The Commons Events Calendar supports individual, group, and global calendars. Designed to publicize events created by the friends you’ve developed on the Commons or to the groups you belong to (and which you choose to notify), Events Calendar provides a convenient way to see all CUNY events or filter events that are pertinent to you.

An event can the following you to see want is going on delivers email notifications about events with vital information, including:

  • Event title
  • A rich description, that allows for links, images, etc.
  • Start and end times
  • Venue (including a map)
  • Whether or not this is a recurring event
  • Commons groups who have been invited

The information is also conveniently aggregated with other Commons events and displayed on individual, group, and global calendars. You can browse through your individual calendar, or look through your groups’ calendars to find events, and click to see details.

  • As an individual, you can check out your personal calendar to see all events targeted for the groups to which you belong, and the events that have been entered by your friends.
  • As a group member, you can access your group’s calendar to find events specifically targeted to your group.
  • As a member of the Commons, you can (soon) access the global calendar and see what events are happening in public groups.

my events

Accessing Your Individual Calendar

There are several ways to access your individual calendar once you are logged into the Commons.

  • Hover over your avatar in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Here you will see a new option called “My Events” (pictured at the right).
  • You can also visit your “Commons Profile.” Here you will see a new tab called “My Events.”

When you click on “My Events>>Calendar” you will see events entered by you, your friends, or by members of groups to which you belong. The calendar grid provides a convenient way to plan your schedule.

my cal

If you click on the “Upcoming Events” tab you’ll see a more condensed view, displayed as a list. No matter which view you choose, you can click on each event for its metadata.

upcoming

The “Manage” tab is useful when you have events that are in draft, and that you have not yet published.

Accessing Group Calendars

omekaGroup calendars can be accessed from a new tab in the group menu called “Events” (see image on the right). Group calendars are different from individual calendars in that they display events to which they are specifically targeted.

If you click on “ New Event” from inside your group, the event you enter will be automatically added to your group new groupcalendar.  But don’t stop there.  You can add other groups that you think will be interested in the event you are publicizing.   You can add public, private and hidden groups, provided you belong to them.  And as stated before, the members of these groups will be notified by email, and events will display on their individual and group calendars.

Understanding Privacy

  • Your personal calendar is discrete from everyone else’s and is private to you.
  • Events you enter from your personal calendar are visible to your friends on the Commons. They will be notified by email upon publication.
  • When creating an individual event, you can target the groups you belong to.
  • If the only group your choose is private or hidden, only those members will be notified.
  • If you post from a private or hidden group, no trace of the event will display except on the calendars of those belonging to those private or hidden groups.
  • If you include a public group, those members will be notified, and the event will be added to the group.
  • All “Public” group events will be viewable on the global calendar, but notification emails will not be sent to everyone on the Commons.

Adding Events to Your Commons Personal or Group Calendar via the iCalendar API

The Commons Events Calendar is compatible with other iCalendar APIs. This means that you can either:

  • bring specific events into your group’s calendar via an “ics” file,
  • subscribe to another compatible calendar and add all its current and future events.

If using a group calendar only group admins can add events via this interface.

Adding To Your Personal Calendar

In your Commons Portfolio, click on Events:

Click on “Manage.”

Adding To Your Group Calendar

This option is only available to admins of the group. Click on the Events tab on the group sidebar.

Then click on “Manage.”

Managing Your Calendar

From this point, interface for personal calendars and group calendars is the same. You have the option to either import a specific event from a downloaded “.ics”file or to subscribe to a calendar “feed.” See below:

 

Adding Events to your personal iCal, Google, MS Outlook, or similar third party iCalendar APIs

If you use Apple iCal, Google Calendar, MS Outlook, or a similar iCalendar API, you can automatically add an individual event from your Commons calendars.  Click on the event to add it by clicking the “Download iCal file” hyperlink (highlighted below).  It will be added to your third party calendar.

Alternatively, if you would like to synchronize your third party calendar with your Commons calendar or your group’s Commons calendar, you can “Subscribe.” Scroll down to the bottom of the calendar and find the Subscribe section, pictured below:

This example is from an individual member who belongs to both public and private groups. If it was a group calendar, only one link would be available.

It is important to note that if you click on the subscribe hyperlink, you will only get the events that are currently in the calendar.

Depending on your needs, it might be better to synchronize your third-party calendar.

Synchronizing Your Third Party Calendar

Instead of clicking on the hyperlink, hover over the link and copy the URL and then paste it in the appropriate place in your third-party’s calendar. Each API is different.

Apple iCal

  1. Open Calendar API
  2. click on File>>New Calendar Subscription
  3. paste in URL
  4. Adjust settings as needed

Google Calendar

  1.  Open Google Calendar
  2. Click on Other calendars
  3. Click on From URL and paste in the URL

Please Note that Google Calendar sometimes takes up to 24 hours to refresh

 

 

Site-Wide Calendar

The Commons site-wide calendar is a great way to see what’s happening all over CUNY.  It shows events added to public groups, but will not display events only associated to private or hidden groups. You can access from the Commons home page, on the “Events” tab or at https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/events/

 

The CUNY Academic Commons is an open space where the CUNY community can find like-minded colleagues, build personal or professional websites, teach, learn, and collaborate in open classrooms. The Commons has over thirty thousand members, and each member can join or create sites, groups, or a group + site on the Commons Creation Portal. Members of the Commons are typically CUNY professors, grad students, undergrad students, alums, and staff. Many professors use the Commons as a platform for teaching and ask their students to join their site or group. Professors and students may publish research on the Commons.

The Commons was built by CUNY, for CUNY. It uses open source software which it shares to other institutions world-wide.

There is tremendous activity on the Commons. Before a member logs in, the Commons home page describes what you do on the Commons. It then surfaces the latest news as well as the number of members, groups, sites, and courses on the site. Notice that you can either register to become a new member here, or simply login to your account.

Here is a screenshot of the top half of the home page before logging in:

 

The Building Blocks of the Commons are Sites, Groups, and Members. Each has an underlying tool set designed to connect members, to create content, to teach and learn, to collaborate and publish research, or post assignments. Members have incremental control over their privacy and email notifications.

The bottom half of the home page is dynamic. We feature two new and exciting sites and groups and list the last four active public sites and groups. We also show the most recently active members.

Here is a screenshot of the bottom half of the home page:

The Commons home page changes dramatically when you login. It becomes your personalized home page.

 

When you are logged into the Commons, you’ll find the Commons home page is personalized for you.

The Commons home page can be accessed from any where on the site by going to the top left hand corner and clicking on the “CUNY Academic Commons” hyperlink, or by going to “https://commons.gc.cuny.edu” or the short link “https://cuny.is“.

Here you can access hyperlinks to all your stuff: your profile, messages, notifications, groups, and sites. There is also a convenient “Create A New Space” hyperlink that will take you to the Commons Creation Portal where you can create a group, a site, or a group + site.

If you have more than three groups or sites, click on the “Show All” and you will see all your groups or sites.

Further down, you will see the “Latest News” on the Commons, as well as a list of “Shortcuts.” The shortcuts are based on your role and your campus(es) which you provided when you registered.

Here is a screenshot of the top part of a personalized home page:

The home page also aggregates activity, both site-wide and on the campuses you are associated with. The first section shows the latest activity on the Commons. Further down, the home page features new and exciting groups and then groups across CUNY and then groups on your campus(es).

Sites are likewise surfaced, according to last active.

And finally, we see the last active members on the entire Commons, and on your campus(es).

Here is a screenshot of the lower portion of the personalized home page:

 

 

Passwords are ubiquitous these days and choosing ones that are hard to guess and easy to remember is challenging. The following tips will help make your digital life more secure.

Don’t share your passwords with anyone. Even if someone is claiming to help you, it is probably a scam. IT departments and customer service representatives know not to ask customers for passwords. If you did share a password, change it as soon as possible.

Don’t use the same password for your accounts. If hackers guess your password, you can be sure they will try it on your other accounts.

If possible, use two-factor authentication.  Two-factor authentication adds another layer of security to your account. Even if someone successfully hacks your password, he or she still needs to have access to a token that is sent to your mobile device. Read more about two factor authentication and how to enable it on many popular websites here: https://www.turnon2fa.com/.

Create long passwords. Use at least 16 characters if possible.

Passwords should be easy to remember but hard to guess.

  • Try to use sentences or phrases.  Avoid single words, or a word preceded or followed by a single number. Hackers use databases of words to guess passwords.
  • Don’t use birthdays, home addresses, or the names of your significant others. Hackers mine social media accounts for password clues.

Make your password complex.  Use upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. Try to have at least one of each of these in your password.

Don’t create a document on your computer with all your passwords. Hackers can easily search hard drives for password information if they get access to your computer or mobile device.

Use a password manager. Password managers store your passwords securely and allow for extremely complex passwords which you do not need to remember. Typically, you have one master password that you need to access your entire collection of passwords. Make sure you can access them across multiple devices. If you use a password manager on a school computer, make sure to sign out before you finish. Here are some examples of free password managers:

The Commons is a social network and collects personal data and content. If you wish to see the content you have contributed, you can  request it.

Go to Commons Profile >> Settings>>Export Data.

You will then see this screen. Click on the Request personal data export button.

The process is currently manual, and may take a couple days to process. You will receive an email with a download link. Additionally, you can return to the request page to download your personal data from a hyperlink.

Your personal data will come as a zip file. Decompress the file and save. You should see a file named index[1,2,3, etc].html.

Click on the file to view in your browser. You will see a record of all the content you have contributed to the Commons, including your user information, profile information, comments, media uploads, posts, pages, etc.

Why Is This Important?

If You Are A Student

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. If you wish to delete your some or all your content on the Commons, contact us.

Not A Student?

The Commons respects member privacy and will work with you to delete some or all your content, as you desire.

When you first join and start using the Commons, you’ll probably want to personalize it. To register, you probably had to use a CUNY email address – but you might want to change that email address to the one you use more often. You can change your display name so that it’s not your username. For security, you’ll want to know how to update your password every now and then. If you are using the Commons as your online presence, you will want to start building your Commons Portfolio. You’ll want to join groups, follow sites, and make friends so that your My Commons page has content that is relevant to you.

Accounts & Profiles

What is the CUNY Academic Commons?

The CUNY Academic Commons is an open space where the CUNY community can find like-minded colleagues, build personal or professional websites, teach, learn, and collaborate in open classrooms. The Commons has over thirty thousand members, and each member can join or create sites, groups, or a group + site on the Commons Creation Portal. Members of the Commons are typically CUNY professors, grad students, undergrad students, alums, and staff. Many professors use the Commons as a platform for teaching and ask their students to join their site or group. Professors and students may publish research on the Commons.

The Commons was built by CUNY, for CUNY. It uses open source software which it shares to other institutions world-wide.

There is tremendous activity on the Commons. Before a member logs in, the Commons home page describes what you do on the Commons. It then surfaces the latest news as well as the number of members, groups, sites, and courses on the site. Notice that you can either register to become a new member here, or simply login to your account.

Here is a screenshot of the top half of the home page before logging in:

 

The Building Blocks of the Commons are Sites, Groups, and Members. Each has an underlying tool set designed to connect members, to create content, to teach and learn, to collaborate and publish research, or post assignments. Members have incremental control over their privacy and email notifications.

The bottom half of the home page is dynamic. We feature two new and exciting sites and groups and list the last four active public sites and groups. We also show the most recently active members.

Here is a screenshot of the bottom half of the home page:

The Commons home page changes dramatically when you login. It becomes your personalized home page.

 

How can I “personalize” the Commons?

You don’t need to. We’ve got your stuff all organized for you.

When you are logged into the Commons, you’ll find the Commons home page is personalized for you.

The Commons home page can be accessed from any where on the site by going to the top left hand corner and clicking on the “CUNY Academic Commons” hyperlink, or by going to “https://commons.gc.cuny.edu” or the short link “https://cuny.is“.

Here you can access hyperlinks to all your stuff: your profile, messages, notifications, groups, and sites. There is also a convenient “Create A New Space” hyperlink that will take you to the Commons Creation Portal where you can create a group, a site, or a group + site.

If you have more than three groups or sites, click on the “Show All” and you will see all your groups or sites.

Further down, you will see the “Latest News” on the Commons, as well as a list of “Shortcuts.” The shortcuts are based on your role and your campus(es) which you provided when you registered.

Here is a screenshot of the top part of a personalized home page:

The home page also aggregates activity, both site-wide and on the campuses you are associated with. The first section shows the latest activity on the Commons. Further down, the home page features new and exciting groups and then groups across CUNY and then groups on your campus(es).

Sites are likewise surfaced, according to last active.

And finally, we see the last active members on the entire Commons, and on your campus(es).

Here is a screenshot of the lower portion of the personalized home page:

 

 

How do I change my email address?

To register to the Commons, you need a CUNY email address. Once you have finished registering, you can switch to a more convenient email address.

Please note: Commons members have two email addresses.

Your Notification Email Address (i.e. your “official” email address)

This is the address you use to reset your password and to receive Commons notifications. To change this,  go to the top black navigation bar, hover over your avatar in the top right corner and select: My Settings>> Security. To change your email, re-write your preferred email in the ‘Email Address’ field, then scroll down and select “Save Changes.”

Your Profile Email Address

By default, this is not displayed. To add or change the email displayed on your Commons Profile, go to the top black navigation bar, hover over your avatar in the top right corner and select: My Profile>> Edit. Re-write your preferred email in the ‘Email Address’ field, then scroll down and select “Save Changes.”

I forgot my password, how can I reset it?

To reset your password, go to  https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword and enter username or email address. Click “get new password.”

You will receive an email with  a link to a page where you can reset your password.

What are mentions and how are they used?

The @mention system links others to the hyperlinked profile of the individual while notifying the individual of the mention via email. If you are trying to reach out to specific group members, simply put the @ symbol in front of their username and it will send a notification to their email address and show up in their @mention activity stream. To learn more about the @mention system read this blog post.

How do I upload a photo of myself to appear on my profile and other areas?

After logging into the Commons, go to the top black navigation bar and hover over your existing (or default) photo.  Go to My Profile»Change Profile Photo.  Here you will find detailed instructions on how to upload an image. You can also create a gravatar, which will enable you to use that same image across many different types of websites.

What are “notifications”?

The Notification link (on the top right bar of the Commons, just to the left of your avatar) indicates if you have a new message, friend request, or invitation to join a group.  Zero indicates that you have no notifications.

How can I change my password?

After logging into the Commons, go to the top black navigation bar and hover over your avatar.  Go to: My Settings» General. Enter your current password and  your new password, then scroll down and select “Save Changes.”

How do I change my display profile name?

After logging into the Commons, go to the top black navigation bar and select: My Profile» Edit.  In the text box under “Full Name (required)” fill in your preferred name, then scroll down and select “Save Changes.”

How do I send a message?

To send an email to another member, you can either find them on the member list or you can hover over your avatar in the top right corner, click the “My Messages” link on the left, and click “Compose.”  Start typing the person’s first name in the addressee box and the program will give you a list of all the members whose names include the letters you’re typing.  Next to the addressee box is an empty box for copying other members. Do the same thing in this box that you just did for the addressee. Each time, you do this, a new box will appear for another person to whom you might want to send a copy of the message.

How can I change email notification settings?

Go to the top black navigation bar and hover over your avatar in the top right corner.  Click My Settings >> Email.  Here you can choose whether you want to receive an email notification for a variety of activities, including posts to the groups you belong to, posts by your friends, posts to blogs you subscribe to, or follow, and messages.

Can member profiles be made private? How can I prevent my profile from showing up in a google search?

Right now, there is not a way to make Profiles private, but we can look into developing that functionality. For now, users worried about privacy should avoid using their full names on their profiles (some combination of initials and first or last names might be good). Certain profile fields can be made visible to only yourself, to your friends on the Commons, logged in members of the Commons, or the default – to everyone.  To change profile field visibility, go to click on the “Change” hyperlink next to the text that reads:

“This field can be seen by: Everyone Change.”

Most, but not every field has this visibility setting.

How Do I Delete My Account?

To delete your account, go to the top black navigation bar and hover over your avatar in the upper right corner.  Click My Settings >> Delete Account, then follow the directions on the page.

Note that you must be logged in to do this. If you no longer remember your password, you can reset it: here – https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword. If you no longer have access to the email you used to register, please contact your campus IT to re-establish the email.

The Commons is a great space to manage your department or committee! Typically, private groups are used to centralize documents, discuss topics, post minutes, and collaborate on projects.

[more to come]

Members use the Commons in many different ways.  Listed below are some of them:

  • Teaching Classes – professors from all CUNY campuses can use the Commons to teach classes. We offer a site teaching template to make it easy to get a class up and running. Professors can also use groups for teaching, or link a group to a group site to create a full-featured class environment.
  • Conferences/Events – connect your conference to a Commons site or group
  • Publications – the Commons hosts a number of open access journals
  • Personal Sites or “Blogs” – post your thoughts, research, articles, poems, images on a Commons site
  • Initiatives/Centers – websites can be configured to include news posts
  • Research – use sites to publish research findings. Use groups to discuss and collaborate.
  • Academic Portfolios – we provide an academic portfolio template to jump-start your site
  • Student e-portfolios – have your students create sites to track their learning
  • Committees/Departments – centralize documents, discuss topics, collaborate on projects using Commons groups.