A. Yes. Our live demo account lets you create, manage and administer fully functional calendars. You are free to experiment with the demo calendars in your own web pages so you can try out every aspect of the system.

A. No. The calendars only show future availability from today's date and up to two years ahead.

A. Both types of calendars show the same information but look different. Our Flash-based calendars have rounded corners, the table-based calendars are rectangular. The table-based calendars show a number of months (adjustable) in one view whilst the Flash-based calendars display one month at a time and have buttons to navigate forward and backward to other months. The size and many aspects of the appearance of the Flash-based calendars can be altered (e.g. to fit in with different web page designs). The table-based calendars are basically fixed in size and appearance (but the height changes when displaying different numbers of months). Table-based calendars show a key chart below the calendar, on the Flash-based calendars a button is clicked to show the key chart. The Flash-based calendars require browsers to have Flash plug-in (version 6 or later), they are visible to approximately 99.0% of internet users, the table-based calendars are visible to approximately 99.9% of internet users.

A. No, the same account works for both. All account holders can use either or both types of calendar with their account at any time. WAP access is also included. There are no extra charges for using any combination of calendar types or displaying calendars on multiple web pages.

A. Basically just change one letter in the link URL for each calendar... Specifically change the part of the link address that reads ac.asp to fc.asp.

If you are embedding the calendar with an Iframe or using or pop-up window you will most probably also want to adjust the height and width properties to suit the different size calendar.

A. To update the calendar, go to the calendar and type your password in the password box...

On Flash type calendars (i.e. if your calendar has rounded corners): Click on the word AVAILACAL logo below the calendar to display the calendar Key, then click the word AVAILACAL to display the password box. Enter your password in the box and click OK.

On table-based calendars: The password box is found just below and to the left of the calendar, type-in your password in the box and press Enter on your keyboard.

Updating the calendar is very simple. Full instructions are provided in the User Guide in the section headed "Calendar Administration".

Calendar-specific passwords are set by the account owner. If you cannot log-in with your password please ask the calendar account owner to confirm your password. If the actual AVAILACAL account is not your own we cannot and will not confirm your password. If neither you nor the account owner can remember the password for your calendar, ask the account owner to set a new password for it.

A.
Issue: Log-in from Flash calendar fails with certain combinations of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Flash plug-in.

Solution: Use a different browser such as Firefox to edit your calendar

Alternative solution: Log-in from table based calendar.

Account holders can also log-in directly to the Calendar Management panel via the AVAILACAL web site.

Only the administrator login function is affected. There are no known issues relating to displaying/viewing the Flash type calendars in any version of Internet Explorer equipped with Flash plugin 6 or later.

Another possible reason for log-in failure is using an incorrect password, sometimes caused by accidentally having [Caps Lock] on. Repeated attempts to log-in with an incorrect password will automatically 'lock you out' of the system for a time.

A. Because the password box is not relevant to most people who view the calendar it is designed to be as inconspicuous as possible. On some low resolution displays it is possible that the password box will not be visible at all. Move your mouse pointer around in the space just below and to the left of the calendar until the pointer changes to an 'I' shape, then click. It is also possible for the password box to not actually be there at all, this is by design and happens for security reasons after multiple attempts to log-in with a wrong password. In such a case, re-check your password, and try again a few hours later making sure that your keyboard [Caps Lock] is off. Also, of course, the password box isn't present if you are already logged in.

A. You can't look-up a password. Instead, use your Calendar Management Panel to simply enter a new password for the relevant calendar(s). The new password replaces the previous password for that calendar so the old password will no longer work even if the person should suddenly remember what it was.

A. By default the calendars show 6 months ahead of the current date and users can click to see 12 months ahead instead. However, by adding &mo=M to the link you can display between 1 and 24 months ahead on one calendar. Simply replace the M with the number of months to display. The following link would show a table-based calendar for 8 months ahead...
http://availacal.com/ac.asp?id=ID&mo=8

To show a 24 month Flash based calendar the link would be...
http://availacal.com/fc.asp?id=ID&mo=24

A. Yes. (If you are the account holder) Log-in using your master password, follow the procedure outlined in the user guide to delete the calendar and then create a new calendar.

A. It is not essential to do this but the timezone setting controls the time of day when a calendar indicates that the current day has ended. If you enter a higher number than your real time zone offset, calendars will automatically 'shut-off' availability earlier in the day. For example: If the rental location is in EST timezone (-5) and you set the calendar timezone to GMT (0), the calendar will show that availability for the current day expired at 7 PM instead of at midnight. People viewing the calendar do not see any mention of the timezone. It simply tells the calendar what time the current day becomes 'yesterday' as far as your availability is concerned. CLOX Timezone Clock Software

A. Yes. Simply add the string &hx=My+New+Title to the link address. e.g. http://availacal.com/fc.asp?id=Example&hx=My+New+Title.

Remember that there must be no spaces in the link address. To include a space in the title, use a + as shown here.

This works for both Flash and table-based calendars. The example above is for the Flash-based calendars, for table-based calendars the link string should look like this... http://availacal.com/ac.asp?id=Example&hx=My+New+Title

A. Yes. The text for orange days can be set in the Advanced Options Panel, or this item can be removed from the key completely if you wish. The text for red/green/am-green/pm-green days can be set by altering the link string. A guide for this is provided at the foot of the Advanced Options Panel. This works for both Flash and table-based calendars.

A. Yes. The Advanced Options Panel panel accessible by the calendar account owner allows the default daily availability status to be chosen. The default colour for untouched calendar dates is normally green but it can be set to red or orange if preferred. This is useful if, for example, you are starting with more unavailable dates than available dates and you want save time by using the calendar administration control panel mainly to mark dates which are available rather than dates which are not.

Ideally, for the reason explained below, the default colour should be picked at the time of creating a new calendar and then left alone. It is however possible to simply change the default colour on an existing calendar if required but if doing so you should bear in mind that only previously untouched dates will be changed to the new default colour. Any dates or blocks of dates which have been specifically set to a colour will not be affected at all when changing the default. This is great because it means that the default colour can be changed at any time without fear of losing any actual availability data but remember that this also means that any dates which have been specifically 'set' to the previous default colour (e.g. for a cancelled booking or correction) might initially 'look' the same as untouched dates but they will not change to the newly selected default colour along with the untouched dates. For example: If you change the default colour from green to red, any dates that are green because they were specifically 'set' to green (as opposed to being green by default) will remain green unless you change them manually.

If you have a multiple calendar account and you want all/most of your calendars to default to red or orange just send us a request by email and we can set your account to have red or orange as the default applied automatically all your new calendars as you create them, instead of you having to manually change the default for each new calendar you add. (In this case you are still able to set individual calendars in your account to default to green, orange or red as you wish.)

A. The appearance of the Flash type calendars can be changed in almost unlimited ways. The color and transparency of the calendar's background, heading and date numbers can be set via the Advanced Options Panel. Calendar displays can also be modified individually by the altering the link string so it's perfectly possible to have the same calendar showing on different web pages but each display being matched to the style of the page that it appears on. Using a medium-high transparency setting will achieve this automatically to some extent but it is also possible to tint each calendar to almost any shade. A guide for these settings is provided at the foot of the Advanced Options Panel. The table-based calendars do not provide these features.

A. The size of a Flash type calendar display is governed by the size of the 'container' in which it is displayed. For example: If you display the calendar in an HTML table cell, Iframe, pop-up window or div the calendar size will automatically adjust to fit it. If a Flash type calendar is displayed alone in a browser window with nothing else restricting its size, it will normally expand to the full height of the browser window. The size of the table-based calendars cannot be altered in this way.

A. You can easily embed a calendar using an inline frame known as an 'Iframe'. Iframes provide a neat way to seamlessly integrate AVAILACAL calendars into any web page. Just copy and paste one of two HTML script snippets shown below into your web page. It will also work with most blogs, social networking sites and HTML emails. Try it and see. You don't need an AVAILACAL account to see if it will work, just copy and paste a script snippet as is. If it works with the example calendar it will also work with your own AVAILACAL calendar(s).

You don't need any special web page authoring software to embed a calendar in a web page. Most web page authoring systems allow you to insert HTML script into a page, but you can use any text editing program such as Notepad instead. You don't need any pogramming skills to do this but if you do use a text editing program, a basic familiarity with HTML script will help you decide where to paste the script so that the calendar gets displayed where you want it to appear on the page. If you create pages using a content management system or some kind of authoring system that doesn't provide a specific way paste HTML into a page, pasting the script into a normal text area will usually do the trick.

These script snippets will display an existing calendar called "Example". To display your own calendar the only change you need to make is to replace each instance of the word Example with the ID (name) of the actual calendar that you want to show.

Some older browsers don't support Iframes, and for this reason there is link labelled 'SEE CALENDAR' in these scripts, this link will be shown automatically if a browser doesn't support Iframes and enables people with those older browsers to see the calendar in a new browser window. Note that because of this, in both of the examples shown below, the calendar ID appears twice. (In this case the calendar ID is Example.)

To embed a Flash type calendar in a web page; copy and paste this script snippet into the page...

<iframe src="http://availacal.com/fc.asp?id=Example" height="270" width="250" align="center" frameborder="no" allowtransparency="true" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"><a href="http://availacal.com/ac.asp?id=Example" target="_blank">SEE CALENDAR</a></iframe>

To embed a table-based calendar in a web page copy and paste this script snippet into the page...

<iframe align="center" frameborder="no" scrolling="yes" height="406" width="660" src="http://availacal.com/ac.asp?id=Example" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"><iframe="http://availacal.com/ac.asp?id=Example" target="_blank">SEE CALENDAR</a></iframe>

Note: If you edit a web page HTML page on your computer's hard drive and then preview it directly in a browser the calendar may not appear but it will work fine after you upload and view the page on your web space.

Remember that embedding a calendar in a page is not the only way to put a calendar in a page. You can also use a simple text or image link to the calendar or have it pop-up. See the other entries here for various ways of doing this.

A. A quick and easy way is to put the text target="_blank" in an HTML link, like this...

<a href=http://availacal.com/ac.asp?id=ID   target="_blank">Check Availability</a>

A drawback of this method is that you don't really have any control over the size of the pop-up window.

A better method is to use Javascript. Download one of the two examples below and paste it into a web page script. These files are zipped text files containing the scripts and simple instructions....
Click here to download script for a Flash calendar popup.
Click here to download script for a table-based calendar popup.

A. No. It makes no difference what kind of server your web pages are on. Any web space will do nicely.

A. Yes. Simply include the address of the web page to return to in the link with &ret= before it, like this...

http://availacal.com/ac.asp?id=ID&ret=www.mysite.com/mypage.html

Don't include the http:// part of the return page address and remember that link addresses should not contain any spaces.

A. Yes.

A. Yes. We can provide you with instructions on different ways to do this. It is helpful, but not essential, if you can use a scripting language such as PHP, ASP, Perl or JSP so that you can mention the date that was requested in the web page that the visitor is redirected to. For example: "Yes I am available on March 5, 2012 here is a booking form for you to fill-in..." (with the date already entered).

A. Probably! Our calendars can do all sorts of wonderful things but in some cases we will need to set up something special for you. Let us know what you would like and we'll look at it and let you know if it is possible and what, if anything, it will cost you.

A. Yes. First create a web page with an embedded calendar (See "How do I embed a calendar..." above.). Simply paste-in add an additional iframe block (read about embedding calendars above) for each calendar that you want to display on the page. Also see below for an instant way to display all the calendars in your account.

A. You can see all the calendars in your account in a table format using a multiview link like this...
<a href=http://availacal.com/multiview.asp?u=AccountID>Show all Calendars</a>

This multiple calendar view will display calendars showing any two or three month period during the next 12 months (24 months when logged-in). To see this working with the calendars that are currently active in the Live Demo account click here. If you are logged-in to the Demo account you will be able to edit these calendars.

A. To show three months per calendar instead of two; add &mo=3 to the multiview link. To include the address of the web page to return to add &ret= followed by the URL of the web page but exclude the http:// part of the URL. You can also include a page title by adding &t= followed by the desired title. If you want to use spaces in the title use a + instead of a space, like this: &t=My+Title

A multiview link address with all these features will look something like this...
http://availacal.com/multiview.asp?u=MyAccount&mo=3&t=My+Title&ret=mysite.com

A. You can display any calendar on as many web pages/sites as you want. They can be even be different styles (i.e. Flash or table-type). You can do this with any or all of the calendars in your account or even if you only have a one calendar account.

A. That's fine as long as it's ok with the person whose calendar it is. All you need is the calendar ID to link or embed the calendar (see instructions for linking/embedding/pop-ups). If required, the calendar owner can, at their discretion, create a password for you to edit the available dates on their calendar.

A. Check all the spelling and also remember that the ID is case sensitive. The address http://availacal.com/fc.asp?id=abcde is not the same as http://availacal.com/fc.asp?id=Abcde (the latter has a capital A).

A. You are only seeing the control panel because you logged-in with the password. To see the calendar as the public sees it (no control panel), click the Log Out link. If you log-out and return to the calendar in the same browser you may still see the control panel because the page hasn't been refreshed in your browser. In this case, even though you can still see the control panel above the calendar, you will not be able to edit it because the server has already logged you out. When you are not logged in the control panel will disappear if you refresh the page or attempt to edit the calendar.

A. For security reasons, if you are logged-in but don't perform any actions 20 minutes or more the server may automatically end your session and log you out. You simply need to log-in again.

A. AVAILACAL employs a whole battery of advanced security techniques including multiple distributed backups of calendar data. Calendar owners also have a role to play in this scheme by safeguarding passwords and keeping separate records of bookings. We recommend that passwords chosen use mixed characters and are not simply words which appear in a dictionary. If you suspect that someone has gained unauthorised access to your account please contact us immediately.

A. Yes. Most recent mobile devices with internet access will allow direct access to our standard calendars without using WAP, however, some older devices are only able to access internet resources using the WAP protocol. AVAILACAL does support these older devices. To access a calendar with a WAP device: Use the device to go to http://availacal.com/wap and enter the calendar ID. Alternatively, if you want to access a calendar directly without keying in the calendar ID. you can create a bookmark on your WAP device like this...

http://availacal.com/wap/c.asp?id=ID

(Replace ID with the calendar ID.)

See the User Guide for instructions for editing a calendar on a WAP device. Before a calendar can be edited via WAP a calendar specific password must have been set for that calendar.