Summary
Concordia University of Edmonton automatically loads the class schedules for instructors into their Google Calendars and ensures they remain current with any changes made by the Registrar's Office for course scheduling. The synchronization between our Student Information System (SIS) and Google Calendar happens on a nightly basis and adds calendar entries for all CUE instructors.
How does it work?
Our Registrar's Office sets the course schedules, including dates, times, room numbers, instructors, etc. Once that timetable information is published, it will get loaded into instructor Google Calendars for their convenience. The addition of the course schedule events will affect the other events you have already in your calendar, they may just appear as overlapping events.
As the Registrar's Office makes modifications to those schedules, they will be reflected in the calendars as well, including, if needed, removing courses entirely from your calendar.
It is worth noting that at this time, no other participants (such as students) are added to the course schedule entries in your calendar.
Am I able to modify the course schedule events on my calendar?
You are able to make some modifications to the events in your calendar. The type of changes you want to make will determine the behaviour you can expect.
- Changes to key properties of the event will not be preserved - If you delete or attempt to change the date, time, recurrence schedule, or room number of the event, the synchronization process will recreate or update the calendar with the information from the Registrar's Office.
- Changes to other properties of the event will be preserved (See note below):
- Properties that can come from SIS - Properties such as event title and description do come initially from SIS (as Course Number/Section and Course Description respectively) and if the Registrar's Office were to modify the course description, it would be reflected in the calendar entry UNLESS you have already modified the calendar events. If they are discovered to have already been modified, the update from SIS will be skipped.
- Properties that do not come from SIS - If you were to add additional participants (such as your classes CUE student accounts), recreate the Google Meet, create Google Meet breakout rooms, etc., these changes will be preserved through the synchronization process.
When making changes to calendar events, it is recommended to modify the entire series of events wherever possible. You are able to modify only a single instance of an event, however the behaviour when it encounters updates from SIS becomes even more nuanced than described above.