Academic Calendar 4

Version History

If a version is not listed it is usually because the only changes are updates to site licence details.

4.5.1.17 Published 4-Sep-2023

Improvements to the way ACal gets the licence details for the owners of shared calendars/

4.5.1.16 Published 31-Dec-2022

The links to the web licence database have been altered to match the new security settings on https://www.greenhillsoftware.net.
Without this update ACal can no longer contact the database in order to get details of licence renewal.

4.5.1.12 Published 22-Sep-2022

Bug fixed: following the changes in version 4.5.1.01 new users running the Setup Data form for the first time had a series of error messages.

4.5.1.11 Published 14-Sep-2022

Bug fixed: In ManageManyCalendars – matching ACal and imported timetable sessions if you made a change to a session using the drop-down selectors in the right-hand column these changes were not, in some circumstances, remembered.

4.5.1.01 Published 1-Sep-2022

Improvements to the way moving to another academic year is handled.
Improvements to the way adding a shared calendar is added to the My Timetables tag of the Setup form and creating appointments from it.

4.5.0.09 Published 19-Jul-2022

Bug fixed: In some circumstances the Send Feedback and Send Data to a Colleague did not work. They do now.
Bug fixed: In some circumstances data entered in the Setup form was not saved correctly.

4.5.0.02 Published 15-Jan-2021

Improvements to Manage Many Calendars to handle issue when making appointments in mailboxes that have not yet been used.

4.5.0.00 Published 19-Dec-2020

New Feature: The Manage Many Calendars wizard can log on to Office 365 using the Microsoft authentication dialog, simplifying access.
Bug fixed: Importing staff data previously stripped numbers out of email addresses.
Bug fixed: From 4.4.2.03 running the Send Data to a Colleague routine caused an unwanted dialog box to appear as if the sender was actually the recipient.

4.4.2.06 Published 22-Nov-2020

Improvement: The Managing Many Calendars wizard can now import staff CSV files where there is a comma within the name, e.g. “Jones, Fred”
Code to handle extra long email addresses has been removed as this probelm is now handled by the licencing web service

4.4.2.05 Published 13-Oct-2020

Fixed: problems licencing emails addresses that were more than 50 characters long

4.4.2.04 Published 10-Oct-2020

Some improvements to error handling

4.4.2.03 Published 14-Sept-2020

Improvements to the way data sent from a colleague is handled when the user opens (double clicks) the incoming email
Improvements to the way data is sent when using the Managing Many Calendars: Send Data to Multiple Colleagues feature. Basic data is always sent along with Timetable data whether Terms or Events are selected or not. This avoid errors that can occur in some situations.
Inappropriate orange panel removed from Calendar View
If an incorrectly formatted date is entered in Events then a sensible message is displayed rather than an Error Message.

4.4.2.01 Published 1-Sept-2019

Extra features on the Data Form’s Sessions tab to cope with cases where two sessions have the same start time. This is highly unusual but might occur in a school implementing split breaks where one population has a break while the other population has a full lesson. In such a case if timetable data is imported from SIMS the session times will only match up correctly if the first of the two ACal sessions with the same start time is the one with the earlier end time.

4.4.2.00 Published 7-August-2019

Bug fixed: When you added a location to an Event it was not included in the appointment if created using the Send to a colleague method.

4.4.0.10 Published 25-April-2019

The Crystal Reports component which is required for ACal’s printing features is now not installed at the start of a normal install. Instead, the user is given the opetion of installing it only when they click the button to use the print feature.

4.4.0.00 Published 23-April-2019

ACal’s printing features have been re-instated with improvements. Significantly, printouts now include appointments from all currently displayed calendars.

4.3.0.03 Published 12-March-2019

Further improvements to handling config file errors.

4.3.0.02 Published 7-March-2019

If there is a configuration error in the user’s settings the error is logged rather than displayed.

4.3.0.00 Published 28-Feb-2019

From this version the .NET Framework used will be 4.5.1
NB In the first release of this version there was a problem that caused ACal to not appear in Outlook’s ribbon. If that is the case you will need to ununstall ACal before downloading and installing the current version.

4.2.0.32 Published 9-Jan-2019

If you updated timetable appointments from the Setup window and you had more than one timetable, i.e. two or more timetable tabs, then updates to the second and subsequent timetables would include the unchanged version of a changed appointment as well as the changed version and any reduced time span that had been set for the update would be ignored for that timetable. The first timetable was updated as expected. This is now fixed.

4.2.0.31 Published 25-Nov-2018

The Managing Many Calendars wizard now shows the name of the timetable file being imported to help avoid confusion when re-importing. The log also now gives much fuller and more readable information on the import process.

4.2.0.29 Published 17-Sep-2018

Improvements to the way ACal imports SIMS XML files and improvements in the speed with which it does so..

4.2.0.24 Published 5-Sep-2018

Improvements to the way ACal distinguishes between three possible different SIMS XML file formats when importing timetable details.

4.2.0.23 Published 4-Sep-2018

Improvements to the import of CSV timetable data files
Fixed bug caused by apotrophes in category names.

4.2.0.22 Published 6-Aug-2018

Bug fixed: If staff data was imported using the Manage Many Calendars wizard with the previous version email addresses may not have been imported correctly.
Improvement: The Manage Many Calendars wizards now alerts you if any of the selected staff have incorrectly formatted email addresses.

4.2.0.16 Published 22-July-2018

Improvements to the way incoming email is monitored.

4.2.0.14 Published 19-July-2018

Bug fixed: On the Setup Data form when clicking the button to create a dataset for the next year an error could occur in some circumstances.

4.2.0.12 Published 16-July-2018

Bug fixed: When importing timetable details from SIMS if a timetable entry did not have an entry for Location/Room it was ignored. This is now fixed.
Bug fixed: Staff details can now be imported from XML files.

4.2.0.8 Published 15-May-2018

Bug fixed: In the wizard for Managing Many Calendars there could be an error on the Set Date Range page the first time it was used.

4.2.0.7 Published 28-April-2018

Bug fixed: The previous version could give an error when leaving the Setup Pages and creating Outlook appointments.

4.2.0.5 Published 21-April-2018

Bug fixed: The previous version did not load into Outlook correctly in 64 bit versions of Windows 7.

4.2.0.2 Published 10-April-2018

Bug fixed: In the previous version in some circumstances the ACal tab did not appear in the Outlook ribbon.

4.2.0.0 Published 19-March-2018

New feature: Reschedule: This feature allows the user to move the content of a sequence of appointments to different appointments. An example of its use is when a sequence of lessons have been planned and this is reflected in entries both in the subject and Notes of an appointment but for some reason one or more of the lessons does not take place and the whole sequence has to be shuffled to new dates.
Improvements to the handling of config errors
Bug fixed: when importing SIMS timetables days were not correctly recognised if defined as ‘1Mo’ rather than ‘1Mon’

4.1.2.0 Published 26-Feb-2018

New feature: A school with a site licence can opt out of ACal’s logging which records on our database the version which users have and which features they use.

4.1.1.1 Published 31-Jan-2018

Bug fixed: If an entry in Events on the Setup Data page did not have a date an error occurred when the form was loaded.

4.1.1.0 Published 30-Jan-2018

Print feature removed The feature to print calendars has been removed. This is because users did not use it and it made installing the software more complex as a special component, Crystal Reports, had to be installed whether you intended to print or not. If any users want to see this feature included again please contact us.

4.1.0.25 Published 14-Jan-2018

A number of bug fixes and improvements to error handling and logging Improvements relating to changing calendar folder and creating the folder list

4.1.0.24 Published 8-Dec-2017

Improvements to wording of Manage Many Calendars wizard and to its logging

4.1.0.22 Published 14-Nov-2017

Bug fix: If there was a problem decrypting licence details for a shared calendar timetable appointments were not created in that calendar.
Bug fix: If, in the SetupData form, you created a new year when the last calendar viewed was not your default calendar problems could occur with timetable appointments going to the wrong calendar.
Bug fix: When adding a new category a problem could occur if the new category had the same spelling as an existing category but case differences.

4.1.0.21 Published 4-Nov-2017

Bug fix: two errors that could occur when switching between calendars

4.1.0.20 Published 31-Oct-2017

Bug fix: If, when creating appointments in shared calendars from the Setup Data form the target folder cannot be found appointments are no longer created in the user’s default calendar folder.
Improvement: Fuller logging of the creation of appoinmtnets.

4.1.0.19 Published 29-Sept-2017

Improvement: If the log folder (My Documents/Add-in Express) is not present it is created.
Bug fix: If, when adding extra timetable tabs on the My timetables page of the Setup Data form, a calendar was not found an error could occur the next time an appointment was created.

4.1.0.18 Published 21-Sept-2017

Improvement: Changes to the way licences for shared calendars are checked and stored.

4.1.0.17 Published 14-Sept-2017

Improvement: Changes to the way the list of available calendar folders is displayed when a user is selecting an calendar folder in order to add an extra timetable tab for the My timetables page of the Setup Data form.

4.1.0.16 Published 10-Sept-2017

Bug fixed: In recent version the ability to add categories to Events on the Setup .

4.1.0.15 Published 2-Sept-2017

Bug fixed: When adding extra timetables to the My Timetables tab the list of calendar folders displayed for selection could, in some circumstances, appear all read-only.
Bug fixed: In some circumstances it had not been possible to rename tabs added to the MyTimetables page of the Setup Data form.

4.1.0.12 Published 23-Aug-2017

Bug fixed: In evaluation mode appointments were not created in some situations.

4.1.0.11 Published 27-July-2017

The default appointment templates have been re-instated.

4.1.0.06 Published 11-July-2017

The message indicating that a new version is available is no longer shown to users with a site licence.

4.1.0.05 Published 3-July-2017

Improvement: ACal now double checks to ensure that categories have colours assigned to avoid categories without colour.
Bug fixed: If you tried to update existing timetable appointments from the Setup page an error occurred if only one term was defined.

4.1.0.04 Published 28-June-2017

Bug fixed: New events entered on the Setup Data form were not being saved.

4.1.0.03 Published 24-June-2017

Improvements to licencing routines.

4.1.0.02 Published 24-June-2017

Bug fixed: An error could occur when you clicked the Categories tab of the Setup Data form.

4.1.0.0 Major new version Published 28-May-2017

New features both for single users and in Manage Many Calendars:

Control colour-coding of appointments
Handle mid-year changes to timetable both for single users and in Manage Many Calendars
Set date span for appointments when creating or updating timetables

New features in Manage Many Calendars:

Much more powerful deleting of appointments in Exchange / Office 365
Ability to import from Engage management system
Ability to import from Tabulex management system

4.0.12.19 Published 6-Jan-2017

Bug fixed: In the Manage Many Calendars – Create Appointments wizard the Full Name column, if it was visible in the staff data grid, would be overwritten multiple times when the form was resized resulting in an unreadable display. This is fixed.

4.0.12.18 Published 5-Jan-2017

Updates to site licences
In the Create Appointments dialog that is launched from the Setup Data page if multiple timetables have been declared those with no entries are no longer ticked.

4.0.12.17 Published 21-Oct-2016

Improvements to the ability to detect a licence file
Improvements to logging of licencing

4.0.12.16 Published 13-Sept-2016

Bug fixed: In some circumstances a site licence was not recognised. This could then lead to problems creating entries in shared calendars. This has now been fixed.
Improvements to logging

4.0.12.15 Published 31-Aug-2016

Bug fixed: If you used the Send Data to a Colleague feature (not the Manage Many Calendars by Email)it was possible that the data was not recognised on arrival by ACal on the receiving computer. This has now been fixed.

4.0.12.14 Published 25-Aug-2016

Bug fixed: If, on the Sessions tab of the Setup Data form you had two Normal Day tabs and tried to delete the second one then any third tab could be deleted as well.

4.0.12.13 Published 9-Aug-2016

Bug fixed: Since 4.0.12.11 the grid for the My Timetables page of the Setup Data form could be loaded multiple times resulting in too many rows.

4.0.12.12 Published 29-July-2016

Bug fixed: If you had two calendars in My Calendars both with the same name (Calendar) only the default would be recognised by ACal.
The Select Calendar Folder form now includes the full path for each calendar folder to make it possible to distinguish between two calendars with the same name.

4.0.12.11 Published 26-July-2016

Bug fixed: If you had added a second timetable on the Setup Data form’s Timetables tab data could be lost when switching between tabs..
Improvements to logging

4.0.12.07 Published 12-July-2016

Bug fixed: In previous two version a bug occurred that meant that session times did not appear correctly in the New Appointment form.

4.0.12.06 Published 12-July-2016

Site licences updated.

4.0.12.05 Published 9-July-2016

Bug fixed: In the previous version if data had never previously been created an error occurred when you opened the form to Setup Data.
Improvements to logging

4.0.12.04 Published 1-July-2016

Site licences updated.

4.0.12.03 Published 30-June-2016

Site licences updated.

4.0.12.02 Published 9-June-2016

Improvement: The installer program is now signed with a digital signature. This improves security. This means that the installation dialogue box that used to say “Unknown publisher” now says “Greenhill Software”. This may solve installation problems some users have experienced.
Update: The Addin-Express component has been updated to the latest version

4.0.12.01 Published 18-May-2016

Change: Outlook Security Manager (secman) is no longer required or included.

4.0.12.00 Published 16-May-2016

Improvement: Improvements to importing data files from SIMS eliminate the need for complex matching of staff codes.
Minor bug fixes

4.0.11.07 Published 17-April-2016

Improvement: When adding appointments to Exchange using the Manage Many Calendars wizard appointments are now, by default, made in batches which significantly increases speed.
Improvement: The notification message that pops up as a reminder that the user’s subscription is due for renewal does not appear if the licence is a site licence. This was at the request of network managers.
Site licence details updated.

4.0.11.06 Published 20-Feb-2016

Improvement: Add-in Express component updated to latest version.
Improvements to logging

4.0.11.04 Published 11-Jan-2016

Bug fixed: If you used the Manage Many Calendars wizard to send data to a colleague, including timetable data, and there were no subjects in the imported timetable data for that person an error occurred.
Bug fixed: In some circumstance the Imported Staff grid in the Manage Many Calendars wizard di not show the staff code column when it was needed.
Improvements to the code managing licences

4.0.11.03 Published 5-Jan-2016

Bug fixed: In Setup Data when you moved to Next Year the Display Name for the year jumped back to the first year in some circumstances.

4.0.11.02 Published 2 December 2015

Bug fixed: If a term ended midweek then the term date all-day appointment for the last week could have a day too many.
Bug fixed: When using the New Appointment form on the last day of term it was not always recognised as a timetabled day .

4.0.11.0 Published 3 November 2015

Outlook 2016 now supported.
Explanatory message added to new appointment form if data file is not found.
Bug fixed: Applying a template to an appointment could fail because the My Template category was not recognised.

4.0.10.05 Published 2 October 2015

Bug fixed: In certain circumstances creating Outlook appointments for timetable appointments was stopped with an error “The value for column Reminder in table TimetableSessions is DBNull”.

4.0.10.04 Published 27 September 2015

Changes to the way the startup procedure is logged.

4.0.10.03 Published 26 September 2015

Bug fixed: Since version 4.0.10.00, the first time you use the Setup Data form when you reach the Outlook tab the name of the academic year is not displayed correctly.
Changes to the way the startup procedure is logged.

4.0.10.02 Published 24 September 2015

Bug fixed: If you used the previous version and went to the Setup Data form for the very first time there was an error when you reached the Timetable tab.
Bug fixed: If, on the Setup Data form’s Sessions tab, you had set up additional day types there was an error if you tried to delete that day types and it was in use.

4.0.10.01 Published 23 September 2015

Improvement: On the Setup Data form when creating a new year you now have separate choices to control whether session times, term dates and events are copied to the new year (with a year added to their dates).
Improvement: If Registry values have been entered they are backed up and restored when a new version of Academic Calendar is installed. (Previously the Registry keys would revert to their defaults.
Bug fixed: On the Setup Data form In some circumstances if you changed one of the Year Options or had different sessions on different days then the grid on the My Timetable tab did not update to reflect the changes.
Bug fixed: In some rare circumstances the Sessions on the Setup Data form’s Sessions tab did not appear to be sorted correctly.
Bug fixed: If you used the Create New Appointment form for a date that did not fall within the academic year currently selected in the Setup Data form the day was considered as not timetabled even though it was defined as such in the data for an unselected year.
On the Setup Data form’s Types of Day tab the grid was widened to accommodate longer names.
A number of error messages which do affect the running of the program are now logged rather than displayed. This removes an unnecessary annoyance.

4.0.9.00 Published 11 September 2015

New option: turn off checking for newer versions. This can be activated for all users using a registry key. Contact us for details
Bug fixed: Sending timetable data to staff caused an error when ACal did not recognise the week identifier in a two-week timetable.

4.0.8.04 Published 3 September 2015

Bug fixed: the previous version did not work correctly on some machines. It appeared to install correctly but many of the buttons did not work.

4.0.8.00 Published 2 September 2015

Improvement: If in the Manage Many Calendars wizard you are connected to Exchange then clicking the Back button allows you to re-enter your credentials and try to connect to Exchange again
Bug fixed: The Send Data to a Colleague form now allows you to select a year.
Bug fixed: When opening to Setup Data form the user could be asked if he wanted to import data in the old format if none of the Years in the ACalYears file were marked as selected.

4.0.7.00 Published 2 September 2015

Improvement: On the Setup Data form’s Timetable tab you can now add unlimited additional timetables. The licence restriction on shared calendars still applies, i.e. the email address of the owner of a shared calendar must be licenced.

4.0.6.02 Published 1 September 2015

Improvement: On the Setup Data forms’ Session Times tab it is no longer possible to delete the normal day set of sessions and this caused later problems.
Bug fix: Importing a timetable file in CSV format with one line per period did not work correctly.

4.0.6.01 Published 21 August 2015

Bug fix: In some circumstances creating appointments directly to Exchange using the Manage Many Calendars wizard timetable appointments were not created.

4.0.6.00 Published 18 August 2015

New feature: Context menu for the tabs of extra timetables. In the Setup Data form’s timetable tab you can add extra timetables. There is now a context menu for the extra timetable tabs that allows the user to rename the tab, clear its entries or delete it.
Bug fix: Manage Many Calendars: Send data by email feature failed to send timetable data. This occurred when a two-week timetable was imported from SIMS.
Bug fix: The text on the Choose Calendar Folder form could appear overwritten if the grid was scrolled.
Bug fix: Timetable appointments could be created for term blocks even though their Timetabled tick box was not ticked.
Bug fix: The names given to new tabs created for additional timetables on the Setup Data form were not always helpful. In some circumstance they were just “Calendar”.
Bug fix: In some circumstances the ticked box column on the Manage Many Calendars staff grid was hidden.

4.0.5.02 Published 13 August 2015

Improvements to importing timetable from SIMS.
If there is a miss-match between the number of sessions in ACal and those in the imported data the messages explaining what has happened are more specific and, if the user goes to the Setup Data form to make changes then these are picked up straight away when the Manage Many Calendar wizard is re-opened.
If changes are made to the matching of sessions these are remembered.
On importing SIMS timetable data the user is asked to indicated which set of rules for creating staff codes is the best match to their own. This could reduce the amout of editing necessary when matching users to timetables.

4.0.5.01 Published 12 August 2015

Improvements to importing timetable from SIMS. The Manage Many Calendars wizard’s import from SIMS feature can now cope with the All Staff Timetables and two different versions of Staff Timetable (selected) export files.

4.0.5.00 Published 24 July 2015

Improvements to form for entering timetable details: changes to the Setup Data form’s timetable tab and the Create Appointment in Outlook form to remove confusion about the role of additional timetables.
Improvement: Options for now has a tabbed form to make it easier to group options
Improvement: New option to turn off the monitoring of incoming emails. Some users reported that ACal slowed Outlook down. The only code in ACal that runs without the user starting it is code that monitors incoming emails in order to act on calendar data being sent by another user.
Bug Fixed: Adding categories – adding a category that was already in the user’s Outlook category list could cause an error if one or more letters was in a different case.

4.0.4.00 Published 11 July 2015

New feature: Notification of new version – When a new version of ACal is available the user is notified and can be taken straight to this page to see what the new features are and download and install it.

4.0.3.03 Published 10 July 2015

Bug fix: If you used Events having entered Events in a beta version of ACal 4 before the Include column was introduced an error would occurs and Events entries were not created in the Calendar.

4.0.3.01 Published 9 July 2015

Bug fix: If you had a two-week timetable and different sessions on different days the settings on the Types of Day tab on the Setup Data form were not retained and a message told you they needed attention.
Site licence: Site licence details updated for some customers.

4.0.3.00 Published 6 July 2015

New feature: The location of the ACal Data Folder can now be set using a registry key. This is for the use of network managers where the default location of the data folder is not appropriate. See details

4.0.2.04 Published 27 June 2015

Site licence: Site licence details updated for some customers.

4.0.2.03 Published 23 June 2015

Site licence: Subscription details updated for some customers.

4.0.2.02 Published 22 June 2015

Improvements: to usage tracking.

4.0.2.01 Published 18 June 2015

Bug fix: Some versions of the beta used a backslash in the year name that caused problems when trying to load data.

4.0.2.00 Published 14 June 2015

Improvements: Setup Data form Events tab to improvement to increase the ease of editing.
Optional columns can be revealed or hidden. These include one to enable data to be sent with instruction to delete items (as when amending calendar entries) and one to include or exclude events from the entry process so different sets of entries can be made in the calendars of different groups.

4.0.1.00 Published 9 June 2015

New feature: The Events grid of the Setup Data form now has a column headed Include which is ticked by default. When Outlook appointments are created only those with a tick in the Include column are created. This makes it much easier to use the Send Data to Colleagues feature selectively.

4.0.0.00 Published 4 June 2015