UNHCE Information Technology & Distance Education Blog

The UNHCE Events Calendar uses several levels of permission to control how new events are added to the calendars. Basically, any staff member can create a new event, and select the calendars they think it should appear on (if you use the UNHCE schedules application you'll be automatically recognized, otherwise you'll need to log-in.)  Each user may have specific calendars that they have rights to add an event to immediately.  If they select a calendar that they don't have permission to write to, then an email is sent to the approver(s) for that calendar.  The approver (or approvers) may then allow that event to appear on their calendar, or not.  If a calendar has several approvers (for instance the county calendars typically have all of the support staff as apporovers), the system allows whoever gets there first to take action.  (If you get an email to approve an event, but it's not there when you go to approve it, it's already been handled.)

Let's look at a specific example:

Annette Cram (support staff in Carroll County) creates a new event and selects three calendars: Carroll County, 4-H Youth, and Agricultural Resources, because she thinks the event should appear on each of these calendars.  Annette has permission to directly add events to the Carroll County and 4-H calendars, so the event will immediately appear on these.  However, she doesn't have permission to directly add events to the Ag calendar, so an email is sent to each approver for the Ag calendar (Suzanne Hebert and Juli Brussell.)  When Suzanne gets the email, she clicks the link in the email and goes to the events calendar, where she sees the event that Annette posted.  Suzanne approves the event, and it now shows up on the Ag calendar.  Later that day, Juli goes to approve the event and sees a message: "Looks like someone already handled this event...maybe you'll get here first next time!"  Juli doesn't need to take any action, as the event has already been approved.

The system was set up this way, because having only one approver for a calendar can cause problems when folks are on leave, out sick, etc.  Unlike our previous calendar system, there's no limit to the number of users we can have.  Therefore, if you'd like someone to be given permission to post events directly to your calendar, just let Steve, Faye, or Siobhan know, and we'll add them.

Another point to understand, is who has permission to edit an event's details.  If you have permission to edit an event, you'll see that option when viewing an event's details.  The person who originally created an event always has permission to edit it.  When an event is created, the user designates a primary calendar; approvers for that calendar will also be able to edit the event details.

If you have any questions about how the events calendar works, please contact Steve Judd or Faye Cragin.