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Terms of Use

General Eligibility Policy
Client / Server Limits
Email Notification Addresses
Access Rights
Data Retention and Archiving
Events for Importing
Holidays
Maintenance and Outage Windows
Appropriate Use

General Eligibility Policy

All UW-Madison students and faculty/staff must have a VALID UW-Madison PhotoID in order to activate and keep their NetID accounts. Having a valid UW-Madison Photo ID does not imply that you must possess an actual physical card.

To be considered valid for NetID services one of the following must be true:

  1. You must be an officially registered student in the current semester. Students studying/working abroad must retain their registered student status with UW-Madison.
  2. You must have an official UW appointment. Those with limited term employee status (LTE) must have received a payroll issued check within 45 days of the current date to be considered eligible.
  3. You must be an officially retired faculty or staff member. Non-emeritus retirees must renew their status with their human resource department to insure eligibility.
  4. You must be a member of a group holding special authorization status with UW-Madison. This status is not granted to individuals nor is it granted by any informal request. Instead, this designation is reserved for pre-determined organizational entities.

For those who are no longer eligible, the following rules apply to deactivation of NetID services:

  1. NetID account deactivation will take place shortly after the “last day to add” of the Fall and Spring semesters each year.
  2. We will not deactivate NetID accounts between the last day of the Spring semester and the "last day to add" of the Fall semester.
  3. We will not deactivate NetID accounts between the last day of the Fall semester and the "last day to add" of the Spring semester.
  4. The initial phase of deactivations will only disable the non-eligible individual’s ability to dial into the Internet, check mail, access My UW-Madison, and access WiscCal. Mail sent to that person’s address will still be accepted.
  5. A grace period is available, by request only, to allow individuals to continue using NetID services for a specified amount of time. This grace period is intended to allow time to correct issues that may lead to reinstating eligibility or, for those who are indeed not eligible, to allow time to establish a private internet service provider (ISP) and set a forwarding address. The grace period will end on an advertised date, generally 2-4 weeks after the initial deactivation.
  6. The final phase of deactivations will take place in conjunction with the end of the grace period. Anyone who has not resolved outstanding issue will have his or her NetID account completely disabled.
  7. Forwarding addresses established before or during the grace period will be honored for a six month period. We reserve the right to exclude messages identified as highly likely to be bulk mail ( spam ) from the allowable forwarded mail.

Client / Server Limits

The WiscCal system has been configured to best perform at its optimal performance due to the number of campus users, network stability, and hardware needs. To view a listing of most of these limits (agenda quota, attachment info, search criteria, etc.), please review the following help desk document: client / server limits.

Email Notification Addresses

The WiscCal system uses email as a method by which users are notified of certain system events:

  • Pending meeting, appointment, or event.
  • Notice of a meeting invitation.
  • Notice of changes to an existing meeting.
  • Notice of the deletion of a meeting.

This is necessary for WiscCal users who access their accounts using the web client via MyUW-Madison, as there is no other method by which such notices can be sent to them. Users of the WiscCal desktop clients can set preferences to also use email for notices.

When WiscCal accounts are created, we provide an email address so that WiscCal can function properly. Given that we cannot know in advance what email address any one user might prefer to use to receive notices, we use the default netid@wisc.edu email address created for all users when they activate their NetID. If you prefer to use a different email address, go to the Account Setup/Admin site.

Access Rights

WiscCal, like other calendaring products, provides a way for users to limit what other WiscCal users can see in their agenda. It also allows you to deny other users the ability to invite you to meetings. A default set of access rights are assigned to user accounts when all WiscCal accounts are created. These defaults rights apply for each user and limit how the rest of the people on WiscCal can see their account information. These default settings are shown in the Access Rights options of the WiscCal clients and are listed when one selects "Default: any unlisted user." The settings for "Default: any unlisted user" is how you know that the rights apply to everyone except specific individuals you choose to give different rights to.

By default, times for events in your agenda can be seen. When another user looks at your agenda, they see only blocks of time with no other information associated with the time block. By default you can be invited by other people to meetings, etc. These settings can be altered for all users (by choosing new settings with "Default: any unlisted user" selected). You may also add specific people to your access list and then give them individually the access rights you desire. For more information about access rights, go to web client steps or native client steps.

Data Retention and Archiving

Data Retention Policy

Calendar system databases, if left unchecked, can grow to enormous sizes. They can become unwieldy, resulting in degraded system performance, and they can consume available storage capacity. It is thus impractical to keep calendar data indefinitely. WiscCal system administrators have implemented a data retention policy:

We will purge calendar system data for all user accounts and resource accounts 25 months prior to the date of the system purge. This purge will be part of the regularly scheduled system maintenance that occurs monthly (which includes database integrity checks and fixes). This maintenance rotates among the calendar system nodes such that all users accounts do not have their data purged on the same day (to avoid lengthy system administration times).

This process will be done on each of the three nodes on a rotating basis, due to the increased load this process places on the system. If your data is purged in October it will not be purged again until January, at which time all data prior to December 1st of 2002 will be deleted from the system. An easy way to determine what schedule your node is on is to create an event in July of 2002 and then check on it on the first of the month in October, and November to see if it is still there. This method will allow you to see the exact schedule for your node.

NOTE: Archiving cannot be accomplished using the WiscCal web client (via MyUW-Madison). One must install and use an Oracle Calendar desktop client.

Archiving WiscCal Data

Any user of a desktop WiscCal client who wishes to retain their calendar data older than the period established by the WiscCal Data Retention Policy, needs to consider the following options for archiving their calendar data to a file on their local computer (note that this calendar data file can be stored, of course, on any media the user has access to, including floppy disk, Zip disk, cd-r, dvd-r, or network file system storage). Users may find it valuable to consider archiving a year's worth of data each January or June to a file with an appropriate date, e.g., 'calendar_2003.txt'. For steps on how to archive your data, go to document 2833.

Events for Importing

WiscCal includes the option for all users to import into their WiscCal agenda campus events. When you log into WiscCal with the web client, there is a link on the left side for importing events. Desktop client users can go to import page. Use the help desk instructions to manage your import options.

These events are not properly a part of WiscCal, but are offered to us from the University's University Communications office. We do the work in the background to make them easily importable, but it is University Communications who decide who can put events into the system, what kinds of events can be a part of their system, and how long they stay in the system.

Any department or group who wish to have events made available for WiscCal users to import should consult with Nick Weaver, 263-9141, jnweaver@wisc.edu, for more information.

IMPORTANT: When you subscribe to the groups of events (for example, Academic Calendar) the system only adds the current/upcoming academic year to your calendar. That means that when you go to the web site you will get the events for what UW Communications decides to publish via WiscCal. Caveat--for now you must do this each fall. Just because you import now does not get you an automatic load next fall or updates as the current schedule changes. You must unsubscribe and re-subscribe to force a re-import of new data (if football game times are changed, for example).

Holidays

Holidays in the WiscCal system are those established by the University. The provisions are covered in the State Statutes Chapter 230.35, in each union contract and in the State of Wisconsin Compensation (see http://www.bussvc.wisc.edu/ecbs/lev-legal-holiday-uw1067-ee-2008.html).

Generally, these are:

Independence Day July 4
Labor Day (first Monday in September)
Thanksgiving Day November 25
Christmas Eve December 24
Christmas December 25
New Year s Eve December 31
New Year s January 1
Martin Luther King Jr. Day (third Monday in January)
Memorial Day May (Last Monday in May)

The page link above provides full details for these official holidays.

We enter the holidays into the WiscCal each November, at which time users will see them appear in their agendas or InTrays. Review this document, document 2686, for information on how to best handle these notices.

Maintenance and Outage Windows

WiscCal service, like all other server based applications, requires weekly outages to either update/patch server/application code or perform database maintenance.

The following maintenance/outage windows have been created:

Every Tuesday: 5am - 7am
Every Saturday: 5am - 2pm

Remember: These outage window times do not mean that the WiscCal system will be unavailable during the specified times, it just means that we have reserved these times for these types of needs. If you are having a problem connecting or working with your WiscCal account during these times, please check with the help desk (4-HELP) to see if there currently is a scheduled outage.

Appropriate Use

WiscCal is a University of Wisconsin information technology resource. When using WiscCal, you must abide by the appropriate use policy that you agreed to when you activated your NetID.