Such a pain in the backside for something that should not be! Viewing a calendar on mobile devices

[RoyMi6]

As part of our University we use Office 365.

We're trying to set up room bookings so that any person that's a member of staff or student can book some rooms in one of our buildings.

The actual room booking process is fine. We've create resources (rooms) that can be booked via the calendar - brill.

The problem comes in that we also allow use of these rooms without bookings.

Typically this just involves checking that no one is in the room and walking in. However, obviously people with bookings take priority.

As such we want to make it easy for people to see the bookings of the room.

Bookings can be made at any time so "printouts" of the bookings place on the door will not work as I could make a booking 5 minutes before using the room.

The suggested alternative is to simply have a link on the door that would allow anyone to view the calendar on their mobile device.

Here lies the problem:

1) Office 365 (outlook web access for calendars) does not work on ANY mobile browser
2) Linking to the web published ICS file of the calendar (for the room bookings) into the suggested alternative (Google) works but then doesn't update often enough (taking more than an 2 hours to update at this rate!) and seems to be a documented problem (https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-calendar-help-dataapi/0iPph4RlxF8)

So, I turn to you OCUK! What alternatives are out there that I can use? All I want is to be able to view a calendar on my mobile that's updated on request. Simples no?

 

[dasyad]

I'm not really familiar with Office 365 but is there no way to sync that up with a calendar application on a phone?

 

[RoyMi6]

I'm not really familiar with Office 365 but is there no way to sync that up with a calendar application on a phone?

Yeah, there is, but it's seen as a step too far for some people.

Ideally we just want a bitly link on the door that when people view on their phone, tablet or computer it shows the rooms availability in a calendar format.

 

[dasyad]

So you cannot view the Office 365 calendar at all on a mobile browser?

Dump it and move to Google Docs to be honest

 

[ChocolateStarfishRammer]

As part of our University we use Office 365

Stopped reading after this.

If your a University (and assumptively a large one) bring your infrastructure in house and stop using this rubbish.

Angry Rant.

 

[RoyMi6]

So you cannot view the Office 365 calendar at all on a mobile browser?

Nope

Dump it and move to Google Docs to be honest

Stopped reading after this.

If your a University (and assumptively a large one) bring your infrastructure in house and stop using this rubbish.

Angry Rant.

An option that's outwith my control.

 

[RoyMi6]

This is essentially what I need, but it's no longer under developed or maintained which means we can't rely on it: http://www.instantcal.com/

 

[dasyad]

A post I read on Google suggested if your force it to load the desktop page on your mobile browser then it works okay? I know it is naff but short of writing your own web app to re-display the calendar in a mobile friendly page then I'm not sure what else you can do.

Cue someone steaming in with an amazing way of doing it

 

[RoyMi6]

A google calendar would work fine - the problem with google calendars is the rate at which it refreshes it's data from the calendar feed.

 

[visibleman]

Not possible to create something yourself?
If you have access to a iCal feed then there are a handful of iCal PHP classes around (the format isn't that difficult anyway) which you could use to feed a jQuery calendar like Full Calendar.

 

[dasyad]

A google calendar would work fine - the problem with google calendars is the rate at which it refreshes it's data from the calendar feed.

No I mean still use the 365 calendar but use the browser on your phone to force display the desktop version of the site, apparently that works.

 

[Dreadhead]

attach a monitor and a raspberry pi to the wall permanently logged into the desktop calendar.

 

[RoyMi6]

Not possible to create something yourself?
If you have access to a iCal feed then there are a handful of iCal PHP classes around (the format isn't that difficult anyway) which you could use to feed a jQuery calendar like Full Calendar.

Yeah, this looks like the route I'm going to take. Cheers for this jQuery solution. I had been focusing on PHP versions and they're surprisingly unsupported as well!

EDIT: Damit, no support for ICS files

No I mean still use the 365 calendar but use the browser on your phone to force display the desktop version of the site, apparently that works.

You don't even have the option to "view desktop version". There's no way I can convince 15K staff and students to change their browser settings on their
mobile just so they can view this calendar when they want to.

attach a monitor and a raspberry pi to the wall permanently logged into the desktop calendar.

Yeah, this is the other option. We're actually looking at getting ~£100 tablets on the walls - but that's a "next years budget" kind of thing.

EDIT2: Just noticed the flaw in this plan that it doesn't work with mobile devices... ARGH!

 

[dasyad]

But with these tablets attached to the walls you can set it up so that their calendar app is sync'd up with the calendar.

I think it's a very wasteful way to do it though, tablet on the wall just to check room availability

Way forward is definitely to write your own page that can get the calendar information out of Office 365.

 

[RoyMi6]

But with these tablets attached to the walls you can set it up so that their calendar app is sync'd up with the calendar.

Only problem with that is that it would require people to hit refresh (or something similar) to display the latest bookings - this could be done automatically on a webpage.

I think it's a very wasteful way to do it though, tablet on the wall just to check room availability

The cost of 10, low costs, tablets pales into insignificance at the overall cost of the refurbishment.

Way forward is definitely to write your own page that can get the calendar information out of Office 365.

Already on the case, just a pain

 

[visibleman]

Yeah, this looks like the route I'm going to take. Cheers for this jQuery solution. I had been focusing on PHP versions and they're surprisingly unsupported as well!

EDIT: Damit, no support for ICS files

You'd need to create a iCal/ICS to JSON parser but as mentioned, the iCal format is pretty basic (Tech Spec) anyway and would require a simple loop around the lines, otherwise there are PHP classes around that can extract the data which you can then stuff into the standard PHP JSON functions for the calendar frontend.

Tricky bit is making that jQuery FullCalendar plugin mobile friendly (i've never tried it on a mobile device, so it might already be suitable) but there are (granted, old) mobile versions of it around - https://github.com/JordanReiter/fullcalendar-mobile.

 

[OspreyO]

We use share point for this, but don't have mobile access to it.

If you want a something that all browsers (incl mobiles) can use, I would just create a simple website. You don't need full blown calendar functionality, you don't need to use Office 365. You're over thinking it. You only need a list per room of the times and dates its booked. Sorted from date descending.

Then its compatible with all browsers (as its so simple) and no synch refresh issues. Its all in one place.

If you want something all singing and dancing then I'd go a different way.