iCAL Education

iCalendar is a standard (RFC 2445) for calendar data exchange. The standard is sometimes referred to as "iCal", which also is the name of the Apple calendar program (see iCAL) that provides one of the implementations of the standard.

iCalendar allows users to send meeting requests and tasks to other users through email. Recipients of the iCalendar email (with supported software) can respond to the sender easily or counter propose another meeting date/time.

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook supports iCalendar. Outlook 2007 is compatible with the calendaring component of the iCalendar protocol only. Users can add calendars under Account Options and set how often they should be updated. Individual calendars are shown as a list of checkboxes so that they can be viewed or hidden without unsubscribing, and they can be viewed as separate tabs or overlaid into a single calendar. Because Outlook only synchronizes calendars.

Window Calendar, found in the newly released Windows Vista, also supports iCalendar. The Microsoft Works Calendar also supports iCalendar.

• webcal (iCAL) subscription    (for Outlook 2007 or Apple OS X "iCal")
• HTTP (iCal) subscription       (for IE7 or Opera 9 or Safari)
• RSS Feed                             (For Outlook 2007 or IE 7 or Opera 9)
• eMAIL subscription      (For OUTLOOK and other eMAIL programs)