Google Calendar Migration

Google Calendar & Personal Gmail Accounts

Some people have made personal Google accounts for themselves.  Every Google account requires that an email address be associated with it.  In some cases people have associated their personal Google account with their UMN email address.  This can cause a problem when activating your UMN Google account, since that account must be associated with your UMN email address.  Having two Google accounts associated with the same email address causes confusion.

This can be corrected after the fact, but it will be easier to deal with before activating your UMN Google account.

If you are in this situation, it would be a good idea to go to your personal Google account info page and reassign that account to a different email address.  You can use a personal email address that you already have, or you can sign up for a personal Google GMail address. Either way, getting your UMN email address disconnected from your personal Google account will simplify the setup of your new UMN Google account.

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Training

In-person Overview Training Session at WBOB

Google Calendar: Effectively Managing your Calendar (custom 1-hour seminar)
When: Thursday, October 6, 10:-11:00 AM
Where: 364 WBOB
Registration Code: au24k8

Registration Info:
To enroll, go to the following page: http://uttc.umn.edu/training/courses/description/?designator=GCAL111
click on the Custom tab on the right side of the page, enter the registration code above, click the Enroll button and follow the registration steps and submit.

Note: Registration closes on the website 2 business days before the class.

Other Training Materials

Online video tutorials: 

• http://uttc.umn.edu/training/resources/google/salvair/index.jsp
• Calendar – Quick Reference Guide
• Calendar – Performance Support Aid

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Questions about Google Calendar:

Can I merge my personal Google Calendar with my University Google Calendar?

No. Your University of Minnesota Google Apps account is totally separate from your personal Google account, and your private account and institutional accounts will not be merged.

Can I share my calendar with people outside of the University?

Yes. But, while you can share your calendar with non-UMN people they will only have Read access.  You can not grant Modify access to your primary calendar to non-UMN people.

Conference Room Scheduling in Google Calendar

Google Calendar schedules conference rooms just a bit different from UMCal. Like UMCal, each room has its own calendar, and to ‘book’ the room an event is put on that room’s calendar.  With Google, you have two options for how to do this: you can either do it directly, or call the EpiCH receptionist and ask to have a room scheduled.

Note: WBOB 364 can only be reserved through the EpiCH receptionist.

To book a room, create an event on your own calendar and then invite the room to the event. 

• This puts your event on the room’s calendar so it’s ‘busy’ and won’t get scheduled for something else. 
• Your event stays linked to the item on the room’s calendar, so any change you make will also update the room calendar.

To ‘invite’ a room:

• Create an event, then click the Edit Event link.
• This page will give you an option to add guests to your event.
• Choose either ‘Guests’ or ‘Rooms.’  Clicking on Rooms will show a list of all rooms at the U – more than most folks want to see. 
• Type WBOB in the box above the list to filter the list to just WBOB rooms. 
• Any room not available at the time of your event, will not show up in the list (unless you uncheck the ‘Show Only Available’ option). 
• Click the room you want and it will be invited to your event, with that time blocked out on its own calendar.

To view a room’s calendar to find a time it is free, you can have Google show you both the room’s schedule and yours side-by-side. 

• While viewing the Event Details, uncheck the option to ‘Show Only Available’ rooms.
• Choose the room you want and add it to the event. 
• Then click on the ‘Find a Time’ tab above the Event Details to show which times are busy for you and the room. 
• You can include multiple rooms and guests.

If you do a lot of room scheduling and want to easily see the calendars of the conference rooms, consider subscribing to those calendars. To do this:

• Click on the ‘Settings’ menu next to ‘Other Calendars’ on the lower left and choose ‘Browse Interesting Calendars.’ 
• A list of calendars will appear, click on the ‘More’ tab at the top. 
• Click on ‘Calendars at umn.edu,’ click and scroll to the bottom to find WBOB
• Click on WBOB and click on  the Subscribe link next to any of the rooms to add the room calendar to your main calendar window. 
• You can toggle the view of the room by clicking on the calendar name in the list on the left.

Want to keep track of the UMN Twin Cities Campus Holidays?

• Go to http://www.umn.edu/google
• Click on the “Add to Google Calendar” button in the right column. 
• Click the button to subscribe to the TC Holidays calendar. 
• They should appear appear on your calendar along with your own events.

For more information go to:

• http://www.sph.umn.edu/epi/google.asp
• http://www.oit.umn.edu/google/using-google-calendar/

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Information on Migrating to Google Calendar:

blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/news/2011/09/umcal_to_be_decommissioned_sep.html

UMCal Import Advice

The import of event data from UMCal will be good, but not perfect. Every event on UMCal will end up in Google Calendar, but some aspects of those events will not.  Repeating events will not be connected to each other, and while events will list other attendees, those attendees will not be connected to that event any more.  In cases where calendars have many of these sorts of events it may be better to recreate these events. Since these disconnected ‘repeating’ events would all need to be cleaned off your calendar one by one after recreating your repeating events it can be helpful to use a second calendar for your imported UMCal data.  Google lets you create additional calendars for organizing different aspects of your schedule.  You can make a calendar just for your imported UMCal events and that will keep them separate from your main calendar where you would recreate these events.

If you want to do this just log onto your main Google calendar and look for where ‘My Calendars’ are listed on the left.  Click on the little arrow next to ‘My Calendars’ and choose ‘Create New Calendar’ and make once named something like UMCal Import.  Then when you follow the instructions for importing your UMCal data you can choose that calendar instead of your main calendar.  Once you’ve recreated your events in your main calendar you can just delete the UMCal Import calendar, and not have to clean up all your events one by one.