dCal Service Statement

Description of the Service

dCal is Duke's group scheduling and calendar service, based on Oracle Calendar. It is centrally managed by the Office of Information Technology. It is available to members of the Duke community with an active, valid NetID on a no-fee basis.

Party Responsibilities

User Responsibilities

Users of the dCal calendaring service should:

OIT Responsibilities

OIT's management of the dCal system must comply with the University's policy on Computing and electronic communications at Duke University: Security & Privacy and other relevant Duke policies.

General Responsibilities

Help Desk responsibilities

Reliability

The dCal Calendar Service will be available at least 99% of regular scheduled hours except for scheduled maintenance (see below). During regular business hours, dCal will be available as close to 100% of the time as possible. OIT will measure and report on system availability.

Availability

Goal

dCal will be available as close to 24 x 7 as possible. The critical period of time for administrative, clerical and service staff is normal working hours Monday through Friday from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM. Except in urgent situations, scheduled maintenance will not occur during normal working hours (see Scheduled Service Unavailability below).

Scheduled Service Unavailability

The normal maintenance window is Saturdays from 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM. This window may not always be used and, when used, often for a much shorter period. When maintenance is needed, it will be confirmed one week in advance and posted to the OIT Service Updates page. In addition, a maintenance notice will be emailed to the dcal-announce mailing list.

Unplanned Service Unavailability

Hardware failures, major security issues or other events may necessitate a service outage that occurs without prior notice. OIT will make every effort to keep the dCal user community informed, particularly with messages on the OIT Service Updates page and with mailings to the dcal-announce mailing list. OIT will make every effort to return the service to full availability as quickly as possible.

Performance Expectations

OIT will monitor user counts, usage patterns and trends, as well as server performance, and attempt to maintain sufficient resources such that the backend dCal service never performs in a manner to negatively affect the response time to the user. Therefore, performance will be primarily dependent on workstation and network performance.

Problem Reporting and Resolution

Users should report problems with the dCal service to the OIT Help Desk.

OIT will determine the criticality of the issue. The following serve as examples to be used in classifying the response priority of the problem.

URGENT

DESCRIPTION: Service is unavailable to all or most users.
RESPONSE: An immediate response is required.
RESOLUTION: OIT will make every effort 24x7 to return the service to full availability as quickly as possible.

HIGH

DESCRIPTION: Service is unavailable to 10 or more users or a mission critical process is affected.
RESPONSE: Response is needed within one to two business hours to address the situation.
RESOLUTION: The problem will be corrected as quickly as possible.

MEDIUM

DESCRIPTION: Service is unavailable to fewer than 10 users.
RESPONSE: Response is needed within three to four business hours to address the situation.
RESOLUTION: The problem will be corrected as quickly as possible.

LOW

DESCRIPTION: Service is operational, but a non-critical functionality is not working.
RESPONSE: Response is needed within eight business hours to address the situation.
RESOLUTION: OIT will attempt to resolve the problem within two business days.

Creation and Maintenance of Resources

Because Oracle Calendar does not provide for distributed maintenance of resources such as conference rooms, OIT creates and maintains resources. See Using dCal Resources for more information on resources.

Requests for resource creation or changes to the basic information about resources (such as the name of a resource or its categorization) will receive a response within two business days.

Application Maintenance

OIT is responsible for maintaining the dCal service. Operating system and application upgrades will be tested first before application to the production service.

Regarding account maintenance, see the policies on decommissioning or deactivating an account as defined in the dCal Management Guidelines. See also "Security and Privacy" below.

Backup and Business Recovery/Continuation

Backup of the dCal system will be performed routinely in order to be able to recover from a hardware or software failure. OIT will not restore an individual or resource agenda from backups. Restoring an agenda may have considerable impact on other dCal users. dCal is a critical business service. Should a significant system failure or disaster occur, OIT will make every effort to return the service to full availability as quickly as possible.

Security and Privacy

System administrators may access an individual's calendar information for the purpose of administering the system, including diagnosis of issues with the service, but they will still treat this information as private. Since Duke provides the service for business purposes, the university reserves the right to access this information for business purposes. All requests for access to another individual's nonpublic calendar information must be approved by a Dean, Director or equivalent of the appropriate area.