OU1 and OU2 so that when you are scheduling others, you will see their name and organizational unit. This is extremely helpful when you have a large user population such as NC State and there may be more than one "Joe Smith".
Making this change is documented in the client configuration documentation mentioned above, but in general, go to your preferences or options menu, look under "general" and then "user name format". You should be able to use a check-box and select OU1 and OU2.
And finally . . .
For more information on preference settings or general use questions, please refer to the documentation on our Brickyard Training page. This page also has some tips and hints on calendar etiquette.
07/16/2007 12:03 PM by shn