Publishing a Windows Vista Calendar on the Network

Windows Calendar, a decent little program for managing your schedule. You can create appointments (both one-time and recurring), set up all-day events, schedule tasks, apply reminders to appointments and tasks, and view appointments by day, week, or month. This all works great for individuals, but a busy family needs to coordinate multiple schedules. The analog method for doing this is the paper calendar attached to the refrigerator by magnets. If you want to try something a bit more high tech, you can use Windows Calendar to publish a calendar to a network share. (Note that this is something that even the mighty Microsoft Outlook can’t do. With Outlook’s Calendar, you need to be on a Microsoft Exchange network to publish your calendar data.) You can configure the published calendar so that it gets updated automatically, which means the remote calendar always has current data. Your family members can then subscribe to the calendar to see your appointments (and optionally, your notes, reminders, and tasks).

First, start Windows Calendar using either of the following methods:
• Select Start, All Programs, Windows Calendar.

• In Windows Mail, select Tools, Windows Calendar, or press Ctrl+Shift+L.


Publishing Your Calendar
Here are the steps you need to follow in Windows Calendar to publish your calendar:
1. In the Calendars list, click the calendar you want to publish.

2. Select Share, Publish to open the Publish Calendar dialog box.

3. Use the Calendar Name text box to edit the calendar name, if necessary.

4. Use the Location to Publish Calendar text box to type the network address of the shared folder where you want to store the published calendar. Alternatively, click Browse and then use the Browse for Files or Folders dialog box to select the network share, and then click OK.

5. If you want Windows Calendar to update your calendar whenever you make changes to it, activate the Automatically Publish Changes Made to This Calendar check box. (If you leave this option deactivated, you can still publish your changes by hand.

6. In the Calendar Details to Include section, activate the check box beside each item you want in your published calendar: Notes, Reminders, and Tasks.

7 Click Publish. Windows Calendar publishes the calendar to the network share by creating a file in the iCalendar format (.ics extension) and copying that file to the share. Windows Calendar then displays a dialog box to let you know the operation was successful.

8. To let other people know that your calendar is shared and where it can be found, click Announce. Windows Calendar creates a new email message that includes the following in the body (where address is the address of your published calendar):

You can subscribe to my calendar at address

9. Click Finish.


Subscribing to a Calendar Using the Subscribe Message
How you subscribe to another person’s published calendar depends on whether you receive a subscription invitation via email. If you have such a message, follow these steps to subscribe to the calendar:
1. Open the invitation message.

2. Click the link to the published calendar. Windows Mail asks you to confirm that you want to open the iCalendar file.

3. Click Open. If your user account doesn’t have access to the network folder, the Connect to Computer dialog box appears (where Computer is the name of the computer where the calendar was published).

4. Use the User Name and Password text boxes to type the credentials you need to access the shared folder, and then click OK. Windows Calendar opens and displays the Import dialog box.

5. If you want to merge the published calendar into your own calendar, use the Destination list to select the name of your calendar; otherwise, the published calendar appears as a separate calendar.

6. Click Import. Windows Calendar adds the published calendar.


Subscribing to a Calendar Using Windows Calendar
If you don’t have a subscription invitation message, you can still subscribe to a published calendar using Windows Calendar. Here are the steps to follow:
1. In Windows Calendar, select Share, Subscribe to open the Subscribe to a Calendar dialog box.

2. Use the Calendar to Subscribe To text box to type the address of the published calendar.

3. Click Next. Calendar subscribes you to the published calendar and then displays the Calendar Subscription Settings dialog box.

4. Edit the calendar name, if necessary.

5. Use the Update Interval list to select the interval at which you want Calendar to update the subscribed calendar: Every 15 Minutes, Every Hour, Every Day, Every Week, or No Update.

6. If you want to receive any reminders in the calendar, activate the Include Reminders check box.

7. If you also want to see the published calendar’s tasks, activate the Include Tasks check box.

8. Click Finish. The published calendar appears in your Calendars list.


Working with Shared Calendars
After you publish one or more of your calendars and subscribe to one or more remote calendars, Windows Calendar offers a number of techniques for working with these items. Here’s a summary:

• Changing a calendar’s sharing information. When you select a published or subscribed calendar, the Details pane displays a Sharing Information section, and you use the controls in that section to configure the calendar’s sharing options.

• Publishing calendar changes. If your published calendar isn’t configured to automatically publish changes, you can republish by hand by selecting the calendar and then selecting Share, Sync.

• Updating a subscribed calendar. If you didn’t configure an update interval for a subscribed calendar, or if you want to see the latest data in that calendar before the next update is scheduled, select the calendar and then select Share, Sync.

• Synchronizing all shared calendars. If you have multiple shared calendars (published and subscribed), you can synchronize them all at one time by selecting Share, Sync All.

• Sending a published calendar announcement. If you didn’t send an announcement about your published calendar, or if you want to send the announcement to different people, select the calendar and then select Share, Send Publish E-Mail.

• Stopping a published calendar. If you no longer want other people to subscribe to your calendar, select it and then select Stop Publishing. When Calendar asks you to confirm, click Unpublish. (Note, however, that if you want your calendar file to remain on the network share, you first need to deactivate the Delete Calendar on Server check box.)

• Stopping a subscribed calendar. If you no longer want to subscribe to a remote calendar, select it and then press Delete. When Calendar asks you to confirm, click Yes.

Source of Information : Que Networking with Microsoft Windows Vista