WEBCALENDAR DOCUMENTATION:
Authenticating via our secure site
WebCalendar has been modified (05/11) to check for a valid session on our secure
site (https://secure.phas.ubc.ca) before checking for a WebCalendar username/password
session.
IF a user is in the dept. directory (ie. all faculty/staff/postdocs/adj-assoc/others,
but not grads)
2013-03-15: Changed to allow grad student access to WebCalendar (for room booking calendars)
AND they don't already have an entry in the WebCalendar database,
THEN one is created automatically for them (with a NULL password).
The upshot is that all dept. members now have WebCalendar available to them without
needing to contact a sysadmin and remember another password.
NOTES:
- Grad students haven't been included because the list of calendar users
could potentially be doubled, and it is already hard enough to scroll through.
The priority at this time is to perfect the tool for faculty & staff use.
2013-03-15: This policy
changed to include grad students.
2013-03-18: Purge script now available:
- https://secure.phas.ubc.ca/forms/sysadmin/webcal_purge.php
- shows WebCalendar accounts that are no longer PHAS accounts and asks for confirmation to delete
- should be run once a year.
- Having a NULL password, doesn't mean that users can login in without a password ...
at least as far as I've been able to detect. We shouldn't have to set WebCalendar passwords
in most cases - ie. as long as they have a phas username/password.
- The secure login takes precedence over anything you enter on the WebCalendar login page.
This means that in order to modify a calendar other than your own, you need to log
off the secure site first. People should be encouraged to take advantage of the "Assistant"
feature in WebCalendar, so that they can manage "non-user" (eg. job applicant) calendars
from within their own.
The code is in a new file:
/wwws/WebCalendar/includes/check_phas_session.php
In addition, includes/validate.php was modified slightly - to call the check_phas_session()
function.
diff -c validate.php.ORI validate.php > validate.txt
Creating Groups based on BPS Committees
2013-02-26: This is not being used.
Site-wide groups have been set up based on the committees defined in Jeff's Brownie Point
Database.
The script to do this is called addgroups.php.
We will have to run this every year - ** BUT FIRST ** we should run the
delgroups.php script to
delete the existing Groups first.
Uploading SIS Course Schedules
2013-02-26: This is not being used.
Events have been automatically added to instructors' calendars based on the SIS Course
Schedules.
The script to do this is called addcourses.php.
These events all have Category="SIS Course Schedules", to help with deleting (backing out).
Don't run this script more than once per session without deleting the existing SIS events first.
The script to delete SIS course events is called delcourses.php.
Changes need to make reminders work
-
WebCalendar setup can be done through http://secure.phas.ubc.ca/WebCalendar/install/index.php.
-
05-09-15: WebCalendar 1.0.2 installation. Needed to make a link from
includes/settings.php to tools/settings.php to fix error about not finding
settings.php file when running send_reminders.php script.
-
I modified cron job (file /var/spool/cron/apache, to view use crontab -u apache -l) to
use wget to run the send_reminders script.
-
WebCalendar reminders are sent via a cron job (file /var/spool/cron/apache, to view
use crontab -u apache -l)
which runs the file every 5 minutes. The cron job runs the file
~WebCalendar/tools/send_reminders.php. When this file runs it
includes the file ../includes/config.php. I had to put this path
in /usr/local/lib/php.ini in the parameter include_path, i.e.
include_path = ".:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php/includes:/var/www/shtml/WebCalendar/includes"
(Aside, /usr/local/lib/php is needed because db_connect is there)
Local modifications to the code:
2013-02-26: Note from PHP4 -> PHP5 forced migration:
- WebCalendar required magic_quotes_gpc to be set ON. On the old
system this was done for just WebCalendar (rather than setting on for
the whole site) via a .htaccess file in the WebCal home directory. For
some reason it doesn't work on the new server. I ended up modifying
includes/config.php to take out the test for it being set - hopefully
this won't cause problems further down the road.
Details for these mods can be found in local (to this web page) .txt files that were
created via:diff -c xxx.php.ORI xxx.php > xxx.txt