Of course, you'll want to use the calendar to do more than find out what day it is. This section will tell you how to schedule appointments, set alarms, and determine appointment recurrence.
To create a new appointment, select File->New->Appointment or click the New Appointment button on the left end of the toolbar. The New Appointment dialog will pop up with the menu bar, tool bar, and window full of choices for you.
Shortcut: If you don't need to enter more information than the date and time of the appointment, you just click in any blank space in the calendar and start typing. You can enter other information later with the appointment editor.
Your appointment must have a starting and ending date — by default, today — but you can choose whether to give it starting and ending times or to mark it as an All day event. An All day event appears at the top of a day's appointment list, in the grey header under the date, rather than inside it. That makes it easy to have appointments that overlap and fit inside each other. For example, a conference might be an all day appointment, and the meetings at the conference would be timed appointments. Of course, appointments with specific starting and ending times can also overlap. When they do they're displayed as multiple columns in the day view of the calendar.
Evolution supports the use of timezones. If you share calendar files with friends or co-workers, it is quite possible you will need to configure your timezone. To configure your timezone:
Click Tools->Calendar Settings
Click the Globe button in the Time section, located in the General tab.
Each red dot represents a major city. Click a dot and click OK to select your time zone.
You can also configure timezone information specific to Start and End time in each appointment. To do that, simply create a new appointment and click on a globe to customize the timezone that the time exists in.
Multiple Simultanious Appointments: If you create calendar appointments that overlap, Evolution will display them side by side in your calendar. However, Evolution cannot help you do multiple things at once.
You can have as many Alarms, any time prior to the appointment you've scheduled. You can have one alarm of each of the following types:
A window will pop up on your screen to remind you of your appointment.
Choose this to have your computer deliver a sound alarm.
Select this if you would like to run a program as a reminder. You can enter its name in the text field, or find it with the Browse button.
Classification only applies to calendars on a network. Public is the default category, and a public appointment can be viewed by anyone on the calendar sharing network. Private denotes one level of security, and Confidential an even higher level.
Evolution can handle not only time that you're busy, but free time. This can be useful if you're on a network sharing calendar files. You can easily compare schedules with other people, allowing easy setup of a RSVP.
To set your appointment to be free or busy, simply click the box in the Show Time As section in the Appointment Editor.
Evolution lets you categorize your appointments, which can help if you lead a busy life. The bottom section of the Appointment tab is where your categorization is done.
Adding a New Appointment Category: You can add a new category to your category list by clicking on Edit Master Category List and single-clicking on Click here to add a category.
The purpose of categories is to let you view all appointments which have similar activities. To do this, change Any field contains to Has category and enter your category at right.
Clicking on the Categories button opens up the category list. To associate a category to an appointment, simply click the check box.
Once you've selected your categories, click OK to assign these categories to the appointment. The categories you selected are now listed in the text box to the right of the Categories... button.
The Recurrence tab lets you describe repetition in appointments ranging from once every day up to once every 100 years. You can then choose a time and date when the appointment will stop recurring, and, under Exceptions, pick individual days when the appointment will not recur. Make your selections from left to right, and you'll form a sentence: "Every two weeks on Monday and Friday until January 3, 2003" or "Every month on the first Friday for 12 occurrences."
Once you're done with all those settings, click on the disk icon in the toolbar to save and close the appointment editor window. If you want, you can alter an appointment summary in the calendar view by clicking on it and typing. You can change other settings by right-clicking on the appointment then choosing Edit this Appointment.
Evolution can be used to schedule group meetings and help you manage responses to meeting requests.
When you create a meeting or group appointment, you can specify the attendees in several categories, such as "chair" or "required." When you save the appointment listing, each attendee will be sent an email with the appointment information and gives them the option to respond.
To schedule a meeting:
Select Actions->Schedule Meeting. The Scheduling and Meeting tabs open.
If you have multiple Evolution identities, choose the one you'll use by selecting an item in the Sent By field.
Click the space labelled Click here to add an attendee to enter the names and email addresses of people you will invite, or click the Invite Others to select them from your addressbook.
Save the Appointment.
Meeting requests are sent as iCal attachments. To view or respond to one, click on the attachment icon and view it inline in the mail window. All the details are shown about the event including time and dates. Then you can choose how to reply to the RSVP. Your choices are:
Accept
Tentatively Accept
Decline
Once you get a reply to your meeting invitation, you'll need to view it inline in the email. Click the attachment and select View Inline. At the bottom, you can click OK to update your attendee list.