Add CalSuite Subscriptions and Views

Introduction

Up until now, we've paid little attention to Calendar suites, an important abstraction in Bedework.  Calendar suites are full-blown Bedework public events web sites that share a single database of events (and administrative and submissions clients).  Each suite has an independent look and feel (skin) and an independent set of managers.  Each suite also filters events in its own way.   For example, you might have a calendar suite

Bedework ships with a default calendar suite called MainCampus (and a second suite called SoEDepartmental which serves as a model for additional suites).   Some sites will never need to add others.  Others choose to develop many, perhaps dozens.  More on that later.  For now, we'll assume you have one:  MainCampus.

Earlier you created categories and used them to set up your hierarchy of folders and calendars (aliases which filter on categories).   While the hierarchy you created is visible in the public calendar in certain places (View All Calendars and Advanced Search), much of the work you've done up to now isn't available to your calendar users or to your calendar managers.  Why?  The public client operates in the context of the MainCampus calendar suite and the MainCampus calendar suite isn't aware of the additions.  In other words, you must explicitly select those parts of the hierarchy you want to reveal in the public client by adding them to MainCampus.  You do this in the administrative client by working in the context of MainCampus (which is the default) and creating calendar suite subscriptions and views under the Calendar Suites tab.  

Add Calendar Suite Subscriptions

Subscriptions define what events are pulled into the suite to be viewed.  When assigned as a topical area, subscriptions are used to tag events with one or many categories.

To get you started, create a subscription for any new top-level alias or folder you created in your hierarchy by:

1. In the admin client, log in with a superuser account.  Make sure that your calendar suite is set to MainCampus (look towards the upper left).
2. Click on the Calendar Suite tab
3. Click on Manage Subscriptions
4. Open up MainCampus, by clicking on the plus on the far left, next to the folder icon.  You'll see all the aliases that are already defined and that they correspond to the top level of the calendar hierarchy that shipped in the quickstart.
5. Click on the add icon to the right of MainCampus

6. In Add Subscription form, fill in the System Name and the Display Name.  Set them both to whatever they will reference, unless the name you've chosen contains certain special characters.  For example, if you'd like to display "Arts & Entertainment", set the System Name to "Arts and Entertainment" and the Display Name to something like "Arts and Entertainment".  

   These characters aren't permitted in System Names: & / \ ' " (ampersand, backward slash, forward slash, single quote, double quote).

7. Optionally add a Description.
8. Select Public Alias as the type.
9. Click on the Select a public calendar or folder option.  This will reveal the hierarchy you set up.
10. Choose the corresponding top-level folder or alias.

Add Calendar Suite Views and Update the All View

Subscriptions are aggregated into views for display in the public web client.   In the Bedework theme, the views are presented along the left hand side of the page.   By default, users start with the All view selected.   All generally includes most if not all of the calendar suite subscriptions.  The other views usually contain one or two subscriptions, depending on how you choose to aggregate your calendar suite subscriptions.  

To get you started, add a view for each subscription you created in the previous step and add that subscription to the All view:

1. In the admin client, log in with a superuser account.  Make sure that your calendar suite is set to MainCampus (look towards the upper left).
2. Click on the Calendar Suite tab
3. Click on Manage Views
4. In Add a new view, type in the name that corresponds to the subscription and click on the add view button.
5. In the Update View form, Find your subscription in the list of Available subscriptions and click on the arrow to slide it over to the Active subscriptions column.
6. Click on the Return to Views Listing button.
7. Click on the All view and repeat step 5.