Recurring Dates for Training

Question

My department is new to Sharepoint (by which i mean I am very ignorant about it,) and at present we use it for setting up our training calendars. This is the process we currently use to do so:
We have an online learning course (let's call it Northern Book Cooking). This course runs for three days from 10:00-7:00, and it runs four times a year - say Jan 18, March 16, May 4, October 20. Each session is the same - if you can't sign up for January,
you can take the May course and so on.
In order to add these sessions to our calendar we first make a template, and then create a training event through Workflows. The training event asks for our course ID number, the last day one can register for it, its location and the start and end date.
The way we currently work is that we make the start and end day the same but change the times (so it starts on Jan 18 10:00 and ends Jan 18 at 7;00). Then we go over to the calendar,open up the first day, and click the recurring box. We then check the weekdays
and add the end date, so that Northern Book Cooking runs from Jan 18-20, and each day goes from 0:00-7:00. Then we go back to training templates and start all over again for the next date, March 16.
What I want to know is if there is a way we can cut-out that last part entirely. I want to be able to go to workflows, add a new training event, add the start date (Jan 18), add the end date (Jan 20), and add the times, and then have Sharepoint do the rest.,
so that ultimately the course runs for three days, and each day runs from 10-7, and I don't have to fiddle with the recurrence function 'manually.' Is there a way to do this? i know you can set sharepoint to recur a date monthly, but you don't appear to be
able to select the months, it just occurs as a pattern date (Jan 18, Feb 18, March 18) until you tell it to stop.
Any help? Or am I dreaming of the impossible?
We are currently using Sharepoint 2007, and will be updating to 2013 in the NEw Year. If there is a solution that works only in a later version, let me know anyways.

Answer 1

Hi,
You can do this fairly easily using dbms_scheduler.evaluate_calendar_string which supports a rich standard calendaring syntax here is a function which prints out dates and an example. You can find more calendaring syntax examples here
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28310/scheduse004.htm#i1023132
and full rules for the syntax here
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/appdev.111/b28419/d_sched.htm#CIHDJEEB
Hope this helps,
Ravi.
set serveroutput on
create or replace procedure print_schedule_dates
   schedule in varchar2,
   start_date in timestamp with time zone default null,
   number_of_dates in pls_integer default 10
is
  date_after timestamp with time zone;
  next_date timestamp with time zone;
  actual_start_date timestamp with time zone;
begin
  if start_date is null then
    actual_start_date := dbms_scheduler.stime();
    -- to make this work in 10.1, change the above line to
    -- actual_start_date := systimestamp;
  else
    actual_start_date := start_date ;
  end if;
  date_after := actual_start_date - interval '3' second;
  for i in 1 .. number_of_dates
  loop
    dbms_scheduler.evaluate_calendar_string
     (schedule, actual_start_date, date_after, next_date);
    dbms_output.put_line(to_char(next_date,
                    'DY DD-MON-YYYY (DDD-IW) HH24:MI:SS TZH:TZM TZR'));
    date_after := next_date;
  end loop;
end;
exec print_schedule_dates('freq=weekly;byday=fri', sysdate+4, 5 )