Forum Discussion
Group Calendars - why would we use one?
Hi all. I am trying to get my head around the Calendar part of Groups and understand why a team or department would choose to use it. As far as I can see there is no Skype integration, and as 90% of our meetings are Skype meetings we would need to continue scheduling these through Outlook. Am I right in thinking it is then just an alternative to a SharePoint calendar, so it would only be used for things like holidays, detailing which offices team members are visting, away days etc. Does anyone have any scenarios or examples where the Group calendar has been used in a different and beneficial way?
Thanks, Laurie
22 Replies
- Did I miss something but reading this thread, no one in the replies dealt with the Skype issue - no integration means it is only for location / room based meetings?
- If Planner start/deadline dates were on there I could see a reason, but, like you, I can't quite see how it's of any use to us.
- Are you using Groups currently. There is definite value, and every group is technically different for how they could use it, but it is darn near impossible to explain how it "really works" to basic business users.
Here are some of the key things that we are using for our organizational group: Weekly staff meeting, scheduled events like potlucks, out of office / vacation notifications, quarterly or yearly workgroup meetings, major milestone dates.
Where Microsoft slightly missed the point I think is that it should be primarily a Group focused calendar, not just a means to invite users primarily. It would be more ideal to be treated like a Room or Resource calendar in a lot of ways.
The pros are definitely outweighing the cons at this point, especially compared to how we used to do group calendars on SharePoint site lists.
Until we get better invite and appointment options, its just gonna be...wonkyYes! I was hoping that moving our team to Groups would allow us to use the Group calendar like a resource calendar (which must not exist anymore because no one knows what I'm talking about when I say "resource calendar"). My team is currently very hesitant to use the calendar because of all of the e-mails it generates when all we want is a central place to put time off, trainings that have been scheduled, etc.
The only minor work around that I have found is under "response options" at the top of an unsent appointment. You can click it an uncheck the option to "Request Responses". It at least turns off the feature where people have to accept/decline and gives the option for individuals to add the event to their own calendar. I think it still auto-populates individuals calendars.
Any additional insights would be great!
Our particular group (in our organization) uses it for when colleagues are out of office (like vacations), major events, deadlines, milestones.
It's less so of a team meeting / invitation thing, as it is a here is what is going on kind of thing.EDIT: As a note, we are in the process of figuring out how to migrate from the SharePoint calendar we have been using to this Group Calendar. A big negative we are finding is we don't seem to be able to create an entry without "inviting" everyone else. So I dont want to invite everyone to my Vacation entry, it just needs to "be there"....
Thanks for all your replies, I think you have confirmed my thinking that it is really just an alternative to a SharePoint calendar.
Brent Ellis - that is interesting. Is it because the group members have notifcations turned on? If they turn off notifications presumably they won't get an invite.
- No, it appears they all get an invite regardless of notification setting. It goes out to all members of the Group (whether subscribed or not), as a meeting request (not an appointment), sent TO the group distro list AND the user that created the meeting entry.
Will have to do some more testing.
In a similar vein I have difficulty when scheduling meetings with everyone in a group. With distribution lists I could expand the list in order to look at the details of everyone's calendar (by expanding the group) but this is not available with groups and I have to rely on the rollup availability. Has anyone found a way to look at the availability of individuals users in a group?
Thanks, Bruce...
Bruce Weatherford wrote:In a similar vein I have difficulty when scheduling meetings with everyone in a group. With distribution lists I could expand the list in order to look at the details of everyone's calendar (by expanding the group) but this is not available with groups and I have to rely on the rollup availability. Has anyone found a way to look at the availability of individuals users in a group?
Thanks, Bruce...
Totally agree with this comment. You go to the Calendar in Outlook and it shows "Busy" for the consolidation of every person in the group. Has anyone found that useful? If there are 5 or more people in the group, the entire calendar is filled with "Busy". I think Group Calendar needs some refinement, hopefully in the works.
- Sounds like a good feature request to me, expand membership and Group member free/busy for scheduling assistant. Yes please.
Some of the use cases I've seen for a Group calendar is for group meetings - you schedule on the group calendar and it automatically invites all subscribed members. Also for events relevant to the entire group - for example a conference, key milestone date, etc.
I've also seen some groups where the members put their planned out-of-office (vacations, etc.) on the group calendar so the rest of the group could easily see if they were expected to be away on particular days.
- Group calendar is much more than a SharePoint Calendar...it's just a common calendar for all the members of the Group that you can Sync to outlook or see in the Office Groups Apps. Additionally, in a Group calendar you can easily book a room of your organization, something you don't have in a SPO Calendar
