Staff Email - Calendar Service Outline & Calendar Sharing

The Exchange email service for staff includes a facility which allows you to maintain a Personal Calendar of appointments and other items. It is possible to share this personal calendar with other staff and you may also connect to other staff members' calendars who have shared their calendar to you. Using the Scheduling Assistant you may schedule meetings, sending invitation emails to specified staff. It is also possible to setup non-personal resource calendars or events calendars that multiple staff may access and maintain.

Sharing Your Personal Calendar

Although you can view your personal calendar in any of the supported applications, it is only possible to share out your calendar using Outlook or Entourage. For that reason you may need to configure one of these applications first before following the steps below to share your personal calendar.

For full step-by-step instructions see our web page on sharing out your personal calendar.

Connecting to Other Shared Calendars

In order to assist with making appointments, it is possible to view other calendars using any of the supported applications. If you have been granted access to another shared calendar you will be able to see the full details of any entries, otherwise you will only get an indication of free/busy times. If you require full interaction with shared calendars you have been given access to, in order to create or edit calendar entries, then you must first use Outlook or Entourage to establish the initial connection to these calendars. For that reason you may need to configure one of these applications first before following the steps below to share your personal calendar.

For full step-by-step instructions see our web page on how to connect to other shared calendars.

Scheduling a Meeting

You may use the Scheduling Assistant to schedule a meeting of several College staff. Amongst other benefts, this facility allows you to:

• Check other staff members' availability and meeting room availability
• Select from a list of suggested meeting times based on attendees' availability, or suggest a specified period
• Circulate a meeting request to all proposed attendees via email, to which they can respond to indicate acceptance, inability to attend or tentative acceptance
• Automatically update of all of the attendees' calendars with the meeting details and any changes to the arrangements
• Dynamically carry out these tasks via certain mobile devices and smartphones whilst on the move (e.g. iPhone)
• Delegate these tasks to another staff member of your choice

For full step-by-step instructions see our web page on scheduling a meeting.

Resource Calendars

A non-personal resource calendar may be setup to manage a shared resource such as a meeting room, allowing the calendar administrator(s) to approve, deny or amend booking requests that other staff will be able to send via the resource calendar facility. This service is appropriate where the resource can only be booked by one person/group at a time. If you would like to make use of this service please see our web page regarding the creation, administration and usage of resource calendars.

Events Calendars

A non-personal events calendar may be setup to manage events, such as annual leave for a group of staff, where there may be multiple entries at any one time. If you would like to make use of this service please contact the IS Services Helpdesk who will discuss your requirements and, if appropriate, create the events calendar. Following this work you will be referred to our web pages on how to connect to an events calendar.