Suggestions for corporate calendar sharing

[lanamater]

Ok, I need some advice.

I have been approached by my employer to come up with a shared calendaring solution for our company, given that Exchange has little flexability in this area.

The requirements are simple. They want to be able to view only everyone's calendar from any given desktop. Granted I know Exchange 2K is capable of this, but it means granting permissions to every user at every desktop. Majority of our users work offsite and are rarely in the office. Some the logistics of this type of administration are impractical to say the least.

Does anyone know of any support for adding security groups into the mix with calendar sharing within Exchange? Currently it only supports users and distribution groups. Since distribution groups provide no security, I cannot use them. If I could have a security group, then I could add the users and set permissions at the server level. I know there are many 3rd party solutions, but most envolve using something other than Outlook for calendaring. This is also a road I do not want to go down.

Has anyone ever come across anything that works?

Thanks

 

[BWilson77080]

i dont understand completely what youre asking...they want 1 calender for the entire organization? or they want a calender per user?

 

[Marcs41]

Are you asking to also have the off-site people access it?
Internally, you can add a group to the permissions list, there should not be a security issue there.

Marc
[sub]If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC![/sub]

 

[BWilson77080]

for remote users to use or even see the calender, you need to configure them to use IMAP4

Do the execs want this setup here:

COMPANY CALENDER --> shared and updated by everyone
or
INDIVIDUAL CALENDERS per PC that execs can select
users from...ex: exec wants to see Sues cal. data
but no1 elses

when you go through outlook with the admin account, you can set the permissions security wise to calenders, folders, etc....like contributor, etc.

 

[lanamater]

For example:

User Bob has his calendar set up for all his appointments within his Exchange mailbox (Outlook Today--Contacts).

Execs want to be able to view Bob's schedule for the next week and see when he is available for a meeting or when he has scheduled blah blah blah. They also anybody in the company to be able to view anybody else's calendar.

They would normally access this through File--Open--Other user's folder--User/Contacts if Bob has given them access via permissions or delegation.

As our company grows exponentially, it is becoming an adminisravtive nightmare to keep adding every user to everyone's calendar separately as a Reviewer.

I tried adding a security group, but security groups d o not show in the list of users/groups when you try to add under properties of the Contacts folder. Only users and distribution group show there.

So I am looking for a solution either streamlining the administrative overhead of having to manually add each user to every single calendar everytime there is a change (which is quite frequent). Or if a third party solution is out there, I would consider that-if it means that we can continue using outlook for calendar (not go to some ACME calendar program).

External users should not need this functionality. It will only be used for people within the office needing to look at everyone else's calendar/schedule.

 

[Marcs41]

I don't quite see why you keep referring to the Contacts?

That has nothing to do with a shared Calendar?

 

[lanamater]

Sorry, I mean calendar-not contacts.

Trying to do this doing working hours...I am sure you understand. Thanks for catching that.

So...Any suggestions? Need any more clarification?

 

[Marcs41]

Since it is internal only, you can just take any Distribution Group, make one called Internal or so, containing all LAN users. Then every users allows Internal to access/view there Calendar.

 

[lanamater]

Well, something must be incorrect in my setup. Distribution groups added to a user's calendar permissions do not allow access for group members. I get "Unable to display the folder. The Calendar folder could not be opened." I have verified permissions at the Outlook level and the server level for Authenticated Users. I also granted Reviewer permissions at the Outlook Today level for the group.

Any more ideas?

Oh BTW- I am running Exch SP3 and W2K SP3.

 

[chirpy]

are all your users connecting to the exchange server your are talking about for email? if so, your answer is very simple. use the public folders to create a calendar for everyone to view and to wich you can give several kinds of permissions. this could be by user or by group. if you are admin on the server, all you have to do is create a new folder with calendar properties. call up help on the exchange server and look for public folders. there you'll see how to create and accomplish what i am suggesting. good luck!

 

[lanamater]

Thx for the suggestion, but Execs do not want it done through public calendars. They want users to maintain their own calendar, but want anybody to be able to view anybody elses' calendar. We have about fifty employees and you can imagine how incredibly crowded a calendar can get with 50 individual users on it. They want to be able to look at any given user and see their schedule for that week, month,etc.

So the calendar sharing works, just not with groups. So I am still fighting the problem.

Any other suggestions?

Marcs41---you suggestions seem to be in the direction I would like to go--if distribution groups are designed to work with this. Do you know if your's works like this? Have you ever had it work like this--with distribution groups and permissions?

I guess I am trying to determine if mine is "broken" or if Exchange is not designed to do this and is working correctly.

So if anyone wants to set this up to duplicate what I have done, please feel free to post your results.

1. Add a distribution group to your personal calendar properties permissions.
2. Grant the distribution group "Reviewer" permissions and in Outlook Today--"Reviewer" permissions also.
3. Add another test user to the distribution group.
4. Log on as that test user and setup Outlook for Exchange mail.
5. File--open--other user's folder--original user--calendar.

I get "Unable to display the folder. The Calendar folder could not be opened."

However if I add the user specifically-it works fine.

/m

 

[lanamater]

Fixed it!!

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/servicedesks/bin/kbsearch.asp?Article=275171

Had to reset the System Folders GUID. Now all is working normal.

/m