Hi,
I am in a department with about a dozen people. They have been wanting some kind of shared departmental calendar system, and so I set up a shared calendar in Outlook 2010, giving everyone an Author-level permissions. Everyone is using Microsoft Exchange.
The problem is that people are objecting to what they see as an imposition... having to enter appointments on their own personal Outlook calendars, then again on the department calendar... even though the department one is more of an electronic in/out board... if someone is going to be gone for more than half a day, it should be noted on the this calendar, as opposed to individual appointments.
Regardless, they want a solution where where if they list an appointment on one calendar, it automatically copies over to the group one. They also added on a requirement that conference rooms and other resources could be booked via this calendar. The solutions I have tried to come up with are:
- Everyone shares their personal Outlook calendar with me, giving me Editor access, and I copy/paste appropriate info to the department calendar. This has been rejected as being a) cumbersome and b) invasive
- Finding a third-party software solution. I have tried to research some possibilities, but there are just so many out there... and many of them seem to be primarily for scheduling employee work shifts, not for reflecting appointments and when rooms and other resources might already be booked. This solution might also be rejected because they don't want to really pay for anything (or else not pay very much).
Is Outlook capable of doing a calendar this complicated? If not, is there a good alternative program that anyone can recommend.
Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Everyone right now is sharing their calendars with each other willy-nilly (because they are not very clear on the concept) and it's getting a little (more) confusing around here.
Thanks!