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Resources are a special type of calendar account. One logs into the resource only to set its access rights. Resources are designed for use by calendar users either via invitation or via designate rights. A resource can contain meetings, daily notes, and day events, but not tasks. Resources are often used by departments to denote physical entities which can only be used by a single user or group of users at one time.
A good example of this is a conference room or equipment. The results of a conflict in conference room scheduling can be frustrating - one group is forced to either reschedule their meeting or find another available room. When creating a meeting, UMCal users could check the availability not only of the meeting's attendees but also the availability of a room in which to hold the meeting as well as the equipment they require such as the departmental laptop or projector. Access to the resource can be granted to any UMCal user or restricted to only certain people.
There are currently three types of resources available in UMCal: Rooms, Equipment, and Managed Calendars.
Many types of rooms can be scheduled as UMCal Resources including conference rooms, practice rooms, study areas, and open computer labs. However, centrally managed classrooms and departmental spaces cannot be created or scheduled in UMCal. If you need to schedule classroom space, please contact the Office of Classroom Management.
Equipment can be anything from digital cameras, laptops, projectors, to lab kits.
Managed Calendars are a type of calendar that is associated with multiple people instead of a single user. Examples of Managed Calendars are:
Let's suppose your department sets up a meeting room as a UMCal resource. Once the room is on the system, it becomes visible in UMCal's list of resources. A UMCal user can select the meeting room and "invite" it to a meeting, much as they would a person.
The user's request to book the room can then be confirmed or declined by a member of your staff — "designate" — who is responsible to manage the schedule for that resource. Alternately you can let the resource manage itself, by allowing the room or the equipment to be booked within your group on a first come basis without the need of approval from a designate. You have complete control over who can see the schedule for the room, and who can book it.
If you would like a resource created for your department, please fill out the resource request form.
Some things to consider when filling out the request:
Resources have a standard naming convention:
Conference Rooms: RM [Dept Name] [Building Name] [Room Number]
Equipment: EQ [Dept Name] [Equipment Description]
Managed Calendars: MC [Dept Name] [Schedule Description]
Some examples are:
The name of the resource will be created by the Calendar Administrators when they create the calendar account.
You can create links to view resources in the web client, and provide these links to your users to open a resource calendar in the day, week, or month view. Use the Resource URL Generator to create a CSV file (easily imported into Excel) of the resources you need to provide links for.
Support information for resources can be found on the UMCal Resource Calendar Support Page.
