Oracle Calendar Etiquette
Calendar Overview
Using Oracle Calendar, individuals can schedule events, meetings or resources (conference rooms, vans, etc) with others in their own unit and with anyone else using Oracle Calendar. The opportunity for collaboration with your peers, colleagues and/or student(s) is greatly enhanced when units make a decision for all to use the calendar. However, along with the benefits of such a service comes, unfortunately, the potential for confusion and misunderstanding. As we see the use of Oracle Calendar grow here at NC State, we believe it will be helpful to consider how Oracle Calendar handles the scheduling of meetings and to explore some issues that may arise. We will also touch on how to handle scheduling events when others that you may be scheduling are using a different calendar system (Groupwise) or none at all.
How Oracle Calendar Schedules Meetings
When you schedule a meeting with another person(s) using Oracle Calendar, you are actually issuing them an invitation to attend the meeting; you are not actually scheduling a “confirmed” meeting. An entry is automatically placed on the other person's calendar, and they then accept or reject the invitation. In short, don’t think that because you’ve scheduled a meeting on another person’s calendar that they will attend. They must confirm. You can also send them an email message with more details about the meeting.
If they accept the meeting or do nothing, the meeting remains on their calendar. The person can choose to accept, decline, or leave it as tentative on their calendar. They cannot actually delete the meeting because they did not schedule it. However, others can still schedule a meeting at this same time even though their calendar shows them as busy (if you use the “busy search” feature, it will not show this time as free). Because some people do have busy schedules, when you place an event on someone else's calendar, be thoughtful and schedule only the time you need.
Some Thoughts about Scheduling with Others
ITD strongly recommends that if your department decides to encourage (or mandate) the use of an electronic calendar, that guidelines be developed and agreed upon so that scheduling of people and resources is understood and done in a consistent manner. Also, if some people in your unit choose not to use the calendar, a discussion should be held so that you can discuss ways of scheduling them and alerting others to the fact they are scheduled differently.
Before developing any guidelines, a department (or individual) may want to use Oracle Calendar for awhile so that people settle on a comfortable scheduling protocol with themselves and their colleagues. In many cases, you'll schedule meetings directly (i.e., place an item on someone else's calendar by inviting them to the meeting). In other cases you may want to consider a different approach. Some thoughts to consider:
- If the person with whom you're scheduling a meeting is someone in your own department or someone you know well, it may be fine to directly invite this person to a meeting. If you are not sure, you might ask first.
If you don't feel comfortable placing an entry on a person's calendar (for example, a student might not feel comfortable putting an entry on their professor’s calendar), you might:
- Ask them to view your calendar and invite you to a meeting. By asking them to place an entry on your schedule you're not stepping on their "territory" but allowing them to step on yours.
- Use Oracle Calendar to identify a date and time during which you are both available for a meeting. You can then convey this information to the other person via an email message that might contain a question like: "It appears that we’re both available on Tuesday, March 30, 2 PM – 3 PM, could we meet then?" In this scheme, both parties view (only) their own calendar and schedule the meeting onto their own calendar.
- Select various dates and times during which you are available and send them this information in an email. They can then check their calendar and reply back to you. Again, both parties view (only) their own calendar and schedule the meeting onto their own calendar.
- Be thoughtful about scheduling meetings – give as much lead time as you can so that they see the meeting and plan accordingly. It is never a good idea to schedule a meeting 15 minutes before you’d like to meet and expect the other person to be there – unless you call first!
What if the people I’m scheduling don’t use Oracle Calendar?
As mentioned earlier, Oracle calendar is not the only calendar in use on the campus of NC State. Many administrative users use Groupwise as their system and unfortunately, Groupwise and Oracle calendar cannot “talk” to each other. In cases such as this, you have a couple of different choices for scheduling meetings:
- If you will need to regularly schedule meetings with Groupwise users, you may want to consider requesting a Groupwise account. You can set yourself up in Groupwise so that you cannot be scheduled, but you will be able to schedule others. For more information on Groupwise, see http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/etss/
- If you have a secretary or administrative assistant, you may wish to request a Groupwise account for them; they can then schedule meetings with Groupwise users for several people in your department.
- You can always send email to non-Oracle users and suggest meeting times and then confirm with them via email as well. This method is probably the one you will use for people that do not use an electronic calendar.
- If you simply wish to let someone know about a meeting, you always have the option of including them in email when you setup the meeting in Oracle.
- Use the Global Viewing Agenda option. This allows you to send a URL to someone via email and they can view your calendar without having an Oracle account.
The University is aware that the lack of a unified calendaring system is problematic and NC State is in the process of hiring a CIO (Chief Information Officer). It is hoped that the hiring of a CIO will facilitate the business model of standardizing on one calendar for all of campus to use (faculty, staff, and students).
Some Thoughts about Oracle Calendar Agenda Items
In Oracle Calendar, the creator of a meeting owns the event. They, and only they, can make changes or delete the agenda item. Even though that item has been placed on someone's calendar, the invitee can not make changes to the calendar (agenda) item. They can only decline the invitation and elect to view (or not view) the declined agenda items.
Care should be taken when creating meetings to which others are invited so that the potential for misunderstanding and confusion is negligible. Some suggestions for creating meetings include:
- Use clear, mutually understandable titles for the agenda item. Catchy phrases or humor may be misunderstood or may not be appreciated. For example, "Monthly Meeting" may be clear to the person creating the meeting, but might be confusing for an invitee.
- Check your invitee's calendar, use the Oracle Calendar "Check conflicts", or the "Suggest date/time" features to verify that your invitee is, indeed, available to meet with you.
- Invite only those you wish to attend. Do not invite individuals to a meeting as a means to advise them of the meeting. You can always let them know via email about the meeting.
- Specify the location of the meeting; if you are unsure of the where it will be held, but you want to hold the time, put something like TBD on the location line. Once you have a room for the meeting, edit the meeting and add the room location. Remember, you can also schedule resources so you may want to check and see if the room you are scheduling is a resource and then you can do it all at once.
- If the agenda is unclear or not well understood, consider adding comments to the Details Description area of the agenda item or attaching a document (agenda) to the meeting.
- Document attachments can be Word files, spreadsheets, etc.
In Conclusion
We offer this document as a starting point for those using a new powerful tool, Oracle Calendar. We would like to invite those using Oracle Calendar to suggest additional items to be added to this list. Only by our working together can we comfortably and productively put this new service to maximum benefit for our campus community.
10/25/2006 10:30 AM by shn