Exchange GroupCalendar user experience
Imagine a small team:
- Jack Jackson. (JJ)
- Hank Williams (HW)
- Tessa de Loo (TDL)
- Alice Dropper (AD)
Jack and Tessa are Sales people.
Hank works at the Helpdesk
Alice is in general Staff and in the mornings at the Helpdesk.
So there are three groups and Jack created the following
GroupCalendars for them:
Sales
Helpdesk
Staff
Because it's nice to have all appointments of everyone together in one calendar Jack also created:
Everyone
The moment Jack created the four calendars on the Exchange server everyone saw this list of GroupCalendars appear in Outlook.
And of course they started testing right away. Let's
follow Alice as she explores the new possibilities.
She added two items to her private calendar...
Alice is a member of three GroupCalendars and has Outlook 2003 so she can display those calendars side by side.
Clicking 'Folder list' allows her to browse to the 'Public Folders' and the GroupCalendars.
Alice is a member of Everyone, Helpdesk and Staff so she opens the Everyone calendar first.
Alice (AD initials) sees her test appointments as expected and notices
that Tessa is also testing. (Tessa has TDL initials)
The GroupCalendar software monitors their calendars and created an item in the
groupcalendar when they created it in their personal calendars.
Tessa added a private item and that is something
that Alice will try later. She first looks in the other GroupCalendars of which
she is also a member.
Helpdesk and Staff:
That seems to work just fine, in both
groupcalendars her items are being listed. Now she would like to see
her GroupCalendars side by side. (a feature only in Outlook 2003 and 2007)
Right clicking the Everyone calendar in the Folder List gives her the option 'Add to Favorites'.
So
she adds her three favorite calendars: Everyone, Helpdesk and Staff to
Favorites. 
And there they are in her calendar list, after clicking
the big Calendar-button . 
Three clicks on the checkboxes and.... everything side by side. Personal calendar plus all group calendars.
Having seen her colleague Tessa being able to create private items she right-clicks her test appointment
to list it as Private.
And within seconds the GroupCalendars change her
item to hide all the information that matters.
One can only see that Alice has an appointment but all details have been
removed.
She likes this very much but wants to try the other option
she heard about to hide an item from the GroupCalendars completely
by adding @@@ to the
body text of the appointment.
So she opens the other test item (with subject testing 1,2, by Alice) and types @@@ in the body of it.
And as expected, after a few seconds the existing GroupCalendar entries disappear ensuring maximum privacy.
After a while she sees other appointments appear from her colleagues.
items in the GroupCalendars.
By moving an item in the GroupCalendar the item will reschedule in her colleagues personal calendar too..
Tessa would no longer need so called delegate permissions in Outlook granted by any of her colleagues to adjust their outlook calendars.
Jack can even give her permissions to create new items for one of her colleagues or all members of a group calendar. (Public to personal option)