This is beautiful.... Everything seems to work great. It's easy to use... adding, viewing, and deleting.... This is a really cool add on. Anyone using this will surely like it.
—Jon M.

This help file was revised on 5/10/2008 for v. 1.6 of the Calendar. If you do not have this Calendar version, please request it.

When you hover the mouse pointer over a red-colored date (indicating one or more personal notes for that date), a 'tooltip' of the notes for that date should display.

Setup — Do this the first time you use the Calendar and as needed
Calendar UserID | Default Browser | AutoAlert | Conflict Warning | Conflict Interval
Archive Deleted Notes | Notes Sorting Options | Scheduling Names | Scheduling Times
Link My Name to My UserID | Recurring Event Dates

Adding/Viewing Notes — Basic Calendar operations

Deleting Notes — Keeping your Notes database at peak performance

Importing/Exporting — Importing/exporting notes/appointments records

Installing — Adding the Calendar to your Sesame application or using it standalone

Security issues — What to do if your application is password protected

Show me some more pictures of the Calendar

Show me the Calendar ad in Inside Sesame (PDF)

Overview
The Simple Sesame Calendar from Inside Sesame is a pop-up calendar and scheduler utility that's easy and fun to use.

Designed as a Sesame add-in, you can add it to any Sesame 2.0.6 or later application — to as may forms as you like. Or you can run it as a standalone application from an ordinary desktop shortcut.

Pop-up the Calendar to make reminders to yourself, notes about upcoming events, due dates, birthdays, anniversaries or the like.

Use the Calendar as an office follow-up
scheduler or appointment calendar at the same time. It supports multiple users and  scheduling for multiple people.

In Scheduling mode, the Calendar can track appointments for doctors in a medical or dental office, sales or service personnel or traveling executives. Anyone using the Calendar with scheduling permission can add appointments and view schedules for any number of people.

Personal notes and scheduled appointments are added via a simple Notes form that pops-up from the Calendar (see image at top right). Each user can add his or her own personal notes and the Calendar keeps track of whose notes are whose. A user can add, view and delete only his or her own personal notes.

Notes and schedules display in your browser where you can optionally print them out whenever you like.

The Calendar's View Notes/Appointments selector includes the following built-in date range options for displaying personal notes / appointments / schedules:

Setting Your Calendar Defaults
Note: Your database administrator may have already set up your Calendar defaults for you. If this is the case, you must not alter those settings without first checking with your database administrator.

With the Calendar displayed, click the Setup button to specify your default settings:

Calendar UserID
You must create a unique Calendar UserID for yourself even if you are the only person who uses the Calendar. You don't need to remember it — the Calendar  does that for you. You cannot add or view notes/appointments until you've established your UserID.

Default Browser
The Calendar uses your browser to display and manage notes/shedules. You must specify your PC's default browser before you can view or manage these items. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, Answer YES. (IE 6.0 or later is required.)  If you use a different browser, such as FireFox, answer NO.

AutoAlert
This option, if YES, automatically checks for any personal notes for the current day when you launch the Calendar and lets you know by displaying a large bright red asterisk in the top left corner of the calendar and playing a sound on your computer. (The sound can be turned off by setting AutoAlertSound to 0 (zero) in GLOBAL CODE.

Note: If your application is secured and has a default start-up form, we can provide you with programming to AutoAlert users to their today's notes as soon as they log in.

Conflict Warning
This scheduling option, if YES, alerts you when saving a new note/appointment with the same date and time as an existing one.

Conflict Interval
This scheduling setting alerts you when saving a new note/appointment whose time of day is within the specified number of minutes from an existing item for the same day for the same person. In other words, if you set the interval to 60, you'll be warned if any other events for the same day for the scheduled person are within 60 minutes of the one you are about to add. This option requires Conflict warning to be set to YES.

Archive Deleted Notes
This option, if YES, automatically writes deleted items (see the section below on deleting notes/appointments) to an archive log (CalendarArchivedNotes.txt) in the user's Sesame working directory. (With custom programming, this file can be shared on the server.)

Notes Sorting Options
Four sorting options are available for displayed Calendar items. The first one is the default:

• Ascending Date / Ascending Time (-1, -1)
• Ascending Date / Descending Time (-1, 1)
• Descending Date / Ascending Time (1, -1)
• Descending Date / Descending Time (1, 1)

Scheduling Names
Using this option, the Calendar can function as a scheduler for yourself and others. A text editor displays for you to type in the names — one name per line — of the people for whom you'll be scheduling. If you will be scheduling yourself, be sure to add your own name to the list. You can use the Calendar to schedule yourself and/or others, and also use it for your own personal reminder notes.

Important: You can use use the Calendar for personal notes and scheduling, but there's a big difference between the two — private vs. public. Your notes, reminders, etc. to yourself are private whereas scheduled items are public.

Anyone using the Calendar can schedule for people as long as they've set up their own Scheduling Names option and have permission to schedule. In other words, UserA and UserB can both schedule appointments for any of the doctors (or technicians or salespeople) in the office.

On the other hand, any personal notes UserA adds cannot be viewed by UserB. That's because normal Calendar notes are treated as personal. the Calendar keeps track of who added them and will only allow that person to view and optionally delete them.

Scheduling for others is password-protected. Without the password, you can still view schedules for those on your Scheduling Names list, but you cannot schedule for them.

Scheduling Times
This option lets you create a list of times of day when people can be scheduled. The default  list starts with 6:00 AM and ends with 5:30 AM in half hour intervals. You can customize the times to begin, for example, at 8:00 AM and end at 5:00 PM with quarter hour intervals if you like. When setting up custom Scheduling Times, be sure to use a standard system recognizable time format such as 9:30 AM for 9:30 in the morning and 2:45 PM for 2:45 in the afternoon.

Link My Name to My UserID
This option is for schedulable people (on the Scheduling Names list) who want their personal notes included in their viewable schedules. A doctor, for example, can see his personal reminder notes when viewing his appointment calendar for the day. This does not make personal notes "public" — you are the only one whose appointment calendar will show them. Your name must be on the Scheduling Names list before you can link it to your Calendar UserID.

Recurring Event Dates
This option lets you create of list of recurring event dates that you want the Calendar to automatically remind you of in the month they occur. For example, birthdays of family members and friends, anniversaries, holidays and other special days that occur annually always on the same date. Any Recurring Event Dates you set are private to your Calendar. You must enter them in a strict format, though they do not have to be in any order. Examples:

1/5 Alice's birthday
2/12 Joey's birthday
2/22 Wedding anniversary
...
11/30 Mom & Dad's anniversary

month_integer/day_integer reminder note text

You must type the month and day numbers as integers separated by a slash (as show in the examples above), followed by one space and the text of the reminder note. These recurring event dates appear on your calendar as "red" dates and show your reminder note (preceded by an «R» for Recurring) when you hover the mouse pointer over them.

The Calendar can show reminders for fixed date events only, not floating event dates such as "the second Monday in June", Labor Day or Thanksgiving Day.

Adding/Viewing Notes
To add a new note or appointment:

1. Click on the calendar date the note or appointment is for.
    
2. Click open the Add New for [date] dropdown and click Personal note or the name of the person you're scheduling. Click GO and The Notes/Appointments pop-up displays, pre-filled with the date and person's name (or your Calendar UserID if you're adding a personal note).
    
3. Select the time of day this note or appointment is for, then type in the note. (You can optionally change the date the note/appointment is for.)
    
4. Click Save Note.

To view notes/appointments:

1. Select whose notes or appointments you want to view from the left-hand View Notes / Appointments list. (See the Calendar picture above.)
    
2. Select the desired time frame from the right-hand View Notes / Appointments list.
    
3. Click the GO button.

Deleting notes
Routinely deleting old notes/appointments/agenda items keeps the database trim and efficient. (Calendar Setup gives you the option of archiving these items to an external file. See Setup above.)

You can mark Calendar items for deletion when they're displayed in your browser. Simply follow the directions at the top of the browser window when viewing your Calendar items.

Note: For Internet Explorer users, deleting items involves these steps:

1. Check the checkbox next to each item you want to delete (or click the Select All for Trash button).
    
2. Click the Trash Selected Notes button.
    
3. Click the trash icon at the bottom of the Calendar.

If you're not using Internet Explorer, an additional step (2A) requires you to right-click on the Note IDs field (which expands into view) and select Copy from the right-click menu. You then do step 3 as above to complete the deletion.

You can optionally click the Cleanup button at the top of the Calendar to delete notes. This option allows you to pick a date and delete all your personal notes (and optionally all scheduled items as well — assuming you have permission) that are dated prior to that date.

Deleting schedule items is password-protected. Deleting personal notes is not.

Importing & Exporting
The Calendar can import and export notes. Both features are on the Admin menu. The Calendar exports all the notes in the Notes database to a text file named CalendarExportedNotes.txt in your Sesame working directory, overwriting any existing file of that name. The export format is:

          NoteDate;NoteTime;NoteFor;Note;NoteID;UserID

Exporting is a fast and easy way to backup the entire Calendar to a text file.

Should a Calendar upgrade be released in the future, you can export your notes  from your current Calendar then turn around and import them into the upgraded Calendar.

When importing, the Calendar imports all the records in the CalendarExportedNotes.txt file and assumes the same format as shown above for exporting. (If notes were previously exported to this file, then it will be correctly formatted.)

Import/Export operations are password protected.

Installing the Calendar

The Calendar comes with a CalendarReadme.txt file that explains the security and administrative options the database administrator has relating to Calendar setup and operation. Be sure to review this file before installing the Calendar.

Use as a Standalone Application
To use the Calendar as a standalone application, copy Calendar.db and Calendar.dat into your Sesame data folder (C:\Sesame2\Data\ is the default installation path) You can then place a shortcut on your desktop to launch the Calendar. Assuming a default installation, the shortcut should have these settings:

Target: C:\Sesame2\Program\sesame.exe data\calendar.db
Start in: C:\Sesame2

If the Calendar will be shared, set up your client shortcuts as you would for a shared application. For example:

Target: C:\Sesame2\Program\sesame.exe -client [servername]:[port1]:[port2] data\Calendar.db
Start in: C:\Sesame2

To put the Calendar in a more compact window when launching it in standalone mode from a desktop shortcut, you can do the following:

1. Open Notepad and type these lines:

HEIGHT: 520
WIDTH: 350
COMMAND AREA WIDTH: CLOSED

2. Save the file to C:\Sesame2\Calendar.ini
    
3. Change the target of your Calendar shortcut to this:

C:\sesame2\Program\sesame.exe data\calendar.db -ini_file C:\Sesame2\calendar.ini

Add to an existing Sesame application
To add the Calendar to an existing Sesame application, follow these steps:

1. Open the latest Designer (DSR) file for the application in Sesame Designer.

2. Open the form where you'll want access to  the Calendar. (This could be a custom starting or main menu form, if you have one.)

3. Add a Calendar button to the form and program it On Element Entry this way:

var vResult as String
vResult = @FormAsDialog("Calendar")

4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 for any other forms where you'll want access to the Calendar.
    
5. On Designer's Application menu, click Merge Application* and choose Calendar.db.
    
6. Reconcile your changes with the live application and you're done.
   
   *The application you're merging the Calendar into must not already contain a database or form named Calendar or Notes. (Always back up your application before merging another application into it or reconciling.) For more information on merging applications, see the Sesame 2.0 User Guide.
   
   When the Calendar is popped up, it does not interact with the underlying database record or form in any way. Calendar actions do not change the displayed record. The Calendar is it's own separate mini-application within the larger application.

You can merge the Calendar into more than one application. If you do, each Calendar in each application will have its own notes database. If you want to have the Calendar available in multiple applications but with only one set of notes across all of them, contact us about a custom version.)

Security issues
If you have merged the Calendar into an existing secured application — or are using it as a secured standalone application — an X User Name and X Password must be set in Security Manager's Application Settings tab in Sesame Designer. Without these, the Calendar cannot access its Notes database.

If you have any questions about the Simple Sesame Calendar — or would like to discuss a custom version of it for your company — call us at 800-780-5474 / 949-722-9127 or email us at office@insidesesame.com.

Prices
Single user $120
Each additional user $29
(20% off to Inside Sesame Subscribers)
Developers distribution license available
Custom versions on request