[Calendar] Re: Test custom event request forms

[Jeff Mangum]

Hi Alan,

Good forms, but I am made a bit uncomfortable by the fact that we seem
to need to create our own separate form which does not interact with
WebEvent in order to allow for public submission of events which need
multiple rooms.  I may have a solution to this which does not require
a separate form.

Right now, I have turned off the "add event" feature on the main site
calendars (NRAO Charlottesville, NRAO Socorro, NRAO Green Bank, and
NRAO Tucson).  Recall that we did that because we reasoned that it did
not make sense to request a meeting for "NRAO Charlottesville", since
there are multiple meeting rooms associated with this and all other
sites.  To allow for public multiple meeting requests, perhaps it
would be useful to:

-- Turn the "add event" feature on for the main site calendars.

-- Instruct event requesters to list which sites and which equipment
   (audio/video) will be needed for this meeting.

-- This would have the benefit of inserting *most* of the event
   information into the calendar system automatically (less work for
   the calendar admins).

-- The administrator for the calendar which received the request would
   then only have to determine which rooms are available for this
   meeting, schedule them, and edit the appropriate custom fields
   (audio/video specification) and the job would be done.

-- Even though we would like people to figure out for themselves
   exactly which rooms are available and to request them specifically,
   in reality I can't see many users actually doing this.  In general,
   I think that "Joe NRAO User" will simply want to request, for
   example, a meeting involving NRAO GB, TUC, and CV, and let the
   calendar administrators figure out the details (i.e. which rooms at
   these three sites are available at the specified time).

-- The details within the WebEvent emails which indicate that there is
   a public event request should be ignored.  As I have said before,
   they are excessively verbose (like this email message!).  The only
   purpose they serve is to tell the calendar admins that there is a
   public event request that they need to do something about.

In the end, the scheme I have listed seems to be much less work for
the administrators.

Cheers,

Jeff


"Alan" == Alan Bridle <abridle at nrao.edu> writes:

Alan> Jeff, Gareth,
Alan> Sheila Marks was having some problems reading WebEvent's own event-request
Alan> emails and I was also interested in looking into an event submission form 
Alan> that would allow users to request events on multiple calendars.  So I've 
Alan> been working with her to try an email-submission format that might be more
Alan> applicable to the NRAO case than the canned "ADD EVENT" form in WebEvent.  
Alan> I now have a trial meeting submission form at

Alan> http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~abridle/reserve.shtml

Alan> and a trial visitor calendar entry form at

Alan> http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~abridle/visitor.shtml

Alan> These talk to the same perl script which I'm hacking at

Alan> /nraoweb/nrao/active/internal/reserve.pl

Alan> with my admittedly limited knowledge of perl (but apparently just 
Alan> adequate to for this narrowly-defined task!).  

Alan> The form sends an email to a mailing list (currently just to me
Alan> for test purposes, but this can be the calendar schedulers list if
Alan> we decide to go live with it) and it also reflects an image of the email 
Alan> to the user's web browser.  It's based on a formmail script that passes
Alan> the Murphy security test by being written by P.M. himself :)

Alan> Comments on this, and any tests using your own browser interfaces,
Alan> would be most welcome.  I've tried it from Mozilla, Konqueror, Netscape
Alan> and IE with reasonable results so far.

Alan> If you think this is helpful, we can link these pages to a calendar-access
Alan> page like the one now at 

Alan> http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~abridle/videoconf/schedule.shtml

Alan> and then put the whole lot on the main NRAO website.

Alan> Alan