This guide is only interesting for students at the Linköping University, LiU

Abstract

When I started at the university a year ago I wrote about how to get reminders about lectures and lessons directly into your mobile phone. Since then, LiU has switched calendaring systems and is now using a system called TimeEdit. This simple guide shows how to set up a reminder system for your school schedule and thereby never miss a single lesson.

Goal

As with the old guide, I will show you how to never miss a lecture or lesson at the uni by getting SMS reminders before they start. I will only use services provided by the university and you will be ready to go in just 15 minutes! You will see information regarding when and where to go, and it is possible to customize how long before the reminder will be sent.

I have been using this setup the last six months, and it is working fairly well. I don’t know if this method works for other institutions than LiTH, but an educated guess is that any student as well as teachers and administrators can benefit from this. Your milage may vary, though.

Another good thing with this approach is that the reminder will match the current schedule at all times. In my time at the university, lectures have become moved or even cancelled, and those who write the schedule down at the start of each semester tend not to know about such changes before it is too late. By following this guide, you’ll be safe!

How to do it, then?

1. Go to the LiU calendar. Select your faculty.
2. Pick your courses and/or student groups.
3. At the bottom of the generated calendar, find the link “iCal”.
4. Right-click and select “Copy to clipboard” or “Copy shortcut”, depending on your web browser.
5. Log on to the e-GO system. If you don’t have an e-GO account, you can use a standard gmail account.
6. In the top left corner, click on “Calendar” (“Kalender” if your’e using a Swedish system)
7. Find “Add” button (Swedish: “skapa”).
8. Click “Add by URL” (See the image)
9. Paste the adress you copied from the LiU calendar into the Public Calendar Address bar.
10. Click “Add”
11. Now note the new calendar to the left, your LiU calendar has been added to your e-GO calendar. It is probably called “TimeEdit”.
12. You can go back to the calendar main page and check if it looks alright

Reminders

Now we want to get the SMS reminders up and running.

1. Click on the little arrow next to the “TimeEdit” calendar and select Calendar Settings
2. I recommend that you change the name of the calendar, I simply named mine “LiU”
3. Click on the “Notifications” link
4. To get SMS reminders, you’ll need to verify that the phone number is yours. Click the “Set up your mobile phone to receive notifications” link on the bottom of the page
   
5. Select your country and type in your mobile phone number
6. Click the “Send verification code” button
7. You’ll recieve a text message on your phone, containing a code. Enter that code in the text box.
8. Click “Finish setup”
9. Now you can select which reminders to recieve, and when they should be sent. I usually select 15 minutes.
10. Click on “save” on the bottom of the page

Finishing touches

Your’e done, and all you need to do is to sit back and relax while the mobile phone takes care of the calendar. It seems quite reliable, in all this time I can only remember one time when I didn’t get the reminder at all. Quite a feat!

For some reason, though, it seems like the calendaring system sometimes sends out duplicate reminders. This is an issue with the LiU Timeedit system and not with the google calendar, and it’s been there for the last six months.

If you’re having problems, check the LiU documentation, and the Google docs. You can also drop me a comment here, or ask me if you run into me at the university.

Happy calendaring!