After our preview release last year we heard quite a bit of feedback related
to the sharing workflows in the Chandler Web UI. Many people seemed to immediately grasp
how useful it is to be able to send links to friends and collaborators that can be
plugged into Chandler Desktop or directly into a web browser for instant view-only
or view-and-edit access to the contents of a collection. Unfortunately, until
Chandler Server 0.15, released in May of this year, actually getting at these links
was pretty difficult.

The solution to this problem, the collection sharing dialog you can find on
Chandler Hub today, solves this problem
and more. Any time you’d like to share your Chandler Hub data with other people or
even just other applications you use, this starting point will make everything
else easier.

Today we’ll two follow users, Adam and Zed, as they run through a sharing
worflow we think you’ll find useful.

Invite Collaborators

Adam and Zed are coaching their sons’ soccer team, the Beagles. Adam has been using Chandler
at work, and creates a new collection to help with the mountain of organization that
will need to take place. He has published this collection to
http://hub.chandlerproject.org and would like Zed
to give him some feedback on a proposed practice schedule.

After logging into the Hub Web UI, Adam clicks on the pulldown arrow next to “Soccer” to
bring up the collection sharing dialog.

He then clicks on the “invite” button to generate two sharing links.

Finally, he right clicks on the “View and Edit” sharing link and selects Send link….
He could also just copy the link location and paste it manually into the email or instant message
program of his choice.

When Zed gets the link he can paste it into his favorite web browser and instantly review and edit
Adam’s practice schedule. What’s more, if he wants to start using the Chandler Desktop client, he
can use this link to subscribe to this collection there.

Collaborate with iCal

Zed’s not ready to take the Chandler Desktop plunge. It’s not that he doesn’t like Chandler, but he’s
been a die-hard Apple iCal fan for years. Fortunately, iCal and Chandler work great together. Once Zed
pastes the link he received from Adam into his web browser, he’s excited to see a big green button
on the left side of the screen labeled “Apple iCal, Google.” He clicks it and follows the instructions
in the dialog that appears to add this collection to iCal. Unfortunately, due to underlying technical restrictions
he won’t be able to edit the collection or add new events from iCal. Fortunately, Zed has bookmarked the link
Adam sent him, and can do all the editing he needs there.

Sky’s the Limit

Hub interoperability
doesn’t end with support for Apple iCal. Several other clients, including the Lightning
Calendaring Extension for Mozilla Thunderbird, have built in support for CalDAV, a calendar sharing standard.
Hundreds of feed readers, usually used for keeping track of blogs and news, can subscribe to the Atom based
collection feeds provided by Chandler Hub. Instructions for each of these methods can be found in the collection
sharing dialog and the Chandler Project wiki.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 11:51 am and is filed under Chandler Hub Service, Chandler Server Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.