Friday, August 02, 2013

iCalendar for Sysadmin Day - Design is how it works

Sysadmin day is the last Friday of July. So this year (2013) it was last week (Today is August, 1st.). I thought I set it right in my Google Calendar last year but I was wrong. Actually Google Calendar nor Yahoo Calendar support such thing like "Every Year on the Last Friday of July". In iCalendar it is an easy thing:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20130726T090000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=7;BYDAY=-1FR
DESCRIPTION:http://www.sysadminday.com/
LOCATION:Company wide
SUMMARY:Sysadmin Day!
BEGIN:VALARM
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:REMINDER
TRIGGER;RELATED=START:-PT15M
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
Live.com (The MSN then Hotmail and now Live, will Microsoft stop changing names at some point?) does support importing the above and it correctly allocates the slots however do not dare to try editing it because the edition interface does not support such statement really. Exchange OWA and Outlook will recognize the iCalendar and correctly allocate the slots but you won't be able to edit the occurrence after that.

Guess who got it right? Yup, MAC OSX did ;-) and as usual with an impressive can't-get-any-simpler User Interface. User experience is on the top of the list for Apple and that is why they can sell the most expensive equipment, they simply get it right. Steve Jobs was so correct when he stated "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

And not only it works from the GUI but you can also import the iCalendar as well.

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