Ubuntu Wiki

The Fridge calendar is used to organize meetings around the community.

The calendar is viewable at http://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/fridge/ (XML, iCal, HTML).

Adding Events to the Calendar

1. Log into Google Calendar (either using a gmail address or an address that is a login for a Google account)
2. Create an event using your time zone (Fridge calendar will adjust and display in GMT no daylight saving time see notes below though).

3. When you are creating your event description, please use the following format in order to make it easier to add the event to the UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter:

 * Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
 * Agenda:  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YOURTEAM/PATH/TO/AGENDA

4. For the Location field, please set it to "#ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net"

5. Under Add Guests, invite j5q85mmi6ujvjtii5s1n3li5io@group.calendar.google.com.

6. Check the box that says 'Guests can modify event'
7. Save the event.
8. When it asks "Would you like to send invitation to new guests?", please choose "Don't Send"

9. Verify the event is showing up correctly in https://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/fridge/ (which is in GMT).

Please note, if your event is not being held in #ubuntu-meeting, you will need to replace all instances of #ubuntu-meeting with the correct IRC channel of your event.

Notes on Google time-zone handling

All events are created in user's timezone as set in "Calendar Settings -> General -> Your current time zone", but for future events it takes into account daylight saving time such that if you plan a weekly meeting for 3pm it will still be 3pm after your location switches to winter/summer time.

If you want to avoid daylight saving time handling & create strictly UTC time-zone events you must use "GMT (no daylight saving time)"

Here is a quick guide in using this Google feature to create "local time" or strictly UTC events:

1. Set your current time-zone to the desired one

2. Click settings -> Calendar Settings -> Change your current time zone (select city or "GMT (no daylight saving time)" for UTC)

3. Create a new calendar

4. In this new calendar create a recurring event & invite ubuntu fridge as described above

Why Google Calendar? Why not an OSS solution?

Its important to understand that we are not being locked into using Google Calendar forever. If the News Team can find a better solution in the future, we can easily migrate away from Google Calendar.

The Fridge is currently running Drupal 5. There is no core calendaring functionality. The events module that it has currently does not support repeating events. If a meeting is supposed to be held weekly, 52 separate events have to be created for the year. Obviously, this is not a maintainable process. Other calendar modules were evaluated by the IS team, but they had security vulnerabilities. Also, most development of event modules have stopped on Drupal 5 and moved on to Drupal 6.

Drupal 6 handles calendars better. Development of modules supporting repeating events is on-going and will be released in the future. Since we need a solution now, going to Drupal 6 does not solve our problems.

#ubuntu-meeting bot

The #ubuntu-meeting bot currently changes the topic in the channel to list current and upcoming meetings. It can handle individual events properly, but cannot process the iCal standard for repeating events.

This will have to be fixed in the future.