Calendar
The Calendar tool allows you to manage course-related or personal events.
Instructors can add important dates for the course and students can view dates posted for
courses such as: project due dates, office hours, and exam information. All users can add
personal events to track group meetings, milestones, and deadlines etc.
While an aggregate view of students’ courses will appear in the system home page calendar,
the Calendar tool provides an integrated view to help your students stay on top of all course
work and upcoming deadlines. It is good practice to note which course each event is for (e.g.,
“Biol 101 Midterm”) to help students identify which course an event belongs to when they are at
their system homepage.
Course-related events are automatically shared with all users in the course in which you create
the event. Users can view course events that you post through the Calendar tool. You can
create course-related events in other tools and set them to appear in Calendar.
Note: Entries must be made from within a course for them to be visible to your students.
Entries made on the system home page will be visible only to you.
Accessing the Calendar tool
To access the Calendar, do one of the following:
Click the Opens the Calendar tool icon in the Events widget on a course
homepage.
Click the Opens the Calendar tool icon in the Calendar widget on a course
homepage.
Navigating the Calendar tool
The Calendar has three main areas:
The top toolbar
The side toolbar
Calendar grid
In the top toolbar you can:
-Create a New Event
-Search Events
-Delete Events
-Set your Display Options for a filter view of the Calendar
-Quick Add (create a New Event based on only a few fields)
-Print, based on your current view.
In the side toolbar you can:
-Use the Calendar link to return to the current view
-Manage how you view your Calendar and who can
access your Calendar
-Use the Date Picker to quickly locate a specific date
In the Calendar grid you can:
-View your Calendar by day, week, or month
-Use the arrows to move forward or backward in the Calendar (any view)
-Click on a date to view the Calendar for that day, or click on an event to view the full
details for that event
The Calendar also contains helpful icons which provide additional information:
Book icon indicates that an event is related to the course
Person icon indicates that an event is personal
Exclamation mark icon denotes a high priority item
Adding a New Event
To add a new event, go to the homepage of the course you wish to add an event for.
1. Access your Calendar tool in one of two ways:
o Click the Opens the Calendar tool icon in the Events widget on a course
homepage.
o Click the Opens the Calendar tool icon in the Calendar widget on a course
homepage.
2. On the Calendar page, do one of the following:
o Click New Event on the top tool bar.
o Click the drop-down Actions menu beside a date in the week or month view and
then New Event.
3. Type a title for the event in the Title field.
4. If you want to add a description, click the Description field and type a description.
5. If you want to keep the event private, select the Private Event check box. This shows
that you have an event on the day and time you set, but hides its details from other
users. If you have groups you can make the details of the event visible to specific
groups.
6. If you want to change the priority of the event, select one from the Priority drop-down
menu.
7. If you want to, add a relevant link in the Link field.
8. Select a Start and End date/time for the event.
9. If you want the event to repeat, click the Update button beside the Repeats check box
and choose a pattern for the recurrence in the pop-up menu. This would be useful for a
consistently recurring meeting or tutorial.
Note: if one event in a series is cancelled you cannot delete the single event. Instead,
add a separate event to that particular date indicating it is cancelled, e.g., Tutorial
CANCELLED.
10. In the Event Access area, select the appropriate radio button for a personal event or
course-related event.
11. If you want to share a personal event with other users, select Enable adding other
users, and click the Add Users button.
12. Click Save, or to create another event Save and New.
Add an event with Quick Add
1. Access your Calendar tool in one of two ways:
o Click the Opens the Calendar tool icon in the Events widget on a course
homepage.
o Click the Opens the Calendar tool icon in the Calendar widget on a course
homepage.
2. On the Calendar top toolbar, click Quick Add.
3. From the Quick Add window, type a title for the event in the Title field.
4. Select the All day event check box if the event takes place for an entire day.
5. Select a Start and End date/time for the event.
6. Click Add.
Searching the Calendar Tool
You can search for events on personal and public calendars using an event’s title, description,
specific date ranges, event types (i.e., personal vs. course events), or by priority.
When you search, you can use wildcards in the Search For field to help when you don’t have
the complete title for an event. The following chart describes supported search wildcards and
their usage.
Wildcard Effects on Description
Characters Search
Calendar uses this implicitly in every search. Searching for day is
any number of
% equivalent to searching for %day%, %day or day%.
any character
Example Searching for %day% returns all events where the title
or description contains a word with the sequence of characters
“day”: daydream, birthday, holidays, etc.
Use this with characters between the brackets. You don’t need to
separate characters with commas inside the brackets.
[] or/ranges
Example Searching for [CK]ath[ae]rine returns events where the
title or description contains Catharine or Katharine or Catherine or
Katherine.
Use this to search for any single character followed by, or
preceded by, a specific string of characters.
^ not Example Searching for _ob returns all events where the title or
description contain words with a three letter sequence ending in
ob. E.g., Robert, Bob, knob, etc. are included in the results, but
obstacle, obtuse, etc. would be excluded.
Use this to search for any single character followed by, or
preceded by, a specific string of characters.
one of any
- Example Searching for _ob returns all events where the title or
character
description contain words with a three letter sequence ending in
ob. E.g., Robert, Bob, knob, etc. are included in the results, but
obstacle, obtuse, etc. would be excluded.