The Office of Communications and Marketing has been working with IT to bring two new systems to the UAMS web.  Recently, a new Campus Calendar was launched to replace the existing Campus Calendar found on the Intranet.  The web address for the new calendar is: http://calendar.uams.edu/day.php, which will bring up the current day's events.  You can view the week's events with the following link:  http://calendar.uams.edu/week.php.  The main level of the calendar is found at the following link: http://calendar.uams.edu/.  From there, you can choose which calendar to view.  The new calendar offers some pretty nice new features.  It is searchable.  You can open up a calendar item and then use the vCalendar link to open the item in an Outlook Calendar window which you can then save to your own calendar.  You can even recommend events through E-mail to colleagues, co-workers, friends or family via the Recommend It link.

"We looked at a number of calendars before deciding on purchasing this system for the campus.  From input from Campus Calendar users across campus, we knew the system had to be easy and intuitive to use.   The views needed to be straight-forward and uncluttered.  This system seemed to offer the back-end administrative functions needed to support multiple campus calendars as well as a user interface that was easy to navigate," said Christina Trimble, Special Projects and Web Coordinator, Office of Communications & Marketing.

"Keith Powell in IT was instrumental in the successful rollout of the new Campus Calendar.  He helped us locate the server space and installed and administered the database for the Campus Calendar.  He has been great to work with, said Shane Tripcony, Manager, Web Marketing, Office of Communications & Marketing.  If you have items that you would like to see added to the Campus Calendar, please send those items to Felece Gassman at fgassman@uams.edu.  Please be sure to include a title of the event, the date or recurring dates and the location of the event.  Any descriptive information, such as event contact, whether reservations or registrations are required and any event details to help describe the event should be sent as well.

"I am pleased to announce the beginning of what I hope will turn into a very well used resource for UAMS, a new Frequently Asked Questions section for the UAMS web," said Tripcony.  "We have been fielding questions over the web dealing with topics such as how to find medical care to how to apply for various educational programs, and all manners of questions in between.  With a campus as large as UAMS, it is impossible to know answers to every question that comes in, but we have worked toward finding common questions and answers that can lead people in the right direction.  I feel this will be a valuable resource for UAMS, especially as it continues to grow."

FAQ topics at the time of this writing included the following:

About Health Care for Patients
For Visitors; Directions to and Around UAMS
About Academic Enrollment in UAMS Colleges
About the UAMS Mission
For News and Information
About Navigating and Using the UAMS Website

The system is searchable, and users can submit questions that can be researched and added to the FAQ database.  The new FAQ section should be a valuable tool for the campus as well as external website visitors.  "If you have questions that you are frequently asked, feel free to submit them to the FAQ section.   Also, use it as a resource for your own research when you have questions," said Tripcony. 

"Matt Koehler, Mike Mottler, Christina Trimble, Elizabeth Bard, Cheri Hatfield, Holly Naramore, Pattie Hamilton, Janet Lynn, Holly Hiryak, Tim Irby and many others around campus were responsible for helping to make the new FAQ section a reality.  Matt Koehler in IT provided great assistance in helping to set up and test the MS SQL database.  Mike Mottler, who recently retired in December 2004, collected questions and answers and did a large part of the writing and research involved with this project," added Tripcony.

Check it out at: http://www.uams.edu/faq

You may find answers to your UAMS questions online.