ELabs Workshop Schedule Creating a Google Account

ELabs Workshop Schedule

This calendar is hosted by Google Calendars. Eric, TomL, Liz, and TomJ currently have permission to edit the calendar or alter sharing settings, including giving such control to others. It is straightforward to add anybody else. To edit the calendar you must create an account on Google's server, but it doesn't have to be a gmail account.

This same mechanism demonstrated above can be used to embed the calendar in a page served from any site. I have also added such a page to the "prototype" site on www13 at http://www13.i2u2.org/Calendar.php

It is also easy to subscribe to the calendar if you have your own Google calendars account, or if you use iCal on a Mac. See the bottom of http://www13.i2u2.org/Calendar.php for links. You can not (yet) export a calendar from iCal and have it added to the Google calendar.

Google recently added support for syncronizing calendars with Microsoft Outlook. They call this "Sync". Details are here, but I've not tried them yet. This would allow us to maintain the master ELabs calendar on a machine at FNAL using Outlook (if that is easier), but then have the calendar published via Google. Those of use outside could also add items via Google. The Sync configuration allows us to configure the syncronization to be either one-way (either way) or two-way. Unfortunately, this may not be mature enough for our use. According to Google, "Keep in mind that it's not possible to sync events on secondary calendars at this time. Google Calendar Sync will only sync events from your primary Google Calendar and your default Microsoft Outlook calendar."

Creating a Google Account

Anybody on the Internet can read the calendar above or at http://www13.i2u2.org/Calendar.php, but to manage the calendar you must log on to Google's server, and you need an account to do that. What may not be clear is that you don't have to create a new e-mail account, you can create an account with a pre-existing e-mail address from somewhere else (eg. your fnal.gov address).

To create a new Google account just go to http://www.google.com and click on "sign-in" in the upper right corner. You'll get a page with a login box, and under that is a link to "Create an Account Now". Follow that link, enter the e-mail address you want to associate with the account, enter a good password (twice), and agree to the terms of service.

The first time you use the calendar service you will get a little tutorial on how it all works. After that, whenever you return to the calendar you will go straight to your calendar page.

Once you have been through the tutorial, you can easily add the ELabs calendar to your own calendar collection by pressing this button:

Once you have your Google account, ask Liz or Eric or someone else with the proper permissions to give you permission to edit events (and, if appropriate, to manage sharing, so you can also enable other people to add to the calendar).