[kronolith] A solution for event notification

[Tom Redfern]

Hello.  New to the list.

I'm playing around with the kronolith's lack of effective alarm
system.  What I did was write a perl script that accesses the database,
and checks the alarm time and notifies by email.  I call it eventtrack.

I wanted to do this in some way that was effective without re-writing
the any kronolith data or modifying any database structures, the idea is
that the calandering system can be updated or installed indpendently.

If anyone in interested, I'll post the code.  The code is in a bit of a
crude state, but it's working.  BTW, I also wrote a module for the nag
stuff, so you can get noticed by that just the same.

It runs out of cron, quaries the database and mails notices.

My intent is that the user be able to chose his notification method, although
email is all it's doing now.

The script quaries for users, then calls up events:

@msg = $eventsource->getDueEvents($uid);

And gets a list of hash references and deals with them.

I intend to write a module for each type of calander so other calander
systems can also be accessed for alarms.

Only the module knows about the guts of the different calander/event
sources, and it returns @msg->{body}, @msg->{user}, etc so you could write
modules for all kinds of calanders and use them all.  The eventtrack
progrma doesn't have to know anything about the source.  It just gets
a body and a person to notify.  Everyone in a company could use their
own prefered type, palm or, ical from Apple, and the cron would notice
all who were listed to be noticed.

It checksums and stores the messages body, keying on user:hashsum and
doesn't send more than one copy of a notice to any one user in the
same day.  The db hash is stored in /tmp.  If the there are any changes
to the body, it sends out another notice.

I also set up and syntax in the discription for alarms that overrides
this.  They are alarms to be sent which deliberately override the
"regualar" alarm So you can be noticed just prior to the event, even
if you were noticed that morning.

It all works well - except for tha slight glitch that horde won't accept
any changes in the alarm time.  I can set the initial alarm time via
web, but if I "edit" the event, and change the alarm time, kronolith
does not register the change.

I'm thinking it may be a browser problem.  I'm going to take a shot at
the problem here later this week.  Anyone know about this?

This whole things has the smell of a nother horde module, if somone was
to write a php interface to allow entry via php.

Any interest in this?

-- 
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* Tom Redfern        Box 21 Snoqualmie   WA 98065-0021  USA          *
*                    Email: thos@fonebone.net  Phone: (425) 888-7080 *
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