Sharing calendars, setting permissions

[Michiel van den Broek]

I got this question from a client about sharing calendars between 55 coworkers, managers and assistants. I'm asking their question here, because they ask me this "because we can't seem to set this with the Exchange options". I'm yet to find out if this is a knowledge issue or that they have in fact tried the exchange options and this is a limitation of Exchange.

Question 1:

The default setting in Outlook is Free/Busy, so if you open a coworkers calendar you only see Busy and no details of the appointment. My client wants people to see more details of the appointment: subject and location. But not top open it (* I guess see body and attachments? *). And not create appointments.

I think this is done by setting the level for "Default" in a calendar to "Free/Busy time, subject, location"? Does every user need to do it for their own calendar or can this be done remote by an administrator?

Question 2

There are 5 assistants who are allowed to create appointments at other users (* I guess all 55) calendar, but rather not open (* I guess see body and attachments *) of existing ones.

Then 2 assistants need to have permission to create, change, move and open calendar items of specific persons (managers), except for private items.

Is this possible within Exchange? Does everyone need to add the 5 assistants to their calendar as contributors? And the managers, do they add the assistants as Editor?

Question 3

Do all 55 people need to do this on their own? Do I need to write instructions? Or can this be managed and set centrally?

Thanks!

[#2]

1) You as the admin can do it - set the Default level to LimitedDetails

2) Don't think so, unless you want to mark all existing ones as Private. The permissions you grant will apply to all items, expect for private, and while you have the "edit only own events" level of permissions, there is no "view only own events" level

3) You as the admin should be able to grant the necessary permissions

@Julia Foran might want to hear more on your specific scenario.

[#3]

To add on a few more notes:
* I agree with Vasil that setting Default to LimitedDetails is best option for the reading scenario.
* You can set these permissions programmatically using the Add/Set-MailboxFolderPermission cmdlet.

[#4]

Thank you. Do I set these permissions for each mailbox (and again when a new user/mailbox is created), or do I change a central setting on which new mailboxes are created?

[#5]

For now, we only have the option to set it per mailbox. We discussed this recently with Julia though, and she mentioned that they will explore the options available to make this (pre-)configurable across all mailboxes. Not sure if she can share any news on this yet 🙂

[#6]

We haven't started or planned any work for this yet, but it's in our list!