New Vols sports calendar for Outlook, iCal, Google calendars, etc.

[Vercingetorix]

I got tired of wishing somebody else would set this up, so I went ahead and did it myself. I've set up a publicly accessible web calendar for UT sports that includes football, men's and women's basketball, and baseball schedules. It includes future schedules as far out as we have them; it will be updated with game times and TV networks as they become available. It will include things like signing day, the start of spring practice, and the O&W game, as well as other things of interest that might pop up -- for example, if it had been set up last year, I probably would have added the women's softball championships once it became obvious that our girls would be playing for a championship on ESPN. That sort of thing. My aim for it is to include everything that you, the UT fan, might care to know about.

The point of this kind of a calendar is that you can "subscribe" to it in your calendar application of choice -- Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, etc. -- and then from then on, everything in it automatically shows up in your own calendar. Even better, you then sync your Blaker-style smartphone or PDA with that application, and presto, now you're carrying around the schedules for all our teams with you all the time. Including not only this year's football schedule, but next year's. And future dates all the way out, like that September 9, 2017 game we've got scheduled in Neyland against Nebraska. I'll update game times and TV information as it becomes available, since I tend to be obsessive about that sort of thing, so when you're sitting there in September wondering whether the Alabama game in late October is going to be at night, you can pull out your cell phone, see that it still says "All Day" for that game, and be confident that it hasn't been determined yet.

Clearly, some drone in UT's sports information department ought to be doing this, but nobody is. So now I am. And I figure that this is something that might interest other UT fans as well. I hope somebody else finds it useful too. Suggestions are more than welcome; if you find this useful, please let me know what else I should include in it.

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The address for the calendar is:
webcal://ical.me.com/andrew_coleman/Vols_Sports.ics

That's what you paste into your calendar application. It's trivially easy in Google Calendar or Mac OS X's iCal; I'm no longer an Outlook user, but apparently it's just as easy to do in the latest version of Outlook. If you use Outlook 2003, you can install a free Outlook plug-in and do the same thing. (I tested it on my wife's laptop; takes about 10 minutes, and you have to install a couple of Microsoft Office updates as well, but it's pretty easy and it works fine.) If you'd like to try this out and need some guidance setting it up, by all means let me know.

OUTLOOK 2003 UPDATE: Google has now come out with something called "Google Calendar Sync," which is supposed to be compatible with Outlook 2003. I have not tried it, but if it's from Google, I bet it works. I would think that you'd have to subscribe to the calendar in your Google Calendar, and then sync THAT up with Outlook using their plugin. Link: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=89955

EDIT: Vader reports below that he need to change the webcal:// to http:// in the above URL in order to add this to his Google calendar. Worth noting.

EDIT 2, July: Had to change the web address. Initial post updated with the new link, which should be permanent. Calendar now includes 2010 season and as many game times as we already have for the 2008 season.

 

[BigPapaVol]

how bored are you?

 

[Vercingetorix]

how bored are you?

Boredom is the mother of invention. It took less time than you'd think to set up. UT makes all the schedules available online; they just don't put them all in one place where it's easy to get everything. It took longer to type up that post than it did to set up the calendar.

 

[BigPapaVol]

Boredom is the mother of invention. It took less time than you'd think to set up. UT makes all the schedules available online; they just don't put them all in one place where it's easy to get everything. It took longer to type up that post than it did to set up the calendar.

then nevermind. I am in fact working on my Outlook plug in as we speak.

 

[Vercingetorix]

then nevermind. I am in fact working on my Outlook plug in as we speak.

Make sure you install the three Microsoft pieces first -- the .NET 2.0 stuff (if you don't have it), and then then the VSTOR and PIA stuff that comes bundled with the plug-in. I don't know why Microsoft can't include all that stuff together. Once you're done, there will be some new buttons out on the end of your Outlook calendar toolbar. That's what you click on to add a calendar.

The plug-in works, but the documentation kind of sucks.

 

[BigPapaVol]

Make sure you install the three Microsoft pieces first -- the .NET 2.0 stuff (if you don't have it), and then then the VSTOR and PIA stuff that comes bundled with the plug-in. I don't know why Microsoft can't include all that stuff together. Once you're done, there will be some new buttons out on the end of your Outlook calendar toolbar. That's what you click on to add a calendar.

The plug-in works, but the documentation kind of sucks.

that's a complete shock.

 

[True_Fan]

just added to Google Cal...looks great...Thank you Vercingetorix

 

[HawaiiVol]

Super easy to setup in Outlook 2007. Just enter that web address in a browser and it prompts you to add it into Outlook.

Thanks a bunch, sir.

 

[vader]

I am trying to add this to my google calendar and I am using "add by url".

I paste it in, click add and it shows up. I click on it and can see it then I get a "Could not fetch the url" message and it disappears.

Any idea what this is about? Think it is related to my company's firewall?

edit: nvm. I had to replace "webcal" in the above address with "http"

Thanks man, this is awesome.

Edit 2: You can customize the google calendar to be pretty close to true Tennessee orange.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Super easy to setup in Outlook 2007. Just enter that web address in a browser and it prompts you to add it into Outlook.

Thanks a bunch, sir.

Thanks for the screenshot -- I should have thought to include one myself. Good to see that the time zone info works -- I was momentarily taken aback by those baseball games starting at 9 am before I made the connection that you were in Hawaii, so it's right. Good stuff.

 

[volmanbill]

Thank you!:rock:

 

[vader]

Thanks for the screenshot -- I should have thought to include one myself. Good to see that the time zone info works -- I was momentarily taken aback by those baseball games starting at 9 am before I made the connection that you were in Hawaii, so it's right. Good stuff.

That is very cool that it automatically shows the times in Central for me.

Thanks for doing this, man. This is cool.

 

[UT IE 95]

I installed the plug in and ran the MS Update. Still can't get it loaded into Outlook 2003. All I get is the Women's tournament from last week.

 

[TennesseeJohn]

Thanks! This is great!

 

[Vercingetorix]

That is very cool that it automatically shows the times in Central for me.

Thanks for doing this, man. This is cool.

No problem. I knew it would be cool, which is why I've spent the last year or two wishing somebody else would set a calendar like this up. Finally figured that I should just shut up and do it myself. The real "aha!" moment for me was when I started syncing my phone to calendars for all my teams, so I could whip out the phone and see, "Okay, the UT football game is at 7 tonight, and the Thrashers have a game at 7:30, so I can put that on the little TV. And the Falcons don't play until 4 on Sunday." I've been wanting an "all UT teams" calendar for a couple of years to help streamline all that. So here it is.

 

[Vercingetorix]

I installed the plug in and ran the MS Update. Still can't get it loaded into Outlook 2003. All I get is the Women's tournament from last week.

I'm mystified why you would get part of it, but not all of it. If it's pulling down the women's tournament, it should be getting everything. You don't have a baseball game going on right now? UT vs MTSU at 3 pm?

 

[UT IE 95]

I'm mystified why you would get part of it, but not all of it. If it's pulling down the women's tournament, it should be getting everything. You don't have a baseball game going on right now? UT vs MTSU at 3 pm?

Nothing past the women's bball tourney. I left the office. I'll try again in the morning.

 

[volley]

I am going to see if I can get this setup on Outlook 2003. After looking at that screenshot, is there any way to specify which sports are displayed, i.e. only football and men's bball? Also will our calendars update dynamically if you add dates to them, such as tournament times, or next years football?

 

[Vercingetorix]

I am going to see if I can get this setup on Outlook 2003. After looking at that screenshot, is there any way to specify which sports are displayed, i.e. only football and men's bball? Also will our calendars update dynamically if you add dates to them, such as tournament times, or next years football?

1. You'll get everything that I put in the calendar, which means that you're going to get all four sports. There's no way that I'm aware of to filter out women's basketball and baseball, for example, unless you can do it at the client level somehow. Sorry about that. If all you want is football and men's basketball, you can Google up a calendar for each of them -- but it will be one season at a time, and it may or may not be accurate w/r/t game times, TV networks, etc. Frustration about that is what has led me to take matters into my own hands.

2. The calendar updates dynamically every time I make changes, which is the whole point -- as I add future schedules, tournament games, TV info, etc., it appears right in your calendar, and you never have to deal with it again. (Until something happens to me, I guess.) The 2008 and 2009 football schedules are already in there, as well as future games beyond that that have already been given a set date. (E.g., the Nebraska game in 2017.) When 2010 comes out, it'll be in there too. Plus, when a game is over, I'm editing the entry so that you get the final score in your calendar too.

 

[kidbourbon]

who is blaker?

 

[Vercingetorix]

I obviously can't vouch for that Outlook 2003 plug-in, other than to say that I Googled it up and tried it out on my wife's machine, and it seemed to work for me. Microsoft being Microsoft, you have to install THREE separate database updates for it to work, two of which are included in the "prerequisites" directory of the download, and the other of which is the MS .Net 2.0 framework, which is available from here. After all that, and installing the actual plug-in itself, you get several little icons out on the end of your Outlook toolbar that you can use to add public Internet-based calendars.

At least that's the way it's supposed to work...

 

[Vercingetorix]

who is blaker?

Blaker is Vol Nation's patron saint of smartphones. He has a magical phone which teleports his brain into UT events far away from where his physical body resides. This calendar is, alas, of no use to him, because he's not constrained by the time-space continuum. His consciousness is automatically in attendance at all UT sporting events, and his amazing phone allows him to transmit the great thoughts of that glorious awareness to the rest of us.

 

[kcvols1]

Vercie, this is da bomb. I am hearing Handel's "Messiah" in the background; you know, like when they open the safe in Die Hard. God bless Google and MS Outlook 2007.

I seriously think you should send the UTAD an invoice for consulting services. At a minimum, this warrants a finder's fee.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Vercie, this is da bomb. I am hearing Handel's "Messiah" in the background; you know, like when they open the safe in Die Hard. God bless Google and MS Outlook 2007.

I seriously think you should send the UTAD an invoice for consulting services. At a minimum, this warrants a finder's fee.

Glad you're impressed. I'm telling you, somebody in the UTAD should already be doing this. They already make all the teams' schedules individually available in importable text files, but that doesn't offer any ability to have updated game times, TV, etc. (Especially important in FB season.) Online calendars give you the ability to change things dynamically like that. All I'm doing is taking the schedules that they provide [1], pulling them into one convenient place, and then keeping an eye on what needs to be changed when. (Like the baseball doubleheader on Sunday -- when the game Saturday was rained out, I changed the schedule to reflect it.) And adding final scores in, of course, but I'm always checking on the finals anyway. Not much extra work.

Nice to know this is useful to some folks. There's no way for me to tell how many people (if any!) are subscribed to the calendar, so feedback is good. If anybody wants anything in particular added to it -- track, hockey, whatever -- let me know.


[1] For example, the reason why the baseball team is called "Diamond Vols" is because that's what somebody in the UTAD decided to call them. I figured that there's enough overlap between baseball and basketball seasons that I just figured it was a useful distinction, so I left it.

 

[tdtnvols2004]

Do you know if you can get this into rainlendar?