Calendar widgets in Elementi 2015

This page is about the calendar data-driven widgets included into Elementi 2015. For other Elementi versions, see below.

Introduction

Calendars are commonly used to store one-time or repetitive events, like: meetings, room bookings, classes etc. The calendar widgets can be used to include the content of calendar files (.ics) within digital signage projects.

Most calendar tools, like Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apple Calendar (formerly iCal), IBM Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Calendar etc., are able to export the data as iCalendar (.ics) file.

Note:

See more about accessing data from calendar applications and Data feeds in general.

Calendar widgets

Under the "Calendars" folder of Elementi 2015 Library, you can find five ready-to-use widgets that automatically display data extracted from a calendar data source:

Calendar widgets in Elementi 2015

• Text Bar

  Displays text content using a fixed number of lines and applying a bottom-to-top & line-by-line scrolling effect whenever the entire text doesn't fit into the widget area.

• Text Ticker

  Displays text content using a continuous horizontal scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.

• Text Roll

  Displays text content using a continuous vertical scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the selected number of lines to fit into the predefined area.

• Slideshow

  Displays slides composed of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from the calendar. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

• Table

  Displays slides composed of multiple cells of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from the calendar. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

See also:

• Soft scheduling widgets
• Create / edit a calendar file from Elementi (see Schedule and Calendar panel pages)
• Displaying calendar events tutorial
• Accessing data from calendar applications
• For other uses of calendar files, see Calendar file usage page

Configuration

Each of the widgets above can be customized using the options provided under "Properties" tab - for more details go to the dedicated page of each widget type, linked above.

To edit the properties related to the data source, click on the button. This opens the Data Feed Properties dialog, which allows changing the URI from where the data are retrieved, the refresh rate, and the optional limit of items.

Note: At any point, the data source configuration can be tested by clicking on the "Test..." button.

ICS parser

A calendar can be parsed into a table-like format, with columns and rows, using the ICS parser. Once selected, the "ICS Parser" tab is added within the "Data Feed Properties" dialog, offering the possibility to filter the events retrieved from the calendar using the following parameters:

"ICS Parser" tab of "Data Feed Properties" dialog in Elementi 2015

• From

  Specify the starting date and time for the data to be displayed. No events before this date will be included in the final data set. The following options are possible:

  • Date

    Specify an absolute date / time for filtering the data.

  • Relative

    Specify a date / time relative to the moment when the widget is opened. Possible values includes "Now", "Today", "Tomorrow", "This Monday", "Next Month", "Last Year" etc.

  • Custom

    Specify a starting date using a custom date string.

• To

  Specify the ending date / time for the data to be displayed. No events after this date will be included in the final data set. The following options are possible:

  • Date, Relative, Custom

    Same as above.

  • Duration

    Specify a duration relative to the starting time specified under "From".

  • Indefinite

    Specify that all events occurring after the starting date must be included in the output data.

Note: To insert a line break in the event description of an external ICS calendar item, use the line feed character ("\n").

Custom date string

The custom date string can be entered using any of the following formats:

offset relative_date
time
offset relative_date time
offset relative_time

• offset

  The offset applied to relative_date or relative_time as a signed integer (e.g., -12, -5, -1, +1, +2, +30 etc.) or the word this (instead of using 0).

• relative_date

  The relative date specified using one of the following keywords:

  • day, days,

    Examples: "this day", "+1 day", "-5 days".

  • month, months, month-dd, months-dd,

    Note: dd is a fixed day during that month.

    Examples: "this month", "this month-10" (means the 10th day of the current month), "+1 month-31" (means last day of next month);

  • year, years, year-mm, years-mm, year-mm-dd, years-mm-dd,

    Note: mm is a fixed month and dd is a fixed day during that year.

    Examples: "-1 year" (means last year), "this year-12-1" (means December 1st of this year);

  • monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday (i.e. the day of the week in lowercased English format)

    Examples: "-2 sunday", "this monday", "+3 friday" etc.

• time

  The fixed time during the specified date, if any, using hh, hh:mm, hh:mm:ss.

  If not provided, then 00:00:00 is used for start date (From) and 23:59:59 is used for end date (To). If some or all time-notation elements are provided, they are replaced within the default ones.

  Examples: "15" (defaults to 15:00:00 for start date, respectively 15:59:59 for end date), "07:30", "22:50:45".

• relative_time (added into 3.1.0)

  The relative date specified using one of the following keywords: "hour", "hours", "minute", "minutes", "second", "seconds".

  Examples: "-3 hours", "+5 minutes", "+150 seconds".

Advanced configuration

 

This section applies only for Elementi X users.

For Elementi X users, the "Data Feed Properties" dialog offers advanced options for more complex data processing.

For more details about the ICS parser parameters detailed above, see $.parseICAL() and parseICAL() functions.

Troubleshooting

• Displaying a calendar takes some time, freezes or even triggers an HMP restart (or safe mode).

  Most probably the calendar file has grown too much and the HMP requires too much time to parse it - if so, the quickest solution is to remove all the past events from the calendar.

See also

• Elementi 2015 Library
• Data feeds
• Data-driven widgets
• Calendar widgets in Elementi 2017 and 2018
• Calendar widgets in Elementi 2016
• Feed widgets in Elementi 3.x
• Soft scheduling widgets
• Create / edit a calendar file from Elementi (see Schedule and Calendar panel pages)
• Displaying calendar events tutorial
• Accessing data from calendar applications
• For other uses of calendar files, see Calendar file usage page