Calendars

An earlier post asked why some people don't use our systems as much as we'd like them to, and I got a helpful comment about some of the issues to do with our electronic calendar, and I thought it was worth responding to some of the points raised.

We can currently sync over air between Windows Mobile devices like the Ipaq, and Palm devices like the 680, 700 etc. This is done using the Synthesis sync client and works OK for most people. It's not particularly well advertised so I can understand if people don't know it exists (perhaps we should advertise it better!).

We're also looking at synching with a wide range of other devices including Windows Mobile, Palm, Nokia and Blackberry using syncML which will be after we've upgraded the current version of the calendar at the end of this summer.

I've also blogged before about our project to look at implementing Zimbra, which does most if not all of the things on the wishlist including ical and rss feeds, although we'd probably publish from MOLE (the on line learning environment) to this calendar rather than the other way round but we'll need to consider this. It also integrates with outlook, sunbird and iCal compliant calendar software.

BUT there are plenty of issues to consider before we go down this route, but our proof of concept is just finishing, and hopefully we'll be moving onto a pilot service soon.