Chapter 5. Entering Data

Events

Events are future or past appointments, like business meetings, personal anniversaries and cinema visits. An event can also take several days, like holidays.

Entering a new event is very easy. Just choose the ActionsNew Event... menu item. A window with six tabs at the bottom will appear.

If you wish you can use a different way to create a new event:

  1. Use the Date Navigator to go to the event date.

  2. Switch to Agenda view and click the desired view's icon on the View Toolbar or select the desired view from the Go menu. Since your event starts at a particular time, you should choose a view that displays hours of the day. You may choose Day, Work Week view or Week view. The Month view is more suitable for to-dos, described below.

  3. In the main panel, double click the time and date when your event starts.

  4. A dialog with six tabs at the bottom of the window appears. Enter your data as described below.

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog

This is a thorough description of the individual event window fields and widgets. Not all fields have to be filled in; some can be left empty. Read the Required fields section for detailed information. And if you prefer to learn by example, there's one in the Entering event section.

Summary:

Enter a short description of the event into the Summary field. This description is the text shown on the KOrganizer main panel.

Location:

Enter short description of the location where the event will take place.

Start and End

The KOrganizer suggested Start and End dates of your event. Events are expected to start and end on the same date. Change these dates as desired. Enter the dates directly or use the Calendar Widget. Select the time from quarter hour intervals, or enter the desired time directly into the time fields. These fields are only available when the All Day box is not checked.

General Tab

Details:

Enter a long description of the event in the large, untitled rectangle. You can write as many details as you wish here. For example, If the event is, say, planned general repair of your car, you can list all items that need repairing. Later on you can print this list and hand it over to the serviceman. If the event is shopping, you should list the goods that you need to buy. Print the event and take it to the shop with you.

Tags

You can assign several tags to a calendar item. Click the ... button to display all available tags. Check the tag boxes to assign suitable tags to the event.

You can also add a new tag, modify a tag, or delete a tag in the Manage Tags dialog. Open this dialog with SettingsManage Tags.

Tip

Your language lesson at work may belong to both Business and Education tags, while the anniversary of your marriage belongs to either Personal or Special Occasion - it is your choice.

Access:

Choose Public, Private or Confidential to keep the event private or confidential. Currently, this choice correctly sets the CLASS attribute of the events to PUBLIC, PRIVATE or CONFIDENTIAL. However, whether these settings are really used to restrict the access of the information depends on the client and/or groupware server implementation.

Warning

Currently, KOrganizer will display items owned by other people and marked as confidential. Other clients may treat them differently, but be careful when publishing private or confidential events: iCalendar is a text file format, and can be read with any text editor (if someone has read access to them). So if you want to keep items really confidential, make sure you use a resource that only you can access.

Attendees Tab

Choose in this tab the people you want to invite to your event.

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog - Attendees tab

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog - Attendees tab

Meeting Organizer:

Sets the identity corresponding to the organizer of this to-do or event. If KOrganizer is configured to send invitation emails, the identity selected on this combo box will be used when sending these emails. The default identity can be set in the Personal section of the KOrganizer configuration. In addition, identities are gathered from your KMail settings and from your address book.

Attendee list

The list in the center of the tab displays the attendees selected for this event, and lets you add attendees by entering the name and mail address, edit or remove them.

If the attendee(s) are in your Address Book, you do not have to remember or type his email address to add it to the attendee list. Just click the Select Addressee... button and choose the attendee(s) from the list. Please note that this is the standard KDE address book, which is also used by KMail and can also be called as a separate application (KAddressBook).

Participants

Choose the role of the attendee (Participant, Optional Participant, Observer, Chair) from the drop down menu at the left side of an entry. The role is a simple reminder of what part the attendee plays in this event.

Status

Choose the status of the attendee (Needs Action, Accepted, Declined, Tentative, Delegated) from the drop down menu at the right side of an entry. If you use groupware schedule and request responses from your attendees, as you receive the responses the status of the attendee will be updated. If you do not request responses, you will have to update the status manually.

Request Response

Select Request Response from the drop down box if this attendee should respond to your schedule plan. Consequently the attendee will be emailed with the event schedule information. A small envelope will appear in the details list to indicate this. This feature is specially useful when groupware scheduling is enabled, as the attendee's status is updated automatically.

Reminder Tab

Reminder

Select a default reminder in the drop down box and press Add if KOrganizer should remind you about an event.

Use the Configure button to open the Edit existing reminder dialog. Using this dialog, you can choose how many minutes, hours or days before or after the events start or end you want to be reminded, you can set repeating intervals for your reminders, and create special reminders that display text or play sounds.

Recurrence tab

Some events take place regularly. You can specify their exact scheduling here.

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog - Recurrence tab

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog - Recurrence tab

Note

To activate the settings, start by selecting a recurrence rule at the right of Repeats from the drop down box. If Never is selected, you are not able to make any changes on this tab.

Recurrence Rule

Choose if you want to repeat this event daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. More detailed options are as follows:

Daily

Specify whether the event occurs every day (1), every other day (2) and so on.

Weekly

Specify whether the event occurs every week (1), every other week (2) and so on. Also specify the days (Sunday ... Monday) on which the event occurs.

Monthly

You can either have the event occur on the same day of the month, or in a specific week on a specific day of the week. You need to choose between these two possibilities. By default, KOrganizer assumes you want to repeat on the same calendar day of the month (for instance the 15th). You can also adjust the period, so you can repeat monthly, tri-monthly and so on.

Yearly

This is similar to Monthly. You need to choose whether or not you are indicating a calendar day of the year (e.g., the 250th day of the year), in a specific week on a specific day of the week of a month (e.g., the 2nd Tuesday of March), or the day of the month in a particular month of the year. By default, KOrganizer assumes you mean the day of the month. You can adjust the period to reflect events that occur bi-annually, every four years, and so on.

Recurrence Range

By default, events which repeat will do so forever; there is no end to the repetition. This may or may not be desirable, so you are able to terminate the repetition by selecting an end date or a number of occurrences.

Exceptions

You may have a very nice recurrence rule set up, but realize that there are a few exceptions. If you set up your college class schedule for instance, you may want to make exceptions for holidays and the like. In this area, you can add, change, and delete dates from the list of exceptions (i.e. times when even if the recurrence rule matches, the event will not be scheduled). Pick a date with the date selector, and press Add to include it. For removing dates, highlight them in the box on the right side, and then click Delete.

Attachments

Events and to-dos can contain attachments. Attachments can either be stored as links or inline. To add an attachment press the Add button.

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog - Attachments tab

A screenshot of KOrganizer's Edit Event dialog - Attachments tab

Checking Store attachment inline will cause the attachment to be stored inside your calendar, which can take a lot of space depending on the size of the attachment. If this option is not checked, then only a link pointing to the attachment will be stored. Do not use a link for attachments that change often or may be moved (or removed) from their current location.

The following actions in the context menu are provided to work with attachments:

Open

Display the selected attachment with the associated application.

Save As...

Allows to save an existing attachment with a different name.

Copy, Cut and Paste

Allows to copy, cut and paste to and from the clipboard.

Remove

Deletes the selected attachment.

Properties...

Allows to change an existing attachment.

Free/Busy

When adding attendees to your event, you need to know if they are busy or free in that particular time. If the attendees make their free / busy information available, you can view here their schedule before sending the invitations.

This shows the free/busy schedule chart on the right, where each line represents one of the attendees, listed on the left. The marked areas on the chart represent the time already taken by other events, unmarked areas represent time free from other events. You can move the event to a different point in time by dragging it with the mouse, or resize it by moving the edges of the highlighted area with the mouse.

The free/busy information is only available if the attendee publishes his free/busy schedule, and if KOrganizer is correctly configured to retrieve it. For more information about configuring KOrganizer to publish and retrieve free/busy information, please check the Chapter 7, KOrganizer Configuration. Double-clicking on an attendee entry in the list will allow you to enter the location of their free/busy information.

Scale

Sets the zoom level on the schedule chart. Hour shows a range of several hours, Day shows a range of a few days, Week shows a range of a few months, and Month shows a range of a few months, while Automatic selects the range most appropriate for the current event or to-do.

Center on Start

Press this button to center the free/busy schedule chart on the start time and day of this event.

Pick Date

Press this button to automatically move the event to a date and time when all the attendees are free.

Reload

Press this button to reload Free/Busy data for all attendees from the corresponding servers.

When you want to confirm, call off or revert the entered data, choose among the Action Buttons OK, Apply and Cancel.

Manage Templates

The Manage Templates button opens a dialog which enables you to save the current event as a template, so that you can reuse the data entered for future events. As an example you can save a template for a meeting that takes place at the same location and with the same people.

With the Apply button you can use an existing template for your event. Continuing the example in the preceding paragraph you can specify the agenda of the meeting.