[Phpgroupware-developers] Calendar: Groups and Categories in a shared calendar

[Troy Thompson]

I'm attempting to modify calendar to customize it for a client. One
requirement is to filter the categories available to a user based on the
groups the user belongs to.

Desired changes I'm trying to implement:
1) On the category edit page (admin.uicategories.edit) I plan to add a
"Groups" selector, so that Categories can be assigned to groups.
2) When using the calendar, a user will see only categories their group
memberships permit.
3) Permit users to view events which are in categories they have access to,
even if they are not specified as a participant.

Usages and Reasons:
- Provide a way for people to place their vacations on the calendar;
everyone should be able to see the Vacations category, but not everyone
"participates" in everyone else's vacation!
- Provide a way for the company board to schedule events in a "Board
Luncheon" category, and only the members of the Board can see events in that
category.
- Permit all members of the "Executive Staff" group to see every category's
events, with requiring they are "participants" in every event.
- Add announcements and events to a shared company calendar without making
everyone a participant nor scheduling a "meeting".

I tried to shortcut this by making a category "owned" by a group
(hand-hacked a database entry) but the category just disappears.

Questions:
- Is there another application that does this already?
- Is the current calendar app more of a "scheduler" than a "calendar"? I'm
looking for a shared group calendar where categories can be protected by
group ACLs.
- Is there documentation anywhere on the ACL methodology? I suspect I'll
just be adding phpgw_categories.cat_groups for data, but the back-end seems
rather expansive in this issue.

Development Platform:
PHPGW v0.9.14.000 RC4
Apache 1.3.26
PHP 4.2.2
Windows 2000 SP3
MySQL 3.23.39-nt.


Troy Thompson
Sonova Systems, LLC
770-822-9788
address@hidden