Story by Tierra Reese, Staff writer
The new university calendar has improved features to increase the number of viewers.
Murray State will have a new and improved calendar, launching on Jan. 8, with new features that make event advertising easier than before.
The strategic planning committee includes Charley Allen, Adrienne King, Alexandra Douglass, Don Robertson and Jamie Morgan, all of whom thought of this new calendar available for the Murray State community. Allen, Murray State’s web manager, explained the updated calendar features and why they are needed.
“This calendar has a really nice search option with categories available to your specific search,” Allen said. “The need for this came out of the strategic plan so that we could have events available to all of the Murray State community.”
Now, instead of looking up the different events on numerous websites, users can go to one website and select what type of event they are looking for on the calendar and it will show what is available.
“We are also going to have a feed on the homepage so that the featured events will be on the homepage,” Allen said.
Students and faculty can submit events to this calendar and within 24 hours the event’s information will be uploaded for everyone to see.
“There is a submit button that you can send events through and our department will either approve or decline it depending on whether or not it fits,” Allen said. “Anyone with a murraystate.edu email address can start submitting in events now.”
Another helpful amenity to this new calendar is the location sharing option. Allen said for every event, there will be a location sharing option through Google Maps allowing users to know exactly where the event will take place.
“You get driving directions and you can check the weather,” she said. “It will interact with Androids, Yahoo or Google; you can automatically share those events.”
The need for this new calendar stems from the lack of use of the current calendar.
The calendar will be available on murraystate.edu/calendar and they are currently trying to make it appear on Racer Vision – TVs around campus that commonly show replays in sports games.
Allen said the committee hopes to set up the calendar on those TVs for improved event advertising.
King and Allen asked people about ideas for the new calendar features. They said people are really excited about it and have already started submitting events.
“A calendar is only as good as the events being sent in,” Allen said.