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PantherCal

Important Scheduling Note:

By default in PantherCal nobody other than yourself has the ability to put things on your calendar. This setting needs to be changed by you to allow others the ability to "invite" you to meetings, etc. Please see the section below titled Setting Permissions in PantherCal for instructions outlining how to change these permissions.

PantherCal Definitions

 Under PantherCal, you can set meetings, tasks, etc. as Personal, Confidential, Normal, or Public. There has been some confusion as to just what these definitions mean. These are the conventions we would like people to use:

Meetings

Public Meetings are just that, viewable by the public. Anyone in the PantherCal system can see the Location, Time, and Details of the meeting. As we do very little work with the public, you will not want to use this type of meeting often.

Normal Meetings are the PantherCal equivalent of our old Groupwise meetings. They are the �standard� meeting type for meetings. We recommend using this setting for most of your meetings.

Confidential Meetings are, for now, equivalent to Normal meetings. Use Normal meetings instead.

Personal Meetings are meetings you want to remain private to all but yourself and the person(s) attending them.

Notes

Public Tasks are, again, viewable by anyone with a PantherCal account. You should use these sparingly.

Normal Tasks are tasks that you are willing to allow other people in your office to see. I could, for example, create a Normal Task of �Write PantherCal documentation� so the other people in Systems would know what I was working on.

Confidential Tasks are generally limited to assignments your supervisor has given you, such as writing a report by a certain date.

Personal Tasks are tasks that are not viewable to anyone but you. Use these for tasks you want to keep private from everyone else.

Scheduling Tips

In the PantherCal system, the rooms and equipment are regarded as Resources. Please see the table at the left for the names of the resources as they appear in PantherCal.

Here's how you would make an appointment with them:

Let's say I want to make a meeting in 242 for tomorrow morning. I hit the "Create a Meeting" button like usual. I click the "People & Resources" tab, and because I want to schedule a room, put "ENG *" into the search box, click the Resources button, and click Find, and the list of our rooms should pop up. (If I wanted both 242 and 248 reserved, I'd have to select both ENG 242 and ENG 248; there is no combined room Resource.) If I also wanted the LCD projector, etc. as well, I'd type in "BFS *" to get a list of our equipment and select what I wanted out of the list.

Note that you should be able to View the Agendas of a room or piece of equipment just like you could any person; you just have to make sure that you have the Resource button selected instead of the Name button in the View Agenda page. 

   BFS Rooms and Equipment List

Setting Permissions in PantherCal

We recommend setting different permissions for a)anyone, and b)people who schedule meetings with you. 

Here�s how you can do this:

Change the Access Rights for the Default: Any Unlisted Person

First, log into PantherCal.

Click the Edit Access Rights icon (the group of people standing behind the key) in the upper right hand corner.

You will see the following screen:

Make sure Default is highlighted, and click the Edit Access Rights button.

You will then see the following screen:

If any of your settings differ from the above, change them so they match the picture.  (It�s important to make sure that the Can invite me to Entries option is selected under Scheduling heading, as that is the option that allows others to �invite� you to meetings, etc)

After you have checked that all of the settings match, click the OK button.

Schedulers

Let�s say someone that schedules meetings with me needs to see more detail on my calendar than merely the times I have blocked off. I could give them rights to see my Normal Meetings, so they knows with who and where I am scheduled to have meetings, in order to resolve possible conflicts. Here�s how I would do this:

Let�s say I am giving Mary Wise these rights in case she needs to schedule a meeting with me.

First, click the Edit Access Rights icon.

Next, I type in the person�s PantherCal name (which is usually their legal name, not the name they go by) into the search window and hit Find (See image below).

Her name then appears in the bottom window. I make sure her name is highlighted and click Edit Access Rights.

Under Viewing � Meetings, Day Events and Daily Notes, I click the customize button.

I  then change his settings to the following:

I also check to make sure that the Can invite me to Entries option at the bottom of the screen is enabled (See image below).

Then I click the OK button at the right side of the screen.

Then I click the Done button the edit Access page.

For more information about using PantherCal please consult the I&MT published documentation here.