            PROJECT BASED CALENDARING SYSTEM
              10 January 2001 - version 0.4

        Created and copyright by Roalt Zijlstra
        Reachable by email on roalt@kwenie.org

This software is GPL-ed so go ahead using it and if you write
nifty addendums, please let me know.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

While I was searching the web for web-based calendar systems I noticed that
a lot of calendaring systems show only the schedule of one person at a time.
Maybe because all calendar and appointment systems do so, but I had the
need to view schedules of some people next to each other.

Looking at Microsoft Outlook (Yeah yeah, sew me, but it is a widely used
calendaring system, so there could be any good in it... except for the
crashers :-) ) you do get an overview while planning a new appointment if
the people you intend to invite are available. That is good, but in my
experience you often want to know a little more about the appointment, for
example where someone is going and what he or she is going to do.

Next to the business with a good web-based calendar I wanted to link scheduled
appointments to projects which I appear to coordinate in the company I work
in. A good reason for that is the need for statistics about how much hours
have been scheduled for a project and how much time did the customer pay for.
This way we can also take into account how long certain projects take and if
our prediction about the duration of the projects are correct.

And here it is then... the Project based Calendaring system which I will write
as PBCS in short.

WHAT WILL IT BE?

Obviously it will be a calendaring system which enables me to reach the
above two aims. The Calendar part will have day/week/two weekly and month
overviews. Next to that there will be list of appointments which is easy
for printing and gives you the information you need on the road.

Appointments can be scheduled for multiple persons at a time and it is also
possible to make a private appointment and to add notes on a day (kinda like
a to do list but then linked on a day). You can also specify a project code
to an appointment. With that information you can get statistic information
about running project as long as the information is truthfully entered.

I intend to make it able to replicate appointments to backup or slave systems
so the PBCS can be used in distributed way across low-bandwidth networks
between departments of a company. This can also be used to have people with
Linux laptops replicate the calendar and have their calendar available on
the road eventually!

WHERE IS IT NOW?

Currently v0.4 is the latest release and in the TODO file you can see what the
roadmap concerning versioning and features will be.

As of version v0.3 the Calendar can be used as a general Calendaring system.
With v0.4 it is even more User Friendly and better usable by non-technical
users. In version v0.4 a weekly overview for a single user has been added,
which is very much used by normal calendar users. Next to that the look of PBCS
is user definable ie. Theme support has been added and I ask all PBCS
administrators to send their custom made themes to roalt@kwenie.org so I can
share them for use with PBCS.

It has taken a long time to release version v0.4 because some radical
improvements had to be incorporated. The most difficult one was to add
recurrent appointments, as this implied a pretty rewrite of the appointment
form and the validity checks. Theming was implemented and concerned all files.
I had to go though them all to make them show the propper colors.

I have also taken time to check consistency and fixed a lot of bugs. The most
notable bug fixes are the week numbering which was one week slow and the
algorithm to show appointment times in week and month overviews was acting
weird.

In version v0.4 I switched the login system and decided to use a form based
authorisation method instead of the popup user/password window. I found out
that the logout system would not work on Netscape/Mozilla and KDE Konqueror.
The new one will work. I also hacked (to be cleaned up in v0.5) in an
authorisation check using a POP3 server.

Here follows a list with all implemented features.

o User authentication using forms and PHP4 sessions
o A special PBCS session management which retains user session information
o A separate administration part for Admins
o User and project management for admin users in the administration section
o User information can be updated by an admin
o Per User an admin can give a user access using its UNIX password.
o Users can change settings for their account, including password, name,
  surname and the show-range for the day-overview.
o Appointments can be made for multiple persons
o Appointments can be made recuurent in many ways. Daily, Weekly,
  Monthly and Yealry.
o Appointments can be edited afterwards on all settings (except recurrence!)
o Appointments can be deleted.
o Appointments can be private without people seeing the content of the
  appointment.
o There are six overviews available. Two Single User Overviews and four
  Multi User Overviews.
o A small month overview for picking dates quickly
o Special GOTO button to change the above month to any date you like using
  pull down menus.
o A user picker enabling you to view one or more persons a time
o An installer script for fresh installs.


If you are interested in more accurate change then there is a ChangeLog file
to satisfy your needs.

Have a look at the INSTALL file for installation instructions.

DISCLAIMER

Of course this software is AS IS, so if it broke your system... it probably
was already bogus and you are better off buying a new one, instead of bugging
me. Still if you have comments which could be improvements I hope you will contact me
on my email address roalt@kwenie.org


Good luck,

Roalt Zijlstra



