iNews: General IST services and support

CalAgenda Tips: Can everyone see my calendar? Setting your access rights

Kimberly Choo and Sarah Jones, IST–WSS

"CalAgenda Tips" is a regular feature of iNews for people on campus who are using the CalAgenda online calendar service (http://calagenda.berkeley.edu/) or just want to learn more about the service. Not all topics will be of interest to all readers; some topics may be too basic for some readers and others too technical, but we hope to address the concerns and issues of as broad a segment of the campus community as possible. If you have suggestions for topic ideas, please send email to

Note: This article applies to version 9.0.4 Macintosh and Windows clients.

In the beginning.... When you first receive your CalAgenda service account, your account is set so that no one can view or modify your Agenda, Day Events, or Daily Notes, and everyone can schedule meetings with you. Unless you specifically give access rights to other people, no one can see your calendar. Using the Oracle Calendar software either on your desktop computer or via the Web, access rights can be set in four categories — designate rights, viewing rights, task rights, and scheduling rights. You can view and modify your access rights by selecting Tools|Access Rights... in the Oracle Calendar menu bar.

Figure 1. An Agenda showing meetings with different viewing rights.

Viewing rights

When someone looks at your agenda, you want them to at least know when you are free and busy. The most basic setting you can choose is to allow the others on campus to see when you are free and busy, but show no details. How?

1. After selecting Tools|Access Rights... , select Viewing in the Access Rights window.

2. At the bottom of the window, select Default: Any unlisted person. (Note: The "any unlisted person" refers to anyone not shown on the list in this window.)

3. Assign access rights in the Meetings, Day Events, Notes section. First uncheck No Viewing Rights then select View Times Only for all three access levels (Normal, Personal, and Confidential).

If you want your boss to see the actual details of your "normal" meetings, for example, type in her name and click the green check button to add her to the list. Then, select her name and allow her to View Entries for Normal and View Times Only for Personal and Confidential. Shown in Figure 1 is an example of a calendar with two events shown with all details (or View Entries access) and one entry with View Times Only. Click the OK button and voilà!

People often ask about the difference between Normal, Personal, and Confidential access levels. There isn't a set definition for the difference between these three access levels. In fact, you are the one who defines the difference between the three levels!

Once you have defined these access levels, you can specify access to meeting, day event, or notes when you create it. You can do this from the Details tab within the Meeting, Day Event, Note window.

Another common question regarding setting access rights is "How can I give my work group viewing access to my Agenda?" Currently, you need to assign access rights individual by individual. We hope new versions of the software will enable us to assign access rights to a group.

Figure 2. The Designate Rights window shown in version 6.0 of the Windows client.

Designate rights

If your calendar is managed by someone else, he or she is considered your "Designate" in the Oracle Calendar software, and you, as the owner, must grant them specific designate rights.

To do this, select Tools|Access Rights... and follow the steps below.

1. Type the name of your designate in the box at the bottom of the screen and click on the green check to add them to the list.

2. Select this individual's name from the list and uncheck the Defaults or No Designate Rights box.

3. Specify the type of access (normal, confidential, personal, and public) your designate will be allowed for your Meetings, Day Events, Notes, as well as your Tasks. At a minimum, you must allow your designate to modify your Public Entries, but you may choose any type of access for your other entries. Public Entries are meetings, events, or notes visible to everyone on the service.

Once you're finished, click the OK button at the bottom of the window.

Now, when your designate opens your calendar by selecting File|Agenda|Open As Designate... he or she will have the permissions you specified to view, modify, and reply to entries in your agenda.

Task rights

Task rights are very similar to viewing rights but simpler to set up. You can control whether other users can see the tasks included in your Agenda.

Figure 3. The Tasks Rights window shown in version 9.0.4 of the Macintosh Desktop client.

1. After selecting Tools|Access Rights... , select Tasks if you are using a Macintosh client or Viewing Tasks if you are using a Windows client.

2. At the bottom of the window, enter a specific individual's name in the box, and click on the green check to add them to the list. (If you don't know the individual's account name, select the magnifying glass icon which will open a directory search window.)

3. Select this individual's name from the list.

4. In the Viewing Task box, uncheck the Defaults and No Viewing Rights and check the box for the access level (Normal, Personal, or Confidential) you want. Select Full Viewing Rights. If you grant viewing rights for Personal, the individual will be able to see all tasks of that type only. If the Defaults box (on the Macintosh) is selected, a person is assigned the default rights for tasks.

Scheduling rights

You control who can invite you to meetings by granting scheduling rights. People who have scheduling rights can include you when they propose a meeting, daily note, or day event. Those who do not cannot invite you to meetings.

The CalAgenda default gives scheduling rights to everyone for everyone. This means that any CalAgenda user can invite you to a meeting. This works well for most people. However, senior managers may wish to restrict scheduling rights for their calendars to a smaller group of people. In this example, these senior managers would change their default setting to refuse scheduling rights for anyone other than those to whom they have been specifically granted.

To specify scheduling rights, select Scheduling from the Tools|Access Rights... window. Assign scheduling rights as desired (similar to the above steps). People's ability to invite you to meetings is independent of their ability to view your calendar or modify it.

The Web client and access rights

You can also change your access rights via the web client. After logging in to your account on the Web, select the icon in the upper right side of the window. In the Access Rights window, select the user whose access rights you wish to modify in the window on the left, or add someone to the window by typing their name in the box and then clicking on Find. Then select the name in the window and click on either Delete or Edit Access Rights.

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