September 2002

By Amber Mitchell

This column tells you how to set up an event calendar that a school staff can update and view from the school Web site.

Introduction

How does your school staff get the word out about meetings and events? Is there one place where they can find an updated, accurate event schedule? With the Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Web site creation and management tool, you can create a dynamic calendar that is always available—and always updated—on your school Web site.

Here are a few advantages of creating an online calendar with FrontPage:

• The online calendar provides a common place for staff members to get accurate information.
• An online calendar is easy to keep updated compared to print calendars, which must be redistributed frequently and are often still out-of-date.
• If you’re not sure you need a complex calendar system, FrontPage makes it easy to start with a simple event schedule and build upon it.

Before you begin

You may be tempted to fire up FrontPage right away, but it’s wise to make a few decisions before you do.

First, determine what event information you need to track. This information will be stored in a Microsoft Access database, so you need to think in terms of data fields. A preliminary list of fields could include:

• Event title
• Start date (mm/dd/yyyy as three separate fields)
• Start time
• End date (three fields, as above)
• End time
• Description
• Location
• Staff member in charge
• Staff e-mail address (to link to)
• Status (for example: active, inactive, past)

Second, decide who is responsible for updating events. One person may do it all, or each department head may update his or her section. You’ll give users the logon username and password to update the database.

The Wizard does its magic

Once the planning is done, you’re ready to start using FrontPage. Start by using the Database Interface Wizard to create the database, submission form, database editor, and results page.

To create an event schedule using the Database Interface Wizard

1. In Page view, on the File menu, point to New and then click Page or Web.
2. In the task pane, under New from Template, click Web Site Templates.
3. Click Database Interface Wizard template, and then click OK.
4. In the Database Interface Wizard dialog box, click Next to create a new Access database and then type the name of the database and the data fields you want.
5. Once the wizard is finished creating the database, click Next.
6. When prompted about which Database Interface Pages to create, select all three and then click Next.
7. Enter a username and password for the database editor (you can change this later).
8. Follow the on-screen prompts to finish.

You now have a form to add events, an editing page to change events, a database to store them, and a page to display them. Most of the hard work is done already!

The results page that the wizard generates will be an all-inclusive list. This is a good starting point, but you may want to take it further.

Customize your results

Maybe you’ll want to list events grouped by month, or maybe you'll just display the current month’s events. You’ll probably want to display events only if the status is “active.” FrontPage allows you to fully customize your results by creating database queries using Structured Query Language (SQL).

Use the Database Results Wizard to write custom queries, as well as to choose which fields to display, change formatting, and more.

To create specialized lists of events using the Database Results Wizard

1. To make a new database results area, on the Insert menu, click Database and then click Results. If you are using an existing database region, right-click the area and then click Database Results Properties to start the Database Results Wizard.
2. In the Database Results Wizard—Step 1 of 5 dialog box, click your database, and then click Next.

   
   

3. In Database Results Wizard—Step 2 of 5 , choose Custom query and click Edit to create a SQL statement for the region of the page you’re working on. FrontPage will help you build a query in the next step, so you can skip ahead and then return to this step if you prefer. Click Next.
4. In Database Results Wizard—Step 3 of 5 , choose which fields to display. Click More Options for help building queries. When you’re through customizing your results, click Next.
5. In Database Results Wizard—Step 4 of 5 dialog box, you are given formatting options, and Database Results Wizard—Step 5 of 5 splits records into groups of a specified number. When you’re through customizing, click Finish.

Visualize it

Of course, when people think of calendars, they often think of a visual representation of dates, rather than just a list of events.

You could manually create HTML tables of each month; this would give you the greatest control over layout. If you want to simply modify a standard calendar, however, you may consider exporting a Microsoft Outlook® 2002 calendar into HTML and integrating it with the results.

To export an Outlook calendar into HTML

1. Go to your Calendar folder in Outlook. (Note that you will need to use a blank calendar.)
2. On the File menu, click Save as Web Page.

Note  If you get a message that says you must install the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web Publishing Wizard, you can install it as an additional feature from your Microsoft Office CD.

After you have saved the pages you want, simply open them in FrontPage for editing. As in the previous procedure, you can add database queries to the HTML file with the Database Results Wizard.

Built for the future

Once your calendar is in use, you can build in new features as needed. If you have a lot of events, you can add a drop-down box to display events by department. Or, you may want to expand the calendar to include other scheduled items such as meeting rooms and resources.

You can add almost any feature onto this base to make it a more useful tool for your staff. Imagine, they’ll never have to rifle through piles of paper looking for an old calendar again!

Security considerations

Any time you put information on the Web, you should think about security. Here are some ideas and resources:

• The Database Editor requires logon; make logon information available only to the users you designate.
• You can password-protect calendar viewing if sensitive information is available.