Re: Zimbra Calendar Printing

Hi Keith,
Thanks very much for responding. We do use that interface, since it's behind the new "Launch in a Separate Window" of the last bullet in our instructions, and that meets most of the requirements. But this is what has the bug in the separate view of a delegated calendar, since as soon as you click on "Week" in that window, it throws a 404 error. The 404 error can be worked around by taking &fmt=html out of the URL by hand. Not too much a problem for us as techies, but fairly daunting for the affected audience (or us to communicate exactly what the workaround is), and a surprising amount of grumbling about the extra steps required from the affected folks. This adds to the significant changes which they're experiencing already with the Calendaring change from OCal to Zimbra. That particular bug is supposed to be fixed in 5.0.9, which we're evaluating, but likely will not get installed here until the next break in the semester, maybe (Canadian) Thanksgiving.

I guess I was hoping there is a fix somewhere which makes the Calendar printing as simple and intuitive for our users as the OCal interface. A Zimlet which produces PDF output of a fill-in the blank dialog box would seem a likely candidate, but it doesn't seem like something like that has been developed yet.

Thanks again!...Gerrit

Gerrit Bos,
Email and Calendaring Project Manager, CCS
Email: gbos@uoguelph.ca
Ph: (519) 824-4120 Ext. 53489

----- "Keith Fong" wrote:
> Hello Gerrit,
>
> Did you try using REST? For example, if you get the Share URL when sharing the calendar, then adding .html?view=<day|week|month> (eg. https://<server>/home/<user>/Calendar.html?view=week) you get a different view that might fit your printing needs better.
>
>
> Keith
>
>
>
> Keith Fong
> Systems Consultant
> Institutional, Collaborative, and Academic Technologies (ICAT)
> IT Services
> Simon Fraser University
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gerrit Bos" <gbos@uoguelph.ca>
> To: zimbra-hied-admins@sfu.ca
> Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 1:13:54 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> Subject: Zimbra Calendar Printing
>
>
> Hi All,
>    First a brief introduction, since this is my first post.   At University of Guelph we are using Zimbra Collaboration Suite 5.0.7 in production as our mail and calendaring solution, having migrated over this summer from Student and Staff mail (Courier IMAP-based) and a significant subset of Staff/Faculty from Oracle Calendar. An interesting process, and some of our experiences are detailed on the internal project page: http://www.uoguelph.ca/ccs/about/projects/email_cal/index.shtml with support information (Work in Progress) at: http://www.uoguelph.ca/ccs/email/index.shtml
>
> My question (admittedly somewhat narrow in focus) is what people are doing regarding Zimbra Calendar printing. This issue is turning into a larger issue here than I personally had expected at the start of the project. (And no, with September and move-in around the corner it is by no means the only one :-)
>
> The desire is for a simple page printout with all the 'at-a-glance' information needed. This is used by administrative assistants for effective meetings with their supervisors and by resource administrators who post it on meeting room doors etc..
>
> Oracle Calendar (thick client) has a single print dialog which allows you to print exactly what date range you want, an handy check boxes for daily, weekly, monthly etc. and prints the minimal information. This has quirks but meets the need and has become an engrained part of the work flow.
>
> Zimbra Web Client has lots of printing options, (from one of our help pages)
>
>    • To print a text version, click on the "Print Calendar" Icon. This prints a day, week or month in text format.
>    • To print a graphical version, choose 'File -> Print Preview' in your browser. This starts at midnight, and prints incomplete in some browsers.
>    • To print a graphical version, exactly like what shows on the screen, use 'Alt-PrintScreen' to create a copy of the window, the use 'Edit -> Paste' in MS Word.
>    • To print a graphical view with no additional detail, right-click on any of your calendars, choose, 'Launch in a separate window', then choose 'File -> Print Preview' in your browser. This does not work with Managed Calendars, or Resources, and we are working on this with Zimbra.
>
> The last option is the closest to what is missing, but has a bug (we understand fixed in 5.0.9) for delegated calendars which is how this is typically incoporated into workflow. So my questions are: What are other sites doing? What advice are you giving regarding printing? Has anyone developed a zimlet or some other workaround so that is made more simple?
>
> Thanks in advance!...Gerrit
>
>
> Gerrit Bos,
> Email and Calendaring Project Manager, CCS
> Email: gbos@uoguelph.ca
> Ph: (519) 824-4120 Ext. 53489
>
> --
>
>