Creating and changing appointment schedulings

You create an appointment scheduling as follows:

•      Select  File    New    Appointment Scheduling  in the top menu.

•      In the ‘General’ section of the ‘New Appointment Scheduling’ action form you specify the following details of the appointment scheduling.

•      Name and optional heading, tags and description. The heading appears at the top of the voting form. If missing, the name is taken as heading.

•      Suggested dates: Select the dates for the appointment. Use the drop-down menus or click on the calendar icon to activate the calendar tool. Time fields may be left open. You may add a remark to your dates, e.g. on the place or duration of the pro­posed appointment, which will also be shown to the participants. Use the [Add date] button to add more dates if three are not enough.

•      Time frame and reminder: Enter start and end of the voting period. Voting on the suggested dates is only possible within the time frame given. Specify when you want to be reminded of the end of the voting.

•      Details of participation and notification: Specify whether you want to be notified of each voting. You may also allow parti­cip­ants to suggest further participants. Specify whether participants are allowed to vote on a date with “maybe” (in addi­tion to the simple yes-no alternative).

•      In the section ‘Participants’ you specify the participants of the appointment and details of their notification.

•      Participants: Select the participants of the appointment (as you would select mem­bers of a workspace). You may enter e-mail addresses of persons who are not reg­is­tered users of your BSCW server; in the case of appointment scheduling, these persons can take part without registering as BSCW users. When you create an ap­point­ment scheduling in­side a shared workspace, the members of the work­space are preselected as parti­ci­pants by default.

•      E-Mail language: Choose the language of the invitation e-mail.

•      You may add a personal message to the participants: Enter an optional message to be added to the otherwise auto­matically generated invitation e-mail to be sent to all participants.

•      Hit [OK] to generate a preview of the voting form. Here, you have the possibility to change any details of the appointment scheduling or to start the voting process im­mediately: click on [Change appointment sched­uling] or on [Start appointment sched­uling now]. Click on [Go back] if you are satisfied with the preview and the voting is to begin at the start date given.

•      If you have started the appointment scheduling in the previous step and are a parti­ci­pant yourself, you will be asked next to vote on the dates suggested, which is ex­plained below. At this point, you may also edit the participant list by clicking on [Edit participants].

You as the organizer can change most details of the appointment scheduling. Once a partici­pant has voted, however, you cannot change the dates and the voting scheme (‘yes-no’ or ‘yes-no-maybe’), unless you reset the appointment scheduling.

•      Select   Change    Properties  in the action menu of the appointment sched­uling and change name, description, voting period, notification details, or parti­cipants. Add an optional message to be included in notification e-mails to participants of a running ap­point­ment scheduling.

•      Hit [OK] for the changes to become valid. All participants of a running appointment scheduling will be notified about the changes, new participants will be invited to vote and participants you have removed from the list will be informed.

You may start an appointment scheduling which has not yet begun at any time.

•      Select   Open  in the action menu of the appointment scheduling or click on its entry in the folder listing. In the action form, click on [Start appointment scheduling now].

If a participant suggests new participants and this has to be confirmed by you (depends on your BSCW server configuration), you will re­ceive an e-mail containing a link that takes you directly to the action form for inviting the new (and possibly other) participants.

•      The ‘Participants’ action form shows the present participants and allows to add new participants and to remove existing participants.

•      Add an optional message to be included to invitations of new participants and to e-mails to participants removed. Click [OK] when you are done.

You as the organizer may send an e-mail message to the participants of a running appointment sched­ul­ing.

•      Select   Send to    Participants  in the action menu of the appointment scheduling, enter your message and hit [OK]. You may send the message to all participants, all part­ic­ip­ants having already voted or not voted yet, or select certain participants to receive your message.

Note that not only the organizer, i.e. creator of an appointment scheduling, but also the man­ager of a workspace that contains the appointment scheduling can change an appointment sched­uling or send messages to the participants.

The voting periods of appointment schedulings may also be viewed arranged as a timeline.

•      Select  GoTo    Timeline  in the top menu of a folder to generate a timeline view of all appointment schedulings contained in the folder.

•      Further details are given in 12.1.10 Viewing tasks and projects as a timeline.