michigan
IS-IT--Management
- Jul 3, 2001
- 281
- 0
- 0
I'm in need of some expertise. I have a situation brewing that I do not have a good solution for. If you could offer suggestions or creative input I'd really appreciate it.
My goal: To have a happy sync'ing environment
This was my goal (pre-syncing):
Within GroupWise, a location where everyone could easily view everyone's appointments, tasks, notes, etc....
Solution: I created a resource for each department:
Master Calendar - Sales
Master Calendar - Marketing
Master Calendar - Administration
Master Calendar - Accounting
Users place all their appointments, etc... into their department's "Master Calendar" Entries are made with staff name or initials / meeting name. (ie Jim - ICM Meeting in Detroit)
This has worked very well for us. Not only is it easy to view your entire department's calendar at first glance, but you can simply (and easily) proxy to another department's Master Calendar and sees all their appointments and stuff.
Users were happy. I was happy. It was a wonderful thing.
Then came these evil Syncing monsters w/PDAs & SmartPhones.
I have a handful of test users right now (including myself) all on the Palm OS. I'm using Novell's PDA Connect (sp1) for syncing. When users sync, it only grabs info that was placed into their personal calendar (which is empty). There is no way to say "Sync to the Master Calendar - Sales" resource/proxy.
Trying to think on my feet, I thought we could allow each user to grant rights to everyone for their calendar only. Then, each user could open their calendar w/multi-user view, select who they wanted to see. It did work, but was not pretty. It lines them up vertically - and with only 5 calendars/users selected it was very busy/unfriendly looking. Plus, if you wanted to view different people you need to build who you want to see each time, which isn't too user friendly. I next thought we'd try adding a group to the view. GroupWise wouldn't allow it.
Next I thought we could set up rules, so anything posted to a department's master calendar could be sent and auto-accepted on the user's personal calendar. This works, however if a user created an item on their palm - at next sync it would only populate to their personal calendar (posted appointment - not a sent appointment where the Master Calendar could auto-accept).
Personally, I don't post too much to our department's Master Calendar - only things where I may be off site or that all people should know. I keep my day-to-day appointments and things on my personal calendar. This is not true with the majority of my staff -- where most keep everything on their Master Calendar.
Lastly, one more thing to throw into my fire: Novell's PDA Connect does not support HotSync 6.x (it works, but the documentation states it won't support it) HotSync 6.x comes with most of the newer Palm products. I'm using a Palm T|X
My Ultimate goal: User can sync and items will populate personal & departmental master calendars.
In conclusion, I don't know if I'm adding complexity to a simply issue. How do other medium size businesses deal with this? Other software options like Intellisnyc (no GW7 support) Toffa, GWAnywhere and others didn't show anything that would address this particular issue. Any and all suggestions welcome.
Thanks again.
My goal: To have a happy sync'ing environment
This was my goal (pre-syncing):
Within GroupWise, a location where everyone could easily view everyone's appointments, tasks, notes, etc....
Solution: I created a resource for each department:
Master Calendar - Sales
Master Calendar - Marketing
Master Calendar - Administration
Master Calendar - Accounting
Users place all their appointments, etc... into their department's "Master Calendar" Entries are made with staff name or initials / meeting name. (ie Jim - ICM Meeting in Detroit)
This has worked very well for us. Not only is it easy to view your entire department's calendar at first glance, but you can simply (and easily) proxy to another department's Master Calendar and sees all their appointments and stuff.
Users were happy. I was happy. It was a wonderful thing.
Then came these evil Syncing monsters w/PDAs & SmartPhones.
I have a handful of test users right now (including myself) all on the Palm OS. I'm using Novell's PDA Connect (sp1) for syncing. When users sync, it only grabs info that was placed into their personal calendar (which is empty). There is no way to say "Sync to the Master Calendar - Sales" resource/proxy.
Trying to think on my feet, I thought we could allow each user to grant rights to everyone for their calendar only. Then, each user could open their calendar w/multi-user view, select who they wanted to see. It did work, but was not pretty. It lines them up vertically - and with only 5 calendars/users selected it was very busy/unfriendly looking. Plus, if you wanted to view different people you need to build who you want to see each time, which isn't too user friendly. I next thought we'd try adding a group to the view. GroupWise wouldn't allow it.
Next I thought we could set up rules, so anything posted to a department's master calendar could be sent and auto-accepted on the user's personal calendar. This works, however if a user created an item on their palm - at next sync it would only populate to their personal calendar (posted appointment - not a sent appointment where the Master Calendar could auto-accept).
Personally, I don't post too much to our department's Master Calendar - only things where I may be off site or that all people should know. I keep my day-to-day appointments and things on my personal calendar. This is not true with the majority of my staff -- where most keep everything on their Master Calendar.
Lastly, one more thing to throw into my fire: Novell's PDA Connect does not support HotSync 6.x (it works, but the documentation states it won't support it) HotSync 6.x comes with most of the newer Palm products. I'm using a Palm T|X
My Ultimate goal: User can sync and items will populate personal & departmental master calendars.
In conclusion, I don't know if I'm adding complexity to a simply issue. How do other medium size businesses deal with this? Other software options like Intellisnyc (no GW7 support) Toffa, GWAnywhere and others didn't show anything that would address this particular issue. Any and all suggestions welcome.
Thanks again.
