Calendar block

Note for Contributors
This page should explain what the Calendar block is and how the calendar works

This block allows to post significant events, relative to their account permissions.

• Site (event viewable in all courses - created by admin users)

• Course (event viewable only to course members - created by teachers)

• Groups (event viewable only by members of a group - created by teachers)

• User (personal event a student user can create - viewable only by the user)

The calendar shows events happening in your classroom. Events are added to the calendar, and can be aimed at individual users, your defined groups, or your courses. Adding closing dates to assignments, forums, quizzes, etc. will cause them to show up in the calendar section. You can view previous or future months on Calendar by clicking the left/right arrows next to the current month’s name. Today’s date is always outlined in black. Other events are color coded based on what the event is (color key under Calendar). You can hide or show various categories of events by clicking on the color key. This can make the calendar easier to read (especially if there are many events on the calendar). For example, if you wanted to hide Group event dates (events assigned to learner Groups you create), click “Group events” on the bottom of the Calendar. This would hide all group events, and the color code would disappear from the link on the calendar. To show the events again, click the Group Events link again.

Both the daily detail screen and the monthly detail screen have the Preferences button in the upper right. This button leads to a screen like this: The last two settings ('Maximum upcoming events' and 'Upcoming events look-ahead') affect how the Upcoming Events block displays information. You may change any of these settings to suit your class needs. When you have finished any changes, click Save changes.

Both the daily and monthly detail screens have the New Event button. This allows you to manually add events for your classes (remember that the system will automatically add due dates for assignments, quizzes, etc. when you create those activities).

Steps To Adding A Calendar Event:

1. Click month on Calendar to get an expanded month view.

2. In Calendar view click the New Event button.

3. On a New Event page select the kind of a new event. It can be:

• User event (event unique to the user only)

• Group event (if Groups are enabled, select group within course event is for)

• Course event (for learners within the course only)

• Site event (created by admin users only)

4. After that you will set the event properties such as:

• Name – this can be anything you like, but probably should be short.

• Description – this is the full details of the event.

• Date – this sets the date and time of the event. The default is today’s date.

• Duration – this sets how long the event lasts. It can have no duration (the default), can last minutes, days, or more (by setting the date in the Until line), or can last a set number of minutes.

• Repeats – this field sets if the event repeats weekly or not. If it does repeat, you must set how many events to create.

After clicking Save changes the event will display within the Calendar block.

File:Callendar.jpg

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Importing Multiple Events

Currently there is no way to import data to create multiple events. All events must be individually entered through the New Event button. Because the New Event data entry screen only allows drop down selection rather than typed entries, it is very difficult to design a macro for quick repeated input of New Events.

To only other option is to directly connect to the central moodle [SQL] database and directly enter data into the events table. Great care needs to be taken with this approach as alterations to the data structure may cause your moodle site to crash !