Latest pet project

My latest pet project has been working with the OnTime Group Calendar API and try to look into new product ideas or use-cases for calendar data. One thing that came up really quickly is a way to expose all the calendars in OnTime in iCal format and using the API and ical4j it took all about 10 minutes to do. So now we have the option to expose each user in OnTime Group Calendar as an iCal feed honoring the access rights of the logged in user. Now that the data is available as iCal as well it makes remixing and reusing the data in custom scenarios extremely easy and the number of clients grew from our 6 to basically unlimited.

Below is an screenshot example of my adding OnTime calendars as subscribed calendars on my iPad (click the image for a larger version).



(click on image for larger version)

Now using multiple overlays on my iPad (or my iPhone) is just as horrible for as using multiple Lotus Notes overlays (or other clients) which only justifies why we develop client UI’s tailor made for the purpose of group calendaring. But… The overlay option is very nice and allows me to quickly discover what a colleague is doing while not in another OnTime client. It even allowed me to expose my business calendar very easily to my wife. No more manual weekend calendar sync – win!!

I’m not saying this will ever become a part of OnTime Group Calendar but it sure is nice.

The code is written as an agent so it was very easy to deploy and using a Internet Site rewrite rule I was able to do a nice URL per user. So now we have a url like http://example.com/ical/jdoe@example.com for each user.

Now off to look for more ways to use the API.

5 thoughts on “Latest pet project”

  1. Well, the idea behind this is the need to support people that do not want to use the Notes client, but are happy having Domino in the backend to do the calendaring "cloud" job.

    They just want to use Apple iCal on the Mac instead. If you only consume the *.ics feeds – yes that is nice – but if you want to be able to change or update an event entrt using your loved iCal on the Mac – there is yet no solution. CalDAV is the protocol to update entries.

    Also, these users want also share their calendars with others (which can be done in Domino with Notes clients or using the web) that are also using the Apple tools.

    It’s fine to have the Domino calendar managed by a secretary using the powerful delegation features, but it would be perfect, if these CEO-type of users could keep their Apple universe tools and use only these tools to manage their Inbox and especially their Calendar(s).

    This is a huge lack of functionality in the Domino server when you think outside the Notes client box.

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