Calendar

[Scott]

In the planning of this project, is there any thought of a calendar
application? I have been looking at different solutions for worship
planning, and most of the ones I have looked at have some type of
scheduling, but none of them meet all the needs I would personally
like covered... and have something that is presentable to the "non-
techy" folks.

I haven't looked into the code of a project like php-calendar (also
open source), but I wouldn't think that it would be impossible to
integrate some type of calendar application that could be used for
more that just scheduling when services and rehearsals would be. Part
of what I see necessary is for ministry members to be able to show
availability along side of the service schedule.

Maybe there is already some thought on the table about scheduling, but
that's my two cents worth.

For those that might be interested, I am using a free hosted service
at worshipbook.org. There is a demo that is basically fully
functional and shows what that hosted service offers. It's pretty
cool, but I would really feel better with a self hosted option, and
have a couple features that are not available anywhere else (that is,
not for free). So, I'm not a very experienced programmer, but I'll
help out the best I can.

Cheerio,

Scott

[Kevin Landers]

Hello guys and gals!

I would agree that there needs to be some calendaring feature included in the application. As a bulk of the software will revolve around scheduling, the software in my mind will take on a sort of "resource management" role. I could see individual member calendars as well as team/service or even church/ministry calendars developing out of the mix. Hope that makes sense... did in my head.

I agree that something like phpicalendar could be used. You can see an example of phpicalendar on our youth group's website ( http://youth.horsebranch.org - def a work in progress and uses the same open-worship.org theme, lol). phpicalendar can be greatly customized and reads ics calendar files. The only issue I see here is that we are gearing toward writing openworship in python (using pylons) rather than using php. Perhaps there is a python equivalent as well, or maybe we can somehow incorporate a program like phpicalendar.

My thought on using phpicalendar, for example, is that we would us the "URL" field in ICS calendar items to link events to their associated service or item in openworship. Also, user specific versions of the calendar would be a matter of exporting/creating ICS files per user that would have entries for their associated events. phpicalendar allows you to also display more than one calendar at once. So, you could overlay a user's calendar and team's calendar at the same time.

Examples of calendars:
Church-wide/Ministry-wide Calendar: main.ics
Team Specific Calendar: team-xyz.ics
Service Specific Calendar: service-abc.ics
User Specific Calendar: user-jdoe.ics

Again, my only concern is that we are using python. So, I am not sure if we can incorporate phpicalendar. Either way, I will take a look at what exists out there in python. Push come to shove, we write our own....

Let me know what you guys think.

Kevin L.

[Kevin Landers]

Should have thought to include a link to phpicalendar for reference - http://phpicalendar.net/phpicalendar/day.php

Kevin L.

[Scubes]

After doing a short sourceforge and google search, I have come across
two projects that might be of interest.

The first is CalendarX located at: http://calendarx.org/

There is an example of CalendarX in use at: http://catholique-quimper.cef.fr/calendar
(It is in French. I can't read French... Does look nice though.)

The second thing I came across was a python package called iCalendar.
Located at: http://codespeak.net/icalendar/

There is also information about the iCalendar package at:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/icalendar/

I am not even sure at this point what is usable and what is not. But
these were just my initial search results. In general, it doesn't look
like we will have to "reinvent the wheel".

Kevin L.

On Jun 4, 11:04 pm, "Kevin Landers" <lande...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Should have thought to include a link to phpicalendar for reference -http://phpicalendar.net/phpicalendar/day.php
>
> Kevin L.

>
> On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 11:00 PM, Kevin Landers <lande...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello guys and gals!
>
> > I would agree that there needs to be some calendaring feature included in
> > the application. As a bulk of the software will revolve around scheduling,
> > the software in my mind will take on a sort of "resource management" role. I
> > could see individual member calendars as well as team/service or even
> > church/ministry calendars developing out of the mix. Hope that makes
> > sense... did in my head.
>
> > I agree that something like phpicalendar could be used. You can see an
> > example of phpicalendar on our youth group's website (

> >http://youth.horsebranch.org- def a work in progress and uses the same

[Raoul Snyman]

> The first is CalendarX located at:http://calendarx.org/

Unfortunately this doesn't look like it'll suit us, for two reasons:
1. It needs Plone, a rather heavy CMS written in Python.
2. It's last release was in January 2006 - i.e. it's dead.

> The second thing I came across was a python package called iCalendar.
> Located at:http://codespeak.net/icalendar/

iCalendar looks cool! Of course it's just to import and export iCal
files, but implementing a calender is not that difficult (I've done it
before on a far more hectic level - think doctor's appointments with
15 minute intervals).

Gonna add the calendar to your mockups, Kevin? ;-)

[Kevin Landers]

Do we devote a separate main navigation section to the calendar?

I see it being listed on the dashboard (perhaps as a configurable item like we did the "Top Songs", "Fave Songs", etc on the Songs page/section - re: http://www.open-worship.org/songs.html ). 

Thoughts?

[Raoul Snyman]

On Jul 30, 12:50 am, "Kevin Landers" <lande...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we devote a separate main navigation section to the calendar?
>
> I see it being listed on the dashboard (perhaps as a configurable item like
> we did the "Top Songs", "Fave Songs", etc on the Songs page/section - re:http://www.open-worship.org/songs.html).

What's the dashboard for? Perhaps if we can establish what the
dashboard is all about, then we can decide where to put the calendar.

[Kevin Landers]

I foresee the dashboard as the landing page for when a user logs in. It would be a place where information that they want immediate access to would be displayed. It would be configurable. It may show a bit of data by default, but those items might be removed from the dashboard. Then items from other sections could also be presented there, such as the "Top Songs" or "Latest Songs" from the Songs section, "Upcoming Events" or "Recently Assigned Events" from the Members or Calendar section (however that develops). When thinking of the dashboard, I think of iGoogle with its widgets or the dashboard within vTiger (www.vtiger.com), etc. Hope this makes some sense, if not, just mail me again! ;)

[Raoul Snyman]

On Jul 30, 2:27 pm, "Kevin Landers" <lande...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I foresee the dashboard as the landing page for when a user logs in. It
> would be a place where information that they want immediate access to would
> be displayed. It would be configurable. It may show a bit of data by
> default, but those items might be removed from the dashboard. Then items
> from other sections could also be presented there, such as the "Top Songs"
> or "Latest Songs" from the Songs section, "Upcoming Events" or "Recently
> Assigned Events" from the Members or Calendar section (however that
> develops). When thinking of the dashboard, I think of iGoogle with its
> widgets or the dashboard within vTiger (www.vtiger.com), etc. Hope this
> makes some sense, if not, just mail me again! ;)

Ah, sounds like we want a dedicated Calendar page...