IRIDIA Seminars

Responsible Must Be

• To be able to send emails to the Seminars mailing list you need to have the flag "mod" not checked in the Membership Management section of the Seminars mailing list.
• Your email address needs to be subscribed to the list of forwarded addresses of "semAdmin@iridia.ulb.ac.be". Ask the administrator of iridia.ulb.ac.be if you need to be added.

How to Manage Seminars

The IRIDIA seminars can be divided into two main types: internal seminars (IS) and external seminars (ES). Note that each class of seminars need a slightly different management procedure.

1. Ask for confirmation of the seminar date and time to at least one person from MD, MB, or TS.
2. Add an entry to the IRIDIA Seminar Database (only for ES):
   1. Create a folder on your PC called "seminars/"
   2. Copy the semPush script to "seminars/"
   3. Create an xml file containing the xml received by email "FirstnameLastname.xml".
   4. Execute "./semPush FirstnameLastname.xml" from a terminal
   5. Check on IRIDIA Seminars List that the entry has been successfully added
3. Update the IRIDIA's Calendars and book the seminar room:
   1. Login into the system
   2. Add an entry into the seminar for the requested date using the format "[SEMINAR@IRIDIA] FirstName LastName: Title of Seminar"
   3. If the location is the IRIDIA Seminar room then fill the 'Location' field of the calendar with 'SEMINAR ROOM, IRIDIA'.
   4. Always use timed events and remember to add the duration of the event
   5. Add participants to the event:
      1. If the seminar is an ES: "IRIDIA Seminars"
      2. If the seminar is an IS add the entry to ("IRIDIA Seminars", " Robotics calendar", "Optimization calendar") depending on the particular case
      3. If there is the need to book the Seminar room add "Seminar room" in the participants (always for ES)
      4. Always add an entry to "Common calendar" (semAdmin participant)
4. Send reminders for the seminars (only in case of ES)
   1. Login into the IRIDIA server
   2. Send new seminar comunication (where <key> is a date in the format YYYY-MM-DD): "./semMail -s -m <key>"
   3. Send reminder: "./semMail -s -r <key>"
   4. Ensure that the semMail script has a seminar admin email address as sender!

Some notes about the Calendar software

• We are using WebCalendar. The current version is probably very outdated and may be a security risk. It should be (carefully) updated to use the version current in Debian, so it receives automatic security updates.

• It would be ideal to find a way to add events directly from a script, so many steps above could be automated. It should be possible, since it is possible to add events from external applications. However, how to do it from a script is not clear. Someone will have to read the WebCalendar documentation to find out how to do it.

Useful Links

• IRIDIA's Seminars List
• New Seminar Form
• IRIDIA's Calendars
• IRIDIA's Seminars Mailing List