Tag: scheduling

Why doesn’t everyone do this — non-working hours clarification

I like that Microsoft has added “they are x hours behind you” to individual profiles, but that assumes people all work 8-5 in their local time. Which isn’t the case, so I’ve been introducing myself to new people that I need to engage in meetings including something like “I work in the Eastern time zone but am generally available until about 6PM Eastern if that’s better for you” & asking for a similar response from them. I know some people who live in the Central, Mountain, or Pacific time zones but work 8-5 Eastern. I know others who live in the same area work 9-6 or 11-8 Eastern. We have overseas contractors who work from 3:30 AM to 12:30 PM Eastern, and others who who start working around 10 AM.

Seems like it would make collaborating with others easier if we all had recurring appointments to clarify our non-working hours. A recurring each-weekday appointment like below — away so it doesn’t look like I’m just booked solid at dark-o-clock, recurring, and no reminder (because that would get super annoying). And maybe a recurring weekly one from whatever PM on Friday through whatever AM on Monday if there are a statistically significant of people who’d be working T-Sat or Sun-Thur.

Doesn’t really provide much value implemented in a small group – you generally get a good idea of when your immediate coworkers are working. But it would help a lot reaching out to other groups!

 

Scraping Calendar Events

We’ve learned the value of engaging with local government — with few people involved in local proceedings, it’s pretty easy for a generally unpopular proposal to seem reasonable. And then we’re all stuck with the generally unpopular regulation. It is a pain, however, to keep manually adding the next Trustee meeting. And there’s no way I’m checking the website daily to find out about any emergency meetings.

Now I’m pulling the events from their Google calendar and creating new meeting items in my Exchange calendar:

  1. Register the app with Google to use the API
  2. Install exchangelib
  3. Copy config.sample to config.py and add personal information
  4. Create a ca.crt file with the CA signing key for your Exchange server (or remove the custom adapter if your server cert is signed by a public key)
  5. Run getCalendarEvents.py and follow the URL to authorize access to your calendar

I’ve tweaked the script to grab events from the school district’s calendar in SchoolPointe too. Now we know when there’s a school board meeting or dress-up day.