Section 98. Subscribe to a Shared iCal Calendar

98. Subscribe to a Shared iCal Calendar

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

30 Configure Networking Manually

97 Create an iCal Event

SEE ALSO

99 Publish Your iCal Calendar

100 Synchronize Your Information Using .Mac

54 Configure a New Mail Account

Because iCal is part of Apple's networked data management suite of utilities, you can publish the events on your calendar to a central server, subscribe to other people's iCal calendars so that you can see their schedules, and even seek out public calendars that are published as services for the iCal-using community.

An excellent starting point for finding shared calendars is choosing Find Shared Calendars from the Calendar menu; this takes you to a shared calendar clearinghouse page hosted by Apple, full of calendars to which you can subscribe.

NOTE

iCal uses the industry-standard VCAL format when publishing or exporting its calendar data. This means that you can share calendars with Exchange/Outlook users, as well as with any other application that uses the VCAL format.

WEB RESOURCE

http://www.icalshare.com

iCalShare is a site dedicated to allowing iCal users to publish their calendars to a browsable directory. You can seek out and subscribe to a calendar of events in which you're interested, no matter whose iCal it's actually part of.

98. Subscribe to a Shared iCal Calendar

1.	Display the Subscribe Configuration Dialog Box Select Subscribe from the iCal Calendar menu to display the Subscribe address entry dialog box.
2.	Enter the Calendar URL Enter the URL of a calendar that's published on .Mac or a WebDAV server . If the calendar was published by a fellow .Mac user , she will be able to give you the URL for the calendar (the URL will have been reported to the person when the calendar was published). KEY TERM WebDAV server A type of server, often found on a corporate network, that provides certain kinds of information and upload and download services (such as iCal publishing). iDisk also operates over WebDAV. Alternatively, visit Apple's iCal calendar library at http://www.apple.com/ical/library/ or iCalShare at http://www.icalshare.com to find an interesting public calendar to subscribe to. These sites present links you can simply click; when you do this, the URL of the calendar in question appears in the Subscribe configuration dialog box.
3.	Automatically Refresh the Calendar You can have iCal automatically query the iCal server periodically to check for updates. Select the Refresh check box and select a refresh intervalanything from 15 minutes to once a month. The more frequently you have iCal refresh its calendars, the more accurate they'll bebut the more frequently your work might be slowed by iCal's background sync process (or interrupted by any error messages that might result from it).
4.	Subscribe to the Calendar Click the Subscribe button at the bottom of the configuration dialog box to add the specified calendar to your Calendars pane in iCal. The new calendar is assigned a unique color , and the events in it are overlaid with your existing personal calendar events.
5.	View Only Certain Calendars Use the check boxes in the Calendars pane to select which calendars you want to see. Hide the calendars (deselect their check boxes) that don't interest you at a given time to reduce clutter in your iCal window and let you see how much free time you really have.
6.	Add a Scheduled Event from Email Someone can send you an iCal event by email. If you receive an iCal event as an attachment in an email message, simply double-click its link to import it into your iCal. TIP To send an iCal event to another person in an email attachment, right-click or Control+ click the event in your calendar and select Mail event from the contextual menu. A new Mail message opens, with the iCal event packaged into it as an attachment. iCal will prompt you about which of your calendars to put the new event into; select the calendar you want to use and click OK . The new event is added into the selected calendar.