Enterprise Information Technology Services Press Release
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

WRITER: Bert DeSimone, 706/542-5110, bert@uga.edu
CONTACT: Steve Hilliard, 542-5110 flowman@uga.edu

EITS improves UGA Calendar Service with January 14 weekend upgrade

ATHENS, Ga.— Enterprise Information Technology Services has assisted faculty and staff at UGA with managing their busy schedules for many years via the UGA Calendar Service ( http://www.eits.uga.edu/calendar ). This service gives individuals the opportunity to manage their professional calendars, schedule meetings with other participants across campus, and related tasks. Beginning the week of January 16, all UGA Calendar Service users will experience significant improvements to the system following a weekend upgrade.

"We chose the weekend before the Martin Luther King Holiday to upgrade the UGA Calendar Service hardware and software to minimize the impact of the upgrade on our clients," said Steve Hilliard, Associate Director for Production System Services. The upgrade process will begin at 9:00am, Saturday, January 14, and continue through 9:00pm, Sunday, January 15. The calendar service will be unavailable during this time period.

"All information will be moved to the upgraded system," said Hilliard, "so when everyone returns to work on Tuesday, all the information stored on the old system will be available on the new system."

The new calendar service has been tested extensively by a campus user group, who found the new system be a great improvement over the old system. "The transition will require no training for current users; however, to take full advantage of the new features, users will wish to familiarize themselves with the system at their convenience," said Allan Nuss, IT professional in the Carl Vinson Institute of Government and member of the campus user group.

If you are already a calendar user, and you use the web interface to the calendar ( http://calendar.uga.edu ), there is nothing you need to do to take advantage of the new features offered by the upgraded service. Simply log onto your calendar account via the Web as normal. If you use a desktop software to access your calendar, your current software will still work with the new calendar, but you will need to download and install new desktop software to take full advantage of the new calendar features available with the upgrade. Desktop software downloads will be available after the upgrade for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris systems on the UGA Calendar Service Web site:

http://www.eits.uga.edu/calendar

UGA faculty and staff not currently using the UGA Calendar Service can create an account by following the "Create a Calendar Account" link on the UGA Calendar Service Web site.

"Users of Palm, PocketPC, and other PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) will be pleased with the added support the UGA Calendar Service offers to these devices," said Hilliard. Hilliard went on to say that it is very important for users of these devices to download the latest software from the UGA Calender Service Web site (under "Desktop Clients") before attempting to synchronize a PDA with the new service.

About EITS
Enterprise Information Technology Services (EITS) is committed to providing information technology resources and services in support of the mission of the University of Georgia as articulated in the overarching strategic plan for the University. Under the leadership of the University's Chief Information Officer, EITS executes its mission via eight core initiatives: strategic planning and governance, instructional technology, research computing, client support, information security, outreach and partnerships, business operations and administrative applications, and infrastructure support. For more information, please visit the EITS Web site: www.eits.uga.edu.