As of Liferay 6.2, Liferay no longer includes the core Calendar portlet that was included in Liferay 6.1 and previous versions. Instead, Liferay provides a new Calendar portlet on Liferay Marketplace. The new Calendar portlet upgrades several features of the old Calendar portlet and adds additional features. The features you’re used to from the old Calendar portlet are still available. You can add events and configure email notifications. You can use the Calendar portlet as a shared calendar for an entire site or as a personal calendar. All content created through the old Calendar is imported automatically by the new Calendar. Some of the new features include an improved look and feel, more configuration options, the ability to assign multiple calendars to a site or user, the concept of calendar resources, and event invitations.
Configuring the Calendar Portlet
Once you’ve added the new Calendar portlet to a page, open its configuration dialog box by clicking on the gear icon in the portlet’s title bar and selecting Configuration. The Setup tab provides two sub-tabs of configurable settings: User Settings and RSS.
Figure 9.8: The Setup → User Settings tab provides several new configuration options that weren't available from the old Calendar portlet.
User Settings: On this screen, you can customize your calendar’s default view and settings. You can set the Time Format to AM/PM or to 24 Hour. AM/PM is the default; with this time format, times such as 8AM or 11PM are displayed. With the 24 Hour time format, these times are displayed as 08:00 and 21:00. Default Duration refers to event duration. When you add a new event to the calendar, the time you set here specifies how long events last by default. You can set the Default View to Day, Week, or Month. You can set Week Starts On to Sunday, Monday, or Saturday. For Time Zone, you can either specify a particular time zone like Pacific Standard Time or China Standard Time or you can check the Use Global Time Zone box. If you check Use Global Time Zone, the time displayed by the Calendar portlet depends on whether it’s being viewed by a guest or a logged in user:
-If a user is logged in to the portal, the Calendar portlet displays events using the time zone set for the user in My Account → Display Settings → Time Zone. -If the Calendar portlet is viewed by a guest, or by a user who is not logged in, the Calendar portlet displays events using the time zone set by the portal administrator in Control Panel → Portal Settings → Display Settings → Time Zone.
Next, let’s look at how to use the new Calendar portlet.
Using the Calendar Portlet
The first thing you’ll notice about Liferay’s new Calendar portlet is its revamped look and feel. There’s a monthly mini-calendar which provides you with an overview of upcoming events. There’s also a larger, more detailed calendar area. You can set the large calendar area to display a Day, Week, or Month view. The Day view displays a day as a single column, divided into hours and half-hours. The Week view is similar but displays seven days as seven columns, divided into hours and half-hours. The month view displays a traditional calendar view with days represented as boxes. In the previous section, we saw how to configure the default display view of the calendar.
Adding New Calendars
You can add new personal or site calendars from the default view of the new Calendar portlet and choose which calendar’s events to display. To add a new personal or site calendar, mouse over My Calendars or Current Site Calendars, click on the arrow icon, and select Add Calendar. To manage your personal or site calendars, navigate to the same drop-down menu and select Manage Calendars. All users can manage their personal calendars. By default, only site administrators can manage site calendars.
On the Manage Calendars screen, you can click Add Calendar to create a new calendar. As usual, you can enter a name and description for the calendar and configure its permissions. Flag the Default Calendar checkbox if you’d like the new calendar to be the default calendar. All sites, including personal sites, have a default calendar. When a calendar is first visited, the events from the default calendar are displayed. You can customize the events that appear in the main area of the calendar portlet by clicking on the colored boxes corresponding to the calendars. When you click on a colored box, its color disappears and the events of that calendar are no longer displayed. Click on an uncolored box to view the events of the corresponding calendar.
Figure 9.9: You have options to add or manage calendars. Also, you can toggle the colored boxes beside your calendars to show/hide your planned events.
When adding a calendar, you can also specify whether or not to enable comments and ratings for your calendar’s events. Comments and ratings can be enabled/disabled on a per calendar basis. They are disabled by default. Additionally, you can specify a color for your calendar. Events created in the new calendar will default to the color you choose.
You can edit a calendar to change its name, description, or color. You can also change the calendar’s default calendar status and flag or unflag the Enable Comments and Enable Ratings checkboxes to enable or disable comments and ratings for a calendar’s events.
Adding Events to a Calendar
It’s very easy to add events to a calendar: just click on any day of the calendar and you’ll see an event creation popup appear. If you’ve selected the Day or Month view, you can click on the specific time when your event begins.
Figure 9.10: When you click anywhere on the calendar, you'll see the event creation popup appear. Click *Edit* to specify details for your event.
In the new event popup, you can select the calendar in which you’d like to create the new event. This is useful since sites and users can have multiple calendars. You can click Save to create the event right away or you can click Edit to specify more event information.
Figure 9.11: You can specify event details such as the event title, start date, end date, description, location, and more.
The Title you enter determines the name of the event as it’s displayed on the calendar. The Start Date and End Date times determine when your event takes place. You can click on the date text box to change the day and you can specify times by selecting a particular hour and minute of the day. Note: Even though the Day and Week views of the calendar break days into hours and half-hours and display events in these time-slots, that’s just for convenience. You’re free to specify whatever start times and end times you like, such as 11:37am and 12:08pm. Check the All Day box if your event lasts for an entire day. Check the Repeat box if your event takes place over multiple days. Checking this box opens another popup.
Figure 9.12: 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.
In the Details collapsible section, you can specify four pieces of information. Under Calendar, you can select the calendar to which you’d like to add your event. Remember that sites and users can have multiple calendars. Under Description, you can explain the purpose of your event and add any details that you think might be useful. Use the Location field to specify where your event takes place. Lastly, the Viewable by field lets you set the permissions for your calendar.
For more advanced permissions options, select the More Options link. A list of roles for which you can permission appears in the left column. The other columns represent permissions which can be configured for the event:
- Add Discussion
- Delete Discussion
- Permissions
- Update Discussion
Discussions refers to comments on the event. So the Add Discussion, Delete Discussion, and Update Discussion permissions determine whether a role can add, delete, or update a comment on an event. The Permissions permission determines whether a role can update an event’s permissions.
In the Invitations collapsible section, you can invite users, sites, or other calendar resources to an event. To invite a user, site, or resource, start typing the name of the entity you’d like to invite and a list of matches will appear. Select the one you want or hit Enter if the entity you’d like to invite is at the top of the list. All the entities you’ve invited to your event appear as a list under the Pending heading, which shows how many pending invitations there are. If you accidentally invited the wrong entity, mouse over its name in the Pending list, click on the arrow icon that appears, and click Remove. If you’d just like to check the status of a resource, click on Check Availability instead. When you click on Check Availability for a calendar resource, its schedule is displayed in this calendar view. If you like to overview the availability of all the invited entities, just click on Resources Availability.
Figure 9.13: You can invite users, organizations, or other calendar resources to your event and can check their availability in a calendar view.
The Reminders collapsible section lets you specify up to two times when event reminder notifications will be sent via email. For example, you might like event notifications to be send one day and one hour before your event. Email is currently the only supported event notification type. To avoid confusion, the event time in notification emails is shown in the user’s time zone, and the time zone is also displayed. Of course, Liferay can only calculate this properly if both the portal’s and the user’s time zones are set correctly. Users should set this for themselves when they create accounts. To set the portal’s time zone, see the section Configuring Additional Portal Settings.
The Categorization and Related Assets collapsible sections let you tag the event and select related assets, respectively. By tagging your event, it will come up in searches related to that specified tag. In addition, related assets including blogs, message boards, web content, calendar, bookmarks, wikis, and documents can be selected to include with your calendar event. When you’re done specifying event details, click Save.
Liferay’s Calendar portlet supports social activities. Whenever a calendar event is added or updated, a corresponding social activity notification is created. If the event was added or updated in a calendar that the current user has permission to view, the social activity will be viewable in the Activities portlet. If the Social Networking portlets have been installed (they’re available as an app on Liferay Marketplace; search for Social Networking CE or Social Networking EE), the social networking notifications will also appear in all the appropriate portlets, such as the Friends’ Activities or Members’ Activities portlets.
Calendar administrators can customize the email notification templates for event
invitation and event reminder emails. To customize a calendar’s email templates,
open the calendar’s Calendar Settings window by clicking on the small arrow next
to the calendar’s name in the default view of the calendar portlet and selecting
Calendar Settings. By default, the General tab of the Calendar Settings
appears, where you can edit the calendar’s name, description, color, default
calendar status, and whether or not calendar events and ratings are enabled or
disabled. Click on Notification Templates at the top of the screen to view a
new tab. Then click on either Invite Email or Reminder Email to customize
event invitation or event reminder emails. You can customize the name that
appears on the sent emails, the address from which to send the email, the
subject, and the body of the email. As with Liferay’s other other email
notification templates (e.g., the Message Boards’ notification email templates),
a definition of terms appears below the email body editor. This definition of
terms list specifies variables that you can you can use when customizing the
email template. For example, [$EVENT_LOCATION$] represents the event location,
[$EVENT_START_DATE$] represents the event start date, and [$EVENT_TITLE$]
specifies the event title.
Figure 9.14: The *Calendar Settings* → *Notification Templates* tab lets you customize the email templates for emails that are automatically sent out to remind users of upcoming events or invite users to new events.
To respond to an event invitation, you can click Accept, Maybe, or Decline when viewing the event in the Calendar portlet. The default event invitation notification emails contain links to their corresponding events. This allows users easy access to events in the Calendar portlet so they can respond to event invitations.
Adding and Using Calendar Resources
You might be wondering, “It makes sense to invite users and organizations to an event, but what about other calendar resources? What are they used for? How can you add them?” Good questions. Calendar resources can represent just about anything that you think might be important to an event. For example, your department might have a limited number of rooms and projectors to use for presentations. You can add the various rooms and projectors as calendar resources and add them to events. This way, when new events are added, the event organizer can check the availability of important resources against events that have already been planned. So, how can you add new calendar resources? You might have noticed that the new Calendar portlet has two tabs in the main portlet window: Calendar and Resources. Click on the Resources tab of the portlet to view, edit, add, or delete resources.
Figure 9.15: Click on the *Resources* tab of the portlet to view, edit, add, or delete resources.
Click on the Add Resource button to add a new calendar resource. You’ll be able to enter a name and description for your resource, specify whether or not it should be active, apply tags and categories, and configure its permissions.
Once you’ve created a calendar resource, you can click on the Actions button next to it and select one of the following four options: Edit, Permissions, Delete, or View Calendars. The View Calendars option exists since calendar resources, like sites and users, can have more than one calendar associated with them. Click Actions → View Calendars and then click on Add Calendar to add a new calendar in which the selected calendar resource appears.
Figure 9.16: Click on *Add Calendar* to add a new calendar in which the selected calendar resource appears.
Liferay’s new Calendar portlet provides an easy-to-use scheduling tool. Sites and users can have multiple calendars, calendar events can include calendar resources and calendar resources have their own schedules of availability. We hope this flexible system meets the needs of your organization.
Exporting and Importing Calendar Data
Liferay’s Calendar portlet allows data to be exported or imported as LAR files. Both calendar events and resources can be exported or imported. As with all LAR files, data can only be imported into a version of Liferay that’s the same as the one from which it was exported. To access the interface for exporting or importing calendar data, click on the gear icon in the portlet header and select Export / Import. By default, the Export tab appears which allows you to define a new export process or use an existing one to export calendar data. If you’d like to import data, click on Import. You’ll be able to define a new import process by selecting an existing LAR file or by using an existing import process.
To define a new export process, you first have to choose a name for the LAR file
to be generated. Calendar-201308061558.portlet.lar is an example of a typical
Calendar portlet LAR filename. Notice that by default, a timestamp is included
in the LAR filename. First you have the option of including the Configuration of
your calendar in the LAR file. Next, you have to define a data range. You can
select All to export calendar data regardless of when it was created or last
modified. Alternatively, you can specify a data range. In this case, only
calendar data which was created or modified at or after the start date and
before the end date will be exported. Next, you can choose which kinds of
calendar data to export: calendar events, resources, or both. For each selected
kind of calendar data, you can choose to export associated comments, ratings, or
both. Finally, you can choose whether or not to export the permissions defined
for the specific Calendar portlet window from which you’re exporting data. Click
Export to export your data into a LAR file. You should see a message stating
Your request completed successfully and you’ll be able to click on the LAR
file’s name to download it.
To define a new import process, click on Import from the Export / Import window. Then either drop a LAR file into the box outlined by the dashed lines or click on the button to browse to and select the LAR file to import. Once selected, you’ll be able to choose whether to import calendar events, resources, or both and whether to import the comments and ratings associated with these calendar events and resources. You’ll also be able to choose whether or not to import the permissions for the Calendar portlet window from the LAR file. Once you’ve made these selections, click Continue and you’ll be able to choose a strategy for updating data:
- The Mirror strategy means that all data and content inside the imported LAR will be created as new the first time while maintaining a reference to source. Subsequent imports from the same source will update the entries instead of creating new entries.
- The Mirror with Overwriting is the same as the Mirror strategy except that if an entry with the same name is found, it is overwritten.
- The Copy as New strategy means that all data and content inside the imported LAR will be created as new entries within the current site every time the LAR is imported.
You must also specify an option for assigning ownership of the imported data:
- Use the Original Author means that authorship of imported content will be preserved, if possible. If the original author of the imported content is not found, the current user will be assigned as the author.
- Use the Current User as Author means that the current user will be assigned as the author of the imported content regardless of the original author.
Upgrading the Calendar Portlet
In Liferay 6.1 and previous versions, an older version of the Calendar portlet was included as one of the core portlets. If you’re upgrading from Liferay 6.1 or a previous version to Liferay 6.2 or a later version, all the calendar events that existed prior to 6.2 will still be available after your upgrade. After following these steps for upgrading Liferay, all you need to do to access previously added events is deploy the new Calendar portlet. You can browse through the new Calendar to confirm that the upgrade succeeded: you should be able to view and edit calendar events that were added via the old calendar portlet.
The old Calendar portlet included certain calendar event types such as appointments, birthdays, holidays, and meetings. The new Calendar portlet doesn’t include this explicit notion of event types. However, by using categories, the upgrade process preserves the functionality provided by the old Calendar portlet’s notion of event types. When upgrading, the old calendar event types are migrated to categories. The upgrade creates a vocabulary called Calendar Event Types and adds the old event types as categories in this vocabulary. Upon upgrading, any calendar events that had one of the old event types receive the corresponding category from the Calendar Event Types vocabulary instead.
Next, let’s look at one of the most widely used applications provided by Liferay: its message boards.