The NTSBDC Calendar is easy and intuitive to use, but there are a few features that may go unnoticed by the first-time visitor. This section will explain some of the obvious and not-so-obvious workings of the calendar.

In Figure 1 above you will notice four main sections:

1. the Small Calendar display and "Today's Date" display
2. the right-hand pane, or "Results Pane"
3. the "Find Events" search section
4. the "SBDC Center" dropdown list

The small calendar displayed on the left-hand side of the page has two functions - it serves as a visual aid, much like looking at a calendar on your wall. It's secondary function is to provide what I call the "Quick-Day" and "Quick-Month" features (see Fig. 2).

You'll notice that when you click the arrow buttons on the small calendar display, the month displayed changes. Clicking the arrows does not change search results or the behaviour of the results pane (right-hand side of page). At this point, the small calendar is just for visual reference.

If you click on one of the day slots in the calendar, the "Quick-Day" feature is invoked. This will display in the search pane all of the events occuring on that day.

The "Quick-Month" feature works the same way. If you click on the month name at the top of the small calendar, all of the events scheduled for that month are displayed.

Once you have explored the Quick-Day and Quick-Month features, and want to bring the everything back to where is was when you came here, click the white "Today is..." line just above the calendar, and the page will revert to where is was, displaying the events for today. This is the "Today's Date" display. Like the Quick-Day and Quick-Month features, it will work no matter what state the calenday is in - if you are in the middle of searching for an event, or you've used Quick-Day or Quick-Month so many times you're not sure if you're still in this century, one click of the Today's Date display will put you right back to square one.

The Results Pane is where events are displayed. You choose the events you want to display using the controls on the left-hand side of the page, and those events are displayed in the results pane.


Whenever there are results displayed in the Results Pane, you may click on the title of any event, and be sent to the Display Event Screen, which will display the full details of the event. (see Fig. 3) From the Display Event screen, you have two options - the "Back to Calendar" button, which takes you back to the main calendar screen (with your previous search results still displayed), and the "Help" button, which displays the help screen you are reading now.

The NTSBDC Training Calendar features a recurring/repeating events function (this function will be explained in detail in the "Calendar Administration" section).

If one of the events displayed in the results pane is a repeating or recurring event, the message:


will be displayed below the event date. (see Fig. 4a)

If you click on the "click here" link, all of the events in that recurring/repeating events series will be displayed in the results pane (see Fig. 4b).

The "Find Events" frame just below the small calendar display is where the real power of the NTSBDC Calendar is (see Fig. 1). This is where you perform searches for events and generate reports.

There are six fields to use when searching for events:

• Month, Day, Year - these are self-explanatory
• Title - This drop-down is populated with the Short Title field from each existing event in the calendar. This is not the full title, but the "short title" used in the SBA calendar.
• City - This is a list of all the cities where SBDC centers are located. Choose the desired city, and the calendar will find all events held in that city
• Keyword or Phrase - Enter a word or phrase to search for, and the calendar will search the title and description of each event for that word or phrase.

When using the drop-down lists, if a field is not being used in the search, it will display "-----any------", indicating that, in the search you are about to conduct, this field will not be used to limit the results of the search. If the "Month" field contains "------any-------" and the "Year" field contains "2005", you are telling the calendar "Find all events that occur in any month of the year 2005".

When you click or tab to a drop-down field, you may change it by clicking on the down-arrow beside the field and choosing a value from the list, or you can enter the first letter of the value, and the first value starting with that letter will be selected. If the first item in the list to start with that letter is not your desired choice, press the same letter again, and the second item starting with that letter will be selected. Continue pressing the same key intil your desired item is selected. For instance, if you want to search for all of the events that occur in July, you will click or tab over to the "Month" field, and press "j" three times (January, June, July). To return a drop-down field to it's default state ("-----any------"), press the "-" key (the first letter in "------any------"). *




To use the Keyword Search function, type the word or phrase that you wish to search for in the Keyword or Phrase field. This search is not case-sensitive, so it doesn't matter if you use upper or lower case. If you type more than one word in the field, each word will be searched for, regardless of how close it is found to the other words in the field.

For instance, typing tax returns will find an event with the words "How to figure tax returns". However, it will also find an event containing the phrase "The IRS returns overpaid taxes in their own sweet time".

Exact Phrase Search - If you wish to find a phrase exactly the way it is typed (you want to find "tax returns" but not "returns overpaid taxes"), simply surround the phrase with double-quotes ("). Using that method, typing "tax returns" will only return classes that have the word "tax" immediatly followed by "returns". IE: "Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights" (with quotes) will return events with the words in that specific order, but will NOT include events with the phrase "Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks".


Below the City and Keyword fields is the Sort Order section. This section determines the order in which events are displayed in the results pane. If nothing is changed in the Sort Order section, the results will be sorted by date, and then by title. The Sort Order section allows you to change that behaviour. Choose your primary sort field from the "Sort #1" drop-down and choose "Ascending" or "Descending" order. If you wish to use a secondary sort field, repeat the above procedure for "Sort #2". You may sort by date and/or by title.

When you click "Find It", the search will be conducted and the results displayed in the results pane. If you click "Print It", you will be taken to an advanced search screen, where you will have greater control over the way the search results are displayed/printed. Reports can be generated with as much or little detail as needed, and searches can be appended together to create reports with combined search criteria. See the "Print It" section for details.

The "Reset All Fields" button resets the fields that you have modified.

The "Print It" function is not a typical "printer-friendly page" feature found on most websites, where the information on the page is simply re-formatted to fit well on a printed page. The "Print It" function is actually a powerful reports tool, giving you increased control over the information in the calendar database.

The "Print It" page is divided into three main sections (see Fig. 6):

1. the Report Title field
2. the Field Display section
3. the Search Criteria section

The Report Title field is a text box where you type the title for your report. This is strictly superficial - enter whatever you want displayed at the top of the report (ie: "Government Contracting SBDC for November-December, 2009").

The field display section allows you to choose which fields are displayed in your report. This section doesn't affect the actual search process. (ie: you may search on the "Title" field, yet not have the titles displayed in your report.)

The search criteria section is where the real work is done. Enter the info you want to search for just as in the main screen "Find Events" section, and click either "Print Report" or "Append to Current Report", and your report will be displayed in your browser for your review. Within a few seconds, the Print Settings window will appear, and you can print the report as you would print anything in Windows (see Fig. 7). If the Print Settings window comes up before you have sufficiently read through the report, or if you want to add more items to the report, you may move the window out of the way, or press "Cancel" in the window to close it. To return to the "Print It" screen, use the back-arrow button on your browser.

To use the "Append to Current Report" button, you need to first do a normal search, clicking the "Print Report" button to confirm the correct results, close the printer window and return to the "Print It" page. Then do a second search and click "Append to Current Report". You will then be able to check the final results, or go back and append another search if needed.

Use your browser's back button to return from the "Print It" page back to the calendar.