[Webpub] New features on MIT's Events Calendar

[Suzana Lisanti]

Dear colleagues,

A new version of the MIT events calendar http://events.mit.edu/is rolling out today with new features that will enable users to subscribe to automatic updates of MIT events that interest them and to incorporate these events into their web sites and daily schedules. 

These features were developed by Information Services & Technology (IS&T) and the Information Center in response to suggestions and feedback from the MIT community. These features also represent the work of the MIT Sloan student project team who analyzed the events calendar last semester. 

The three new features launched today - email alerts, RSS, and iCalendar integration - will allow users to subscribe to events of interest (by keyword, category, or sponsor), then add those events to their web sites or personal schedules. Event publishers will benefit from improved event promotion and better targeting. 

NEW FEATURES

1) Email alerts - using MIT certificates, users can now create email alerts (daily, weekly, or monthly) to be notified of events that might interest them. For example, a user might create 3 alerts to be notified of upcoming movies, IS&T events or energy lectures.
	
2) Custom RSS feeds - RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a convenient way to get automatic updates of news and events. RSS feeds provide headlines and short descriptions that can be used on a web site to dynamically incorporate event information, read in a desktop news reader, or converted to email using RssFwd. Any user, including non-MIT users, can create a custom RSS feed of events by keyword, category or sponsor. 

3) iCalendar ("add this event to my calendar") - This feature allows users to add specific events to their personal schedules. Calendar clients vary widely in their implementation of the iCalendar standard, so we are offering this feature marked as a beta version. This has been tested with the TechTime desktop client, Outlook (2003, XP) on Windows XP, Macintosh iCal on OS X 10.3 or above, and Evolution (Linux/Athena). We hope to add other calendars and fuller support as compatibility allows. 

NEW EVENT PUBLISHER TOOLS

We've added several new publisher tools in response to customer requests:

* Copy event - this makes an exact copy of any event to save data entry. Just click copy event, enter the new date, and click post.
* For repeating events: Edit this date and delete this date have been added, allowing event publishers to edit or delete one date of a repeating event.
* Mark cancelled - event publishers can now mark an event as cancelled.
* You can add events dynamically to your web site by using RSS feeds.

REDUCED FUNCTIONALITY

In order to comply with the iCalendar standard and enable users to import events into their personal calendars, some less-used functionality has been reduced. Most notably, repeating events are now required to have the same time information for all dates. If users change one date, it will become "unlinked" from the repeating series. If the standards become more flexible, our data model is in place to restore this functionality.
 
Comments and feedback on the new calendar can be sent to events-cal at mit.edu.
 
Thank you,

The Events Calendar Team: 
Suzana Lisanti
Steve Landry
David Conlon
Mike Moretti
Susan Curran