The calendar widget displays a small monthly calendar showing an overview of upcoming events. A larger area shows the Scheduler, a more detailed calendar with a number of options: you can set it to to display a Day, Week, or Month, or choose a more event-oriented Agenda setting.
Figure 1: The default view is set in configuration, but a user can change it at any time.
Two calendars are included by default when the widget is first added to a page: a personal calendar for the current user and a Site calendar for the current Site. These are displayed in the widget’s lower left. Next to each calendar is a colored box: click it to show/hide that calendar’s events in the main viewing area.
Adding New Calendars
To create a new personal calendar,
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Click on the arrow to the right of the My Calendars header and select Add Calendar from the menu.
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Fill in the Add Calendar form. Give the calendar a name and description, set a time zone, and decide if it’s your user’s default calendar—the one that is shown automatically whenever the widget is displayed. You can also pick a color, which color codes events whenever multiple calendar’s events are displayed at once. You can also decide to enable ratings or comments on the calendar’s events, and configure permissions.
To edit an existing calendar instead of adding a new one, select Manage Calendars from the menu.
To add or edit a Site calendar, open the menu next to the header with the Site’s name.
Figure 2: Personal and Site calendars are shown in the lower left. This image shows calendars belonging to User *Test Test* and Site *Liferay DXP*.
Adding Events to a Calendar
To add events to a calendar,
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Click on any day in the main viewing area to open an event creation pop up. If you’ve selected the Day or Week view, you can click on the specific time when your event begins.
Figure 3: When you click anywhere on the calendar, you'll see the event creation pop up appear. Click *Edit* to specify details for your event.
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Name your event and assign it to a calendar. Click Save to create the event immediately or Edit to enter additional information.
Figure 4: You can specify event details such as the event title, start date, end date, description, location, and more.
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If you clicked Edit, complete the Edit Event form. Enter start and end times and enter a description. To schedule an event that reoccurs, check the Repeat box and fill in the Repeat pop up.
Figure 5: The *Repeat* box allows you to specify whether an events repeats daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, how often it repeats, and when (or if) it ends.
Additional Event Functions
At the bottom of the Edit Event form, there are several collapsed sections: Details, Invitations, Reminders, Categorization, and Related Assets.
Details
In the Details section, you can move the event to another calendar, enter a location, and configure the event’s permissions.
Giving a user permission to add, delete, or update discussion allows them to make, edit and remove comments on the event. The Permissions permission allows a Role to update permissions for the event.
Invitations
In the invitations section, invite Users, Sites, or Calendar Resources (see the next tutorial for more on resources: in brief, a resource is anything you might need for an event—a conference room, a vehicle, etc.). Follow these steps:
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Enter the name of an invitee (User, Site, or Resource) in the Invitations field. Hit Enter to add them to the Pending column.
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Check the availability of invitees by clicking the arrow next to the their names and selecting Check Availability. This displays their calendars (assuming you have permission to view them).
An automated email is sent to invitees who must navigate to the calendar widget to respond. See below to customize the content of the invitation.
When invitees respond to the invitation, their names move to the Accepted, Declined, or Maybe columns.
Reminders
Schedule up to two email reminders to send to attendees. Reminders translate the time of the event into the recipients own time zone.
See below to customize the content of the reminder email.
Categorization
Tag your event or assign it to a category so it appears in appropriate search results and is published by any asset publisher set to publish content assigned to the same category.
Related Assets
List an asset—such as an agenda or supplementary material for a meeting—as related to your event. Links to related assets are displayed in the Event Details window.
Customizing Email Notifications
To customize email notifications for event invitations and reminders,
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From the Calendar widget, click on the arrow next to a calendar and select Calendar Settings.
Figure 6: Email templates apply to a single calendar and all its events.
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Click on the Notification Templates tab. Then select either the Invite Email or the Reminder Email sub-tab.
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Edit the email as desired. At the bottom of the screen is a glossary that specifies variables for terms that were set when you created the event. Use these variables to refer to event-specific information, such as the event’s name, date or location. It’s a good idea to include a link to the event (use the variable
[$EVENT_URL$]) as users must navigate to the calendar widget in order to respond.
Click Save. Now your notifications contain the proper text.
The next article covers setting up calendar resources and porting data from one installation to another.