Sync multiple calendars in one

IT MEC Group So, the best advice I can give you here is to use what's available.

There are 3 scenarios I can think of that you could be describing.

1.  The assistant is a shared assistant that handles adjustments to the schedules of all of the CEO's

• The executives may have a grouped calendar they all view that updates all of them at once
• The executives typically have their own calendars that they add and delete from on their own

2.  The assistant is a shared one with basic viewing or edit (not add or delete) access to all the CEO's schedules

• There may be a shared master calendar for the CEO's to see everything that goes on in their group or the whole company
• They may or may not set up their own appointments on their calendars.

3. The assistant is a shared one but makes no adjustments to the CEO calendars and only needs to see information

1. In this scenario, there are other possibilities

              ----You want a Unified View

              ----You want as little adjustment to either end as possible

I have 2 methods for you:

Calendar Sharing, from the CEO to the Assistant;  This method means you share every CEO's calendar from their end, then add the calendar as a shared calendar to the Assistant.  When this is done, you have to set up their view for them.  You add the shared calendars under their own folder heading.  This creates an exact copy of the calendars from the CEO's in the assistant's account, and creates the linkage with whatever sharing level you set.  

However, I've found this direct to the user operation to be a bit unprofessional.  I create an Active Directory Group\Exchange Group called "Assistant" or the like, and add the assistant to the group.  Share the calendars to the group in that fashion and all access will propagate to the assistants.  Any assistant can be removed from that group during their exit pathway during occupational mobility (let go, retire, promotion etc) and the access will change in a couple of hours to a day.  This model fits one or many assistants with one or many CEO's

With both of those, you will have to set up each assistant for their viewing of the calendars by adding each shared calendar, giving it a color, and placing all of the added calendars under their own heading in outlook (drag\drop works).  Then you can activate them all by activating the heading with a checkbox.  In older versions of outlook, this was done by adding a calendar folder then dropping the calendars into it.  This is where the copies of data will be kept.  You can rename the calendars also, to make sure you can easily tell which one is which.

When you are done with that go to view and save this view as the default.  It will now be that way on open.  With this method, you can adjust what they can see and what they can change.

There is also DELEGATE access which is set up in exchange.  This can utilize the Group ability I describe above, and gives you the ability to quickly add or remove the ability from any user.  A DELEGATE access role gives another user the same access to your outlook items that you have.  They can send messages, add calendars, events, tasks, etc  AS IF THEY WERE THE PRIMARY USER.

Some setups have included using Power Shell to Add and Remove the role for the group at different times of the day so that assistants can perform their normal messaging, memorandum, and scheduling functions for the executives during working hours, but cannot do any damage in their off hours.  Usually a Service account with ADMIN access to AD and Exchange handles this when a specific email is recieved (a punchout email or task).

There is also the programming method that uses a RESOURCE calendar called Assistant.  This calendar is set up to accept all conflicts.  Each CEO then gets 2 FLOWs.  For any event that gets created on their Calendar, the resource recipient that gets added to it is the Assistant calendar, and their INITIALS or the ORGANIZER information get added to the subject.  The second flow moves recieved messages from the resource to a temporary folder, waits for 5 to 10 minutes, then deletes the folder.

You add the Assistant group as a Delegate of the resource (the resource administrator).  This assumes they need to see all the information from the CEO's, but they cannot move or adjust the info.  The events can be Colored based on the sender info (the email address it came from) but this is only a flagging value and may not appear in all viewing apps.

Executives do more than sit in an office.  Many are active in outreach programs and charities.  They like to have copies of these calendars on their main availability calendars.  Any calendar they link to, even if they cannot make changes to it from their main outlook profile, can still be used in a FLOW to add a vague event to their internal calendar.  They can even add another calendar to their own profile to manage philanthropic events.  These calendars can be shared in the same ways as above, however, if you add a FLOW to copy events to their main calendar in a VAGUE MANNER.

The philanthropy calendar idea can also apply to a private calendar or a home life calendar for any user.