FAQ

Sundial is the software program designed to provide distributed authorship and an information approval workflow within a secure environment. This flexible tool was developed by a team from Columbia College Information Technology (CCIT) and is currently managed by Columbia University Information Technology (CUIT).

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The University Events Calendar, accessible by clicking the Events Calendar button on the Columbia University homepage, is a central listing of many of the events taking place across the University. The University Events Calendar (UEC) is intended to provide all audiences -- both on- and off-campus -- with an easy-to-use resource for learning about events that serve the overall Columbia mission. The UEC is administered by Student Services and powered by Sundial.

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Training is available for new users and current users. We encourage departments to have "super users" or local administrators who can then train others within your department. To request training, email sundial-help@columbia.edu.

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To request a new user or to deactivate a user account, ask your local Sundial administrator or email sundial-help@columbia.edu.

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You can post an event within Sundial by clicking on "add event." For more detailed information, please see "Creating an Event."

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Approvers of specific populations (calendars) have the ability to publish events and suggest to other populations (calendars). You can publish an event by clicking on "publishing." For more detailed information, please see the "Event Suggestion and Publication."

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An "author" has the permission to enter an event to those populations (calendars) to which they have been given permission. An "approver" has permission to change the publication status of an event to "approved," "approved conditionally," "queued" and "declined" and may also further submit an event for publication to another population (calendar). For more information on publishing options, see the "Event Suggestion and Publication."

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You may request support by clicking on the "request support" button in the upper left corner of Sundial's main page. From this form, you can request functional or technical support, and/or report a bug in the software.

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As a registered user, you may log on to Sundial at calendar.columbia.edu/sundial by clicking "Columbia login," and then entering your UNI and password.

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The "submit an event" form is for users who are not yet registered users of Sundial. As a registered user of Sundial, you have many more options to publish to a specific population(s) (calendars), attach media and set permissions for your event, so we encourage you to continue entering your events into Sundial. Events that come through the "submit an event" form which are sponsored by a registered department will be forwarded to that department and they are expected to enter the event information for inclusion on the UEC.

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Student events that are submitted through the "submit an event" form are forwarded to the sponsoring department for verification and entry. For events in Lerner, the sponsoring department or University Event Management can enter the event.

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Meta-events allow you to connect your event to larger super-events or connect smaller sub-events to an event. All events in Sundial have a unique Event ID. It is possible to define how an event relates to another event(s) using their Event IDs. Within the super-events and sub-events fields below, you connect events to this event by providing comma-separated lists of Event IDs.

For example, in the case of Homecoming an event sponsor can list Homecoming as the super-event and then post sub-events such as the football game, alumni dinner, and pep rally which are part of the super-event Homecoming. Super and sub-events can have multiple super and sub-events of which they belong.

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An event's ID can be located by clicking on an event that has already been saved at least once. The event ID number is displayed at the top of the page and on the browser window.

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You can manage your own preferences to include the permission settings for your events and what notifications you'd like to receive from Sundial. You can adjust the the permissions that other groups have to access the events you list, set the event entry forms to minimize or maximize certain sections, disable email notifications of event publications, and more. The "Preferences" menu is accessible through the button on the top left of the main Sundial screen.

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"Send to a friend" allows calendar viewers to email an event to others. If you’d like to remove this option, use the advanced view to change the "enable send event" to no. Please note: Only certain calendars will have this feature. For more information, contact sundial-help@columbia.edu.

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Most likely, yes. Sundial is an excellent platform for creating and sorting event listings for web calendars, as well as for event registration. To learn more about whether Sundial is the right platform for you, please email sundial-help@columbia.edu.

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