The
City of Nanaimo has been making many changes to their online services to help inform the citizens of Nanaimo about whats going on in their fine city. The feature I want to talk about today is the new calendar feature.
This is a very powerful and very customizable calendar that you can access many ways.
1. On the homepage is a link on the right side
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| Right Side Menu |
2. From the Municipal Hall Menu
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| Easy link from any page on the site |
3. Directly at
http://www.nanaimo.ca/Calendar/
When you first arrive you will be able to see the Public Meetings. These are the council meetings and other public meetings that the council members are attending. If you want to see politics in action these are great meetings to attend.
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| Not much to see yet |
By default you will be shown a monthly view but you can change this by choosing one of the four views at the top. I like the list view for items that don't happen to often because I can see more than one month at a time.
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| List View |
Now although the council is a lot of fun it's not really what I want to do on a Monday night. Also I can watch it on my iPhone or Computer on Tuesday at
Council Agendas and Minutes. What I really want to do is get some exercise. So I go via the menus to I want to > View >
Public Schedules (Arenas/Aquatics) .To see the online pool and arena schedule.
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| Online Pool Schedules |
I choose my favorite facility or activity and click on it. Today I'm feeling like the wave pool.
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| Schedule for Waves |
On this page is a very important icon
that links back to the calendar. So I can see the waves times in the calendar.
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| Waves in Calendar |
I can now easily see that they are running every week day at 11 AM and 7 PM and once on weekends. This is great but I don't want to swim alone so I invite a friend.
At the top right of the page, hidden under the switcher for font sizes and mobile versions is link that reads "Get Link".
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| Top Right Corner |
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| Popup Dialog |
This url contains all the information needed to show the calendar the way you are looking at it.
http://www.nanaimo.ca/Calendar/Display/Waves?viewtype=month&calendarUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nanaimo.ca%2Fschedules%2Fparks-recreation-culture%2FActivity%2FWaves.ics&calendarTitle=Waves&shownDate=12/12/2011
I email that link to my friend and he can suggest a time.
Maybe you want to see some more information like what is going on at Oliver Woods Community Centre and Frank Crane Arena. That's very easy to do as the major recreation facilities have been setup as standard calendars for you to choose from. Click on " + Add a calendar" above the calendar and you will be given a drop down list.
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| Choose a calendar |
I've added the two calendars.
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| Three calendars selected |
Now I can see all the calendars on the same monthly view
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| More to see |
Now would be a great time to check out weekly and day view
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| Daily View |
Looks like if I go swimming tonight I will miss adult drop in volleyball. I haven't played volleyball since junior high. Much like most things I haven't done since junior high there is probably a good reason for that but I'm not going to let that stop me. I click on Adult Volleyball.
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| Adult Volleyball |
In this popup I can see all the information I need and add this event to my Outlook, iPhone, google or yahoo calendar but I want to know more about the cool events going on at Oliver Woods so I click the
icon under where it says "Subscribe to this calendar"
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| Please Login |
The City of Nanaimo does not make you sign up for an account. Any existing account you have might work. No one wants to have a new password to remember and it's actually more secure to use a secure third party site to remember your password than it is to give a password to every site you visit. I've decided to use my Google account so I click Google. If it was my first time I would have been asked for permission from Google then I'm directed back to the calendar with a message thanking me for subscribing.
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| You have subscribed |
I can check my subscription by clicking the manage your subscriptions link.
Looks like I will need to enter an email and save my settings (if I had applied for a job or used one of the many future services that want emails addresses Nanaimo would have it on file). I will receive an email asking me to click a link and verify my email before I get any more emails but after that I will receive a daily email around 5:15 PM of all Oliver Woods events for the next day. I can also click the Dashboard link at the top of the page to see a central readout of all my profile information including calendar events.
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| My Dashboard |
And that covers everything you should know about Nanaimo's new online calendar. There are a few hidden features I have not covered here but I'll leave those for the adventurous to discover. If you have any feedback feel free to let me know in comments, via email or via my social networks.
Disclaimer: I work for the City of Nanaimo and wrote this application but the the opinions expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not represent the opinions or policy of the City of Nanaimo.
