CommCenter Guide

Appearance

Calendars ​

Our websites have the ability to display a calendar feed on a variety of pages. These feeds are controlled by a shared Microsoft Outlook calendar. These calendars are assigned to a school by the Communications Department. The school has one or more editors that are permitted to enter events into the calendar for display on the website.

Specific calendars may be assigned to specific pages in order to keep the main homepage calendar uncluttered. For example, a 'Clubs & Activities" calendar could be placed on the Clubs and Activities page allowing all club related events to appear here. Clubs can now be omitted from the home page calendar feed, keeping its content more relevant to everyone.

Calendar Subscriptions ​

The shared calendar communicates to the website via a subscription configuration that is accessed via the Content menu. Navigating to this selection displays the current subscriptions for that site (via the pull-down at the top center of the page.)

Synchronization of the calendars happens on a schedule selected as part of the subscription creation process. Each subscription has a Sync action, and the edit screen has a Sync Now button, which starts a calendar sync immediately.

Selecting the "Add Calendar Subscription" button at the lower right will open a new subscription for editing. Selecting one of the existing subscriptions will open it and allow it to be edited.

Definition ​

The following fields define the calendar subscription:

  • Title: the calendar name shown in CommCenter.
  • iCal Subscription URL: required. This is the public subscription link used anywhere visitors can subscribe to the calendar. If no MS Graph Calendar ID is entered, event indexing uses this iCal feed.
  • MS Graph Calendar ID: optional. When present, event indexing uses Microsoft Graph instead of the iCal feed. This is useful for calendars that need a larger sync window, such as annual calendars.
  • List Available MS Graph Calendar IDs: retrieves available Microsoft Graph calendar IDs for the signed-in user. Use one of the listed IDs when a subscription should use Microsoft Graph.
  • Color: the calendar color used by calendar displays.
  • Automatic Sync: the recurring sync schedule. Choose a preset, choose Never, or choose Custom to enter a cron expression.

When an MS Graph Calendar ID is saved, CommCenter saves the subscription using the Graph API calendar view format. Otherwise it uses the iCal format.

Ownership ​

The Ownership section assigns the calendar subscription to an organization and, optionally, a group. The selected organization determines which site the subscription belongs to.

Search and Filtering ​

The Search & Filtering section controls metadata used by calendar apps, website event feeds and special calendar behaviors.

  • Categories create calendar filter options, such as Athletics or Activities.
  • Keywords drive specific calendar behaviors. For example, Annual affects the sync window, Add D20 Annual adds the District Annual Calendar to an organization's annual calendar, Add PLC adds the PLC Calendar, and Block Schedule identifies the subscription used by high school block schedule widgets.

Sync History and Job Details ​

The right side of the edit screen shows Sync History. Each row shows the job status, processed event count, start time, end time and duration. Select a row to view the full job details.

Job details are useful when troubleshooting sync failures. For Microsoft Graph sync errors, the details may include available calendar IDs that can be copied into the MS Graph Calendar ID field.

Pressing the publish button will make the subscription active and save the selected sync configuration.

General Calendar Guidance ​

  • It takes about an hour for calendar entries to make their way to the school's website.
  • All events are publicly visible.
  • These calendars are only meant to display events on the school's pubic website; please don't share the calendar(s) with others or add invitees to these events.
  • Make sure to use the 5 W's:  Who, What, Where, When and Why.  If these questions are answered for every event, you're much less likely to get phone calls or emails with additional questions.
  • Hyperlinks can be added in the event description. Please do not place raw url's in the description. Use something like "Visit the Academy District 20 website for additional information".
  • If entering a longer event (for example, school photos taking place for a period of two weeks), add a single day event for the start and ending dates. This way the website calendar feed won't be filled with the same thing for two weeks.

Please contact us at socialmedia@asd20.org if you have questions.