Get your schedule
Step 1: Log into
http://msteched.com and sign up for sessions. It's OK. I'll wait.
Step 2: From the
My Schedule link on the left side navigation bar, right click the RSS Feed Icon (
) and save the feed to your local hard drive.
Get the parser
Step 3: Download Microsoft's msxsl.exe to the same folder containing the feed saved in the previous step. This program allows command line xsl transformations of xml files, storing the output to local file.
Download from Microsoft... (25K)
Download from me... (25K)
Directions for use of msxsl.exe
Get the transformation file
Step 4: Copy the following xsl transformation file to the same folder as in Step 2.
XSL transformation file: rssToCsv.xslt
Step 5: Open a command line to the folder containing all three files from steps 2-4.
Step 6: At the command line, type the following:
MSXSL sessions.xml rssToCsv.xml -o calImport.csv
Legend:
sessions.xml is the download of the RSS feed from msteched,
rssToCsv.xml is the XSL style sheet that transforms RSS feed to Outlook import format,
calImport.csv is the output file containing the sessions in Outlook import format.
Step 7: Repair the CSV file. I recommend using Notepad or some other text editor to do the edits to this file, as Excel is doing something wiggy to the first column name (Subject), causing slight problems on the Outlook import parsing. MSXSL.exe inserts
a blank line and
tab character at the beginning of the file.
Remove both so that the first line of the file begins with:
"Subject","Start Date"...
Importing to Outlook
In the TechEd 2006 RSS schedule, there are some problems with the coding of the session times. An event in the Boston convention center at 2:45PM (EDT) has been inexplicably converted to GMT by offsetting the time 7hrs. When importing events into Outlook 2003, Outlook ignores any timezone indications or offsets, and assumes the raw time is a local time. Since I haven't had any time to figure out the time shifting inside the xsl transform file, I've decided on the following process to get the sessions to appear at the correct time here on the east coast time zone (which is the conference timezone.)
Change the timezone
Step 1: Double-click the time in the system tray.
Step 2: Change to the Time Zone tab.
Step 3: Select a timezone in the GMT +02 range. I prefer Cairo, although a range of choices from Praetoria to Helsinki are available.
Step 4: Click OK to set the timezone to GMT +02.
Import your schedule
Step 5: In Outlook, select the
File dropdown menu. Select
Import and Export..., then
Import from another program or file. Select
Comma Separated Values (DOS), then browse to the folder containing the Outlook import file created above, and select it (calImport.csv in my example.)