Volume 2. No 4
Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Summer 1994
Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Summer 1994
In November 1993, UCD Employee & Staff Affairs sent out a request for reviews of groupware calendaring programs to members of the Computer Consultant's Association. Division staff were seeking actual user response on software that would work in a mixed DOS, Windows, and Macintosh environment and that would work with departments within and outside the Division.
Here are several of the more-detailed responses to that query (updated to reflect changes in software versions and user impressions since November 1993).
In the College of Letters and Science Dean's Office, the desktop computing is primarily Macintosh-based. We use Meeting Maker from On Technology to schedule the deans' and a majority of the staff's calendars.
Meeting Maker has served our purposes quite well, being especially strong for setting up quarterly schedules in a short period of time. It also is exceptionally strong for getting ad hoc meetings within the office scheduled quickly and easily. Meeting Maker also has facilities for scheduling shared space (conference rooms).
We have run into some problems with proxy notifications. That is, not all keep their own calendars, and it can be tricky getting access privileges and notifications to behave properly.
Since it is a client/server application, having all data in one place and accessible by all (configurable according to each user's desires), Meeting Maker helps our busy office members stay in touch with each other and eliminate waiting lines at office doors. Remote access is a useful feature particularly revered by the deans and management. Along with email, it's the heartbeat of the office.
Out-of-office (read "not included in the Dean's Office LAN") participants remain problematic. We are carefully watching the marketplace and other departments for developments in this area. Cross- campus scheduling or the ability to access other services would complete the functionality and eliminate hundreds of hours of phoning, contacting, and recontacting.
We have since evaluated Meeting Maker XP and found it to be a step backward for the Mac users, though cross platform. We are still running Meeting Maker 1.5.
We are looking to future upgrades of Meeting Maker to allow us to use it for the counselors as well ... that is, scheduling students for the first available appointment with a number of counselors by a single glance on a condensed screen. Our counselors currently are using a package called "front desk," a legacy system supported by Peachtree Software. There are some serious disadvantages to it, not the least of which is that there are no fixes or development on the horizon, and a continually ballooning data file.
I have about 75 users in Student Housing running Schedule+ (version 1.0) under Windows for Workgroups (version 3.1) in conjunction with Microsoft LAN Manager (version 2.2).
We have found Schedule+ to be an extremely cost- effective calendaring solution since both MS Mail and Schedule+ were included in the upgrade from Windows to Windows for Workgroups. (This solution, of course, assumes a department has Windows already, which Housing did.)
In addition to the workstation clients included with the WFW upgrade, we purchased the MS Mail Server Postoffice option (version 3.2). The Server Postoffice allows for the central storage of each user's calendar files, such that they are available even if an individual's workstation is powered off.
Schedule+ is used extensively by everyone in the department. Much of its usefulness stems from the fact that it is tightly integrated with MSMail. All notifications for meeting requests, cancellations, etc. are received and replied to using MS Mail. If a user is sent a meeting request, s/he receives a mail message and can accept, decline, or tentatively accept the request with a click on a single button. If accepted, the meeting is automatically booked. In any case, a reply is sent to the meeting originator.
Security on scheduling is highly flexible. Individuals can designate "no access," "view only," "read only," "read/create," "read/update," or "assistant" levels of security to any individual in the mail system. Schedule+ also allows resources such as rooms, projectors, vehicles, etc., to be easily scheduled.
The product also has a task/project manager built into it, as well as the ability to write and keep daily notes.
There are only a couple of shortcomings, and they are pretty minor. The current version of Schedule+ will not book recurring meetings for groups. This is an inconvenience, as members of a group must book recurring meetings for themselves.
Student Housing has been using Schedule+ for about 18 months and is extremely satisfied with it.
If you're evaluating programs, I strongly and unreservedly recommend that you take a look at the WordPerfect Office 4.0, available for DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX.
The Office is a single program that performs email, calendaring, scheduling, and to-do lists. We've had the software installed on our network for a number of months now, and people like it a lot.
The program will soon be upgraded and renamed to WordPerfect Symmetry 4.1. (Though WordPerfect was the first to use the name "Office," Microsoft Corporation has co-opted its meaning, and so WPCorp evidently thought it better to switch than fight.)
Symmetry will have even more client versions, including seven UNIX variants. The Mac and Windows clients will double as remote clients (so that if you have a PowerBook or Windows notebook, you will be able to hook up via LAN or modem to check your messages using only one version of the software).
Supposedly WPCorp will also further improve the program's speed.
One feature of the current program that is particularly well implemented is the ability to delegate responsibility for calendaring (as well as email and task management). This means that a secretary or receptionist can maintain (or at least view and add to) calendars for faculty or administrative staff who have delegated that authority. The security on this is very tight; without such delegation, people can only see when you are busy, not what you are doing while you are busy. You can also have several calendars open simultaneously (again, provided access has been granted).
We use the program to schedule our conference room, and anyone on the network can look and see when it's free without checking with the main office; you can also keep track of slide projectors, vehicles, or any other resources you want to define.
With the WordPerfect Customer Advantage Program (the campus site license) the cost of WordPerfect Office is ridiculously cheap. And there's an SMTP gateway to tie the Office/Symmetry in with the campus email system and the rest of Internet mail.
Our department has been using a network version of OnTime over NFS via Sun's PC-NFS and FTP Software's PC/TCP. The OnTime Windows and DOS executables and calendars reside on a Sun file server, and are accessed as regular files. NFS file locking is enabled.
The package is supposed to work over multiple network implementations, and has built-in security features (network administration, etc.). Early on we had a few troubles with calendars becoming corrupted, but haven't had problems recently after some OnTime and SunOS upgrades. File locking seems to work as expected to prevent conflicting updates. Changes and alarms are appropriately propagated to all clients on the net.
At present we only have five client PCs, and use is within the department only. I don't know if this package is available for Macs and UNIX hosts. I have seen at least one other department here use the package, but I don't know if they use the network version or not.
In the Division of Education and the CRESS Center we have used Meeting Maker for several years. However, ours is an exclusively Macintosh network environment. Meeting Maker does come in cross- platform versions.
In my humble opinion, these utilities work very well if everyone signs on and maintains their personal calendar. They fall apart if a significant player doesn't get the picture and keep his or her calendar up-to-date. The only solution I have found for the negligent player is to have someone more compulsive manage their calendar as a proxy.
In all other respects, I find MeetingMaker to be a really nice resource scheduler and meeting planner.
In Graduate Studies, we were using Network Scheduler, but we have now pretty much given up using it as the users weren't too happy with it.
I was not wowed by the product from the beginning. I encountered bugs and questions that the distributor's technical support people were not successfully able to resolve or answer. They didn't seem to have a connection with the programmers.
Network Scheduler also doesn't work on Macs. We are a PC environment with two Macs. I bought it based on the recommendation of others who are using it, but I'm not sure it was the best choice.
It didn't do a number of things our folks wanted it to do, but it's entirely possible that we also didn't spend enough time in learning the product.
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