calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki - MediaWiki-l

Kasimir Gabert

2 Dec 2 Dec

4:22 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki

Hi Frederik Dohr, In this case, I think that the best bet would be to get Google Apps for your domain (or use their server with a Google domain) and have either a shared calendar or a shared excel sheet. A wiki is not designed for something as simple as this. If you want to do it in a Wiki, however, you could make a large table but include each section with a template. Then tell your users that when they want to add in their vacation time or what not, they just follow the link to the proper template and never see the table code. I hope that this helps, Kasimir Gabert On 12/2/06, Frederik Dohr <fdg001(a)gmx.net> wrote:

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Hello, While searching for a "killer app" for convincing my colleagues of the advantages of a wiki (see the thread on corporate wiki success factors), I realized that calendaring and scheduling might be a very good thing to start with. This way everyone could, for example, enter their periods of absence (e.g. vacations, out-of-office meetings etc.) in the wiki without the hassle we currently have with these issues (we're mostly using an Excel sheet for that at the moment). However, I wonder how best to present the respective data. Using the EasyTimeline extension probably wouldn't be a good thing for starters, as its use is a little more complicated than the basic wiki syntax. A huge table might do the job, but its "source code" (i.e. wiki syntax) would probably look like a huge mess to most of my colleagues. So that leaves me with an ordinary sequential list - maybe with years and months as (sub-)headings? The whole thing might look something like this: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Simple_Timeline Hmm, come to think of it, a shared Excel table might actually be better then - also because it'd be easier to highlight weekends and holidays there!? What do you think of my assessment of this situation - any ideas? Thanks a lot in advance! -- Frederik _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- Kasimir Gabert

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cohesion

9:37 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki

On 12/2/06, Frederik Dohr wrote:

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While I'd love to see that, the Google Apps idea ain't gonna fly; I've had enough trouble convincing them of the wiki thing... Also, the main reason I chose this calendaring/scheduling issue was to find a convincing initiatory use of the wiki, to make co-workers familiar with using it. So introducing yet another collaboration tool would only undermine my goals at this point...

You might try semantic mediawiki extension (http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Main_Page). It's not super simple, and I also agree with Kasimir, google apps for your domain would be the easiest if you want a calendar. I played around with semantic mediawiki for this purpose though, it works, but it's certainly not simple for people who don't like computers.

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Frederik Dohr

3 Dec 3 Dec

11:31 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki

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Is my understanding of your situation correct? -> You have a corporate environment, yet no shared calendar such like Lotus Notes. You have convinced your colleagues to use a Wiki, but (still looking for an "initiatory use") you don´t know what to use it for and therefore you want to create a calendar application for the Wiki which is not existing nor the real purpose of the Wiki?

Well, yes and no. I realized there is great potential for a wiki improving the workflow in our project team. However, this would require my colleagues to realize the potential benefits of employing a wiki. Plus, as we all probably know, getting people to change their habits is quite a challenge. Thus I'm trying to lure them to the wiki by providing them with a topic that they are all interested in, and which also happens to show the superiority of the wiki concept for certain tasks. So in a nutshell, I'm hoping that exposure will lead to enlightenment...

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No offense intended, but I guess I´d use Powerpoint before trying to have MusicMaker to create presentations.... <vbg>

No offense taken. Constructive criticism is always welcome! -- Frederik

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Markus Krötzsch

4 Dec 4 Dec

7:36 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki

On Saturday 02 December 2006 22:37, cohesion wrote:

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On 12/2/06, Frederik Dohr wrote:

While I'd love to see that, the Google Apps idea ain't gonna fly; I've had enough trouble convincing them of the wiki thing... Also, the main reason I chose this calendaring/scheduling issue was to find a convincing initiatory use of the wiki, to make co-workers familiar with using it. So introducing yet another collaboration tool would only undermine my goals at this point...

You might try semantic mediawiki extension (http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Main_Page). It's not super simple, and I also agree with Kasimir, google apps for your domain would be the easiest if you want a calendar. I played around with semantic mediawiki for this purpose though, it works, but it's certainly not simple for people who don't like computers.

Which I fear is a problem for MediaWiki in general ... Anyway, suggestions to further simplify Semantic MediaWiki are always welcome. Or maybe we need to improve the documentation? -- Markus -- Markus Krötzsch Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe mak(a)aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de phone +49 (0)721 608 7362 www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/ fax +49 (0)721 693 717

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Hans Voss

5 Dec 5 Dec

8:21 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki

I actually use my private wiki for calendering purposes. But indeed, this is not ready for the non-tech savvy people. I used Christof Damian's calendar extension for displaying. I now have settled on a predefined 'article' format for the individual days. Then I wrote a Perl script (I am more comfortable with Perl than with PHP) that will check each day's article and notify me when an 'appointment' is due. It is merely a matter of convenience to keep it in the wiki in the first place. I have (as yet) no synchronisation of calendars what so ever, although the latest versions of Christof's extension could just help me out there (it seems it can produce iCal/vcal files). On 12/4/06, cohesion <cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org> wrote:

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On 12/4/06, Markus Krötzsch wrote:

You might try semantic mediawiki extension (http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Main_Page). It's not super simple, and I also agree with Kasimir, google apps for your domain would be the easiest if you want a calendar. I played around with semantic mediawiki for this purpose though, it works, but it's certainly not simple for people who don't like computers.

Which I fear is a problem for MediaWiki in general ... Anyway, suggestions to further simplify Semantic MediaWiki are always welcome. Or maybe we need to improve the documentation? -- Markus

No, I think it does a good job doing what its main design is, saying something like this article subject was "born in" some date etc. But using it instead of a Lotus Notes/Outlook/Google calendars would be rough for non-tech people. I don't really think it should try harder to be those apps though, its not. It is actually flexible enough to use in that way though, if you need to, but I wouldn't want it to be the use-case that I was hoping would switch people to liking wikis. :D If you're hoping to convert people, use mediawiki for procedures and documentation, that's way easier than calendaring :) Judson _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- ---- Met vriendelijke groeten / With kind regards Hans Voss --------------------------------------- * Senior Consultant Open Source, Networking and Security * google talk enabled * General Open Sourcerer.

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Frederik Dohr

11 Jan 11 Jan

2:51 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki

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I used Christof Damian's calendar extension for displaying. I now have settled on a predefined 'article' format for the individual days. Then I wrote a Perl script (I am more comfortable with Perl than with PHP) that will check each day's article and notify me when an 'appointment' is due.

Hans, do you still have this Perl script? Would you mind sharing it - I would love to take a look at it! It'd be really awesome to have a reminder of upcoming or imminent events on the main page of the wiki, but I'm excited to see how your reminder system works. btw: Do you happen to know whether the Calendar extension works flawlessly with MW v1.9? (I believe there were some issues with MW v1.8.2 before, so I'd rather ask before breaking anything... ) Thanks! -- F.

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Hans Voss

3:05 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] calendaring and scheduling with MediaWiki

Hmm, Forgot to remove the original password. Oh, whatever, the database can't be reached anyway and the password is unique for this setup. On 1/11/07, Hans Voss <hans.voss(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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I don't know if it will work in anything higher then 1.6.x (that's what I use). What I did was the following: I created a 'namespace' Event where all the calendar entries go. This will remove the clutter from the 'wanted pages' etc. Then I have entries/articles/pages like: "Event:January 11 2007" for a calendar item and entries like "Event:January 11" for yearly recurring items (birthdays, anniversaries..... ;-) The articles are formatted as follows: Example for "Event:January 11 2007" {{Event:January 11}} * 10:00 Morning meeting  * 12:00 Lunch  * 16:00 Late afternoon meeting  So: 1) first the inclusion of the yearly items 2) in a bullet list each entry Each entry consists of a starting date and the item text. Item text can be followed by an HTML comment (so it won't show). Inside this comment is a number which is the number of minutes you wish to be warned before hand. The default 'warn' time is 60 minutes, but that can be changed in the script. The script is released under GPL (use however you like, let me know if you do something other cool stuff with it and send me back any changes in functionality/fixes/....) On 1/11/07, Frederik Dohr <fdg001(a)gmx.net> wrote:

I used Christof Damian's calendar extension for displaying. I now have settled on a predefined 'article' format for the individual days. Then I wrote a Perl script (I am more comfortable with Perl than with PHP) that will check each day's article and notify me when an 'appointment' is due.

Hans, do you still have this Perl script? Would you mind sharing it - I would love to take a look at it! It'd be really awesome to have a reminder of upcoming or imminent events on the main page of the wiki, but I'm excited to see how your reminder system works. btw: Do you happen to know whether the Calendar extension works flawlessly with MW v1.9? (I believe there were some issues with MW v1.8.2 before, so I'd rather ask before breaking anything... ) Thanks! -- F. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

-- ---- Met vriendelijke groeten / With kind regards Hans Voss --------------------------------------- * Senior Consultant Open Source, Networking and Security * google talk enabled * General Open Sourcerer.

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