Managing Your Shared Calendar Information 853
Using Calendar Groups and Schedule View 864
Creating Your Own Free/Busy Server 867
MICROSOFT Outlook 2010 provides a number of ways for you to share your calendar information with others. In addition to using Microsoft Exchange Server to share your calendar with other Exchange Server users, you can publish your calendar to the Internet and invite others to share access to it. You can publish your calendar to Microsoft Office Online or to any Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) server. You can also send your calendar to someone else via email, save the calendar as a web page and then send it, or post the calendar to a web server.
If you use Exchange Server, you can allow other users to access your entire calendar or selected calendar items. To share your calendar and its items, you must set permission levels for various users. In most cases, permissions are set by using built-in roles, as described in Table 35-1, but you can also set custom permissions for the rare cases when the built-in role does not fit the situation. Some permissions allow users only to view your calendar; others allow users to add, or even edit items.
Table 35-1. Folder Permissions
Permission | Description |
|---|---|
Owner | The Owner role gives full control of the calendar. An Owner can create, modify, delete, and read folder items; create subfolders; and change permissions on the folder. |
The Publishing Editor role has all rights granted to an Owner except the right to change permissions. A Publishing Editor can create, modify, delete, and read folder items and create subfolders. | |
Editor | The Editor role has all rights granted to a Publishing Editor except the right to create subfolders. An Editor can create, modify, delete, and read folder items. |
Publishing Author | A Publishing Author can create and read folder items and create subfolders but can modify and delete only folder items that he or she creates, not items created by other users. |
Author | An Author has all rights granted to a Publishing Author but cannot create subfolders. An Author can create and read folder items and modify and delete items that he or she creates. |
Nonediting Author | A Nonediting Author can create and read folder items but cannot modify or delete any items, including those that he or she creates. |
Reviewer | A Reviewer can read folder items but nothing else. |
Contributor | A Contributor can create folder items but cannot delete items. |
Free/Busy Time, Subject, Location | A user with these access rights can view the free/busy information, as well as the subject and location. |
Free/Busy Time | A user with these access rights can view only the free/busy information. |
None | The None role has no rights to access to the folder. |
The first step in sharing a calendar is to right-click it in the Navigation pane and then choose Share, Calendar Permissions. Figure 35-1 shows the Permissions tab with the Calendar folder’s default permissions.
To allow all users to view details of the calendar, you need to assign Reviewer permission to the default user. A default user is any user who is logged in. Select Default in the Name column, and then change the permission level by selecting Reviewer in the Permission Level drop-down list.
Tip
INSIDE OUT Share your calendar for review quickly
You can also right-click the calendar and then choose Share, Share Calendar. An email is generated that grants permission, and you can add people with whom you want to share the calendar to the To line. Reviewer (read-only) status is granted using this method. This approach not only shares the calendar but also automatically generates an email message to inform the recipients that you have made the calendar available to them.
You might assign a permission of Publishing Author to users if they are colleagues who need to be able to schedule items for you as well as view your calendar.
To give users Publishing Author access to the calendar, follow these steps:
On the Permissions tab in the Calendar Properties dialog box, click Add to open the Add Users dialog box, shown in Figure 35-2. Alternatively, you can right-click the calendar in the Navigation pane and then choose Share, Calendar Permissions.
Select a user or distribution list in the Add Users dialog box (hold down Shift and click to select a range of users, or hold down Ctrl and click to select multiple users), and then click Add. After you have selected all the users that you want to add, click OK.
By default, Outlook 2010 adds users to the Permissions tab with Free/Busy Time permission. To change the permission of a newly added user to Publishing Author, select the user’s name, and then select the permission in the Permission Level drop-down list. Figure 35-3 shows the Permissions tab after these changes have been made.
As you can see in Figure 35-3, the permissions granted to a user can be configured manually using the check boxes in the bottom half of the Permissions tab. However, this is usually unnecessary because you can set most combinations of settings using the Permission Level drop-down list.
You can configure your Free/Busy settings by clicking Other Free/Busy. The Free/Busy Options dialog box is displayed, as shown in Figure 35-4, allowing you to set the amount of free/busy information that you publish on the computer running Exchange Server and specify the frequency of updates. You can also configure your Internet free/busy publishing and search locations to set custom Internet addresses for your free/busy publishing and search locations.
Tip
INSIDE OUT Permissions and delegation are different
Giving someone permission to view or modify your Calendar folder is not the same as assigning them to be a delegate. Delegate permission gives the person the ability to send and receive meeting notices on your behalf. See Chapter 34, for details on assigning delegate permissions.
By default, if you’re using Exchange Server, your free/busy information is shared automatically with all other users on that server. If you want users who are not on your server to be able to view that information, or if you do not use Exchange Server at all, you can still share your free/busy information. You can also post your calendar information to Microsoft Office Online or to a web server using WebDAV (including Microsoft SharePoint sites that are configured for anonymous access). For example, your company might set up its own server to enable users to share their calendar information with others, whether within the company (for example, if you don’t use Exchange Server) or outside the company.
Note
This section focuses on how to publish your calendar information and configure Outlook 2010 to search for calendar information. See the section Using Calendar Groups and Schedule View, on page 864, to learn how to view others’ calendar information.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Other users don’t see your schedule changes
When you make changes to your schedule, those changes might not be visible right away to other users who need to see your free/busy times. By default, Outlook 2010 updates your free/busy information every 15 minutes. To change the frequency of these updates, click File, Options, and then click Calendar. Click Free/Busy Options, and then click Other Free/Busy to access the Update Free/Busy Information On The Server Every n Minutes option (shown in Figure 35-4), which you can use to set the frequency of updates.
Publishing your calendar information makes it possible for others to see your free/busy times in Outlook 2010 when they need to schedule meetings with you or view or manage your calendar. Likewise, the free/busy times of people who publish their calendar information, and who give you access to that information, are visible to you in Outlook 2010. The ability to publish free/busy information to web servers, therefore, brings group scheduling capabilities to users of Outlook 2010 who do not have access to Exchange Server.
Exchange Server provides four free/busy states for a given time period: Free, Tentative, Busy, and Out Of Office. When you publish your calendar to Microsoft Office Online or a WebDAV server, you can specify which level of calendar detail is available to the viewing user. When you publish your free/busy information to a web server or file server via File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or a file, however, only Free/Busy or No Information status is available. Consequently, if you view someone’s free/busy information that is published to an FTP site, an HTTP site, or a file server, all time that the user has marked as Tentative or Out Of Office appears as Busy when you view his or her schedule in Outlook 2010. The only way to view Tentative and Out Of Office status is to pull that information directly from Exchange Server, from Microsoft Office Online, or from a WebDAV server (if the posting user has chosen to include detail in the calendar).
Tip
INSIDE OUT Prevent free/busy publishing
You can avoid publishing your free/busy information to any servers if you prefer. Choose Tools, Options, click Calendar Options, Free/Busy Options, and then click Other Free/Busy. You can set the Publish n Months Of Calendar Free/Busy Information On The Server option to specify how much of your free/busy information is published. By setting this value to 0, no free/busy information is published, and your free/busy information will appear blank to other users.
Microsoft Office Online is a central place on the Internet where you can publish your schedule. Publishing your schedule allows anyone (or only those you specify) to access your calendar information from anywhere on the Internet. This free Microsoft service is useful if you don’t use Exchange Server but still want to share your calendar information with others, whether inside or outside your company. You can also use this Microsoft service in conjunction with Exchange Server, publishing your calendar information to the service to allow users outside your Exchange Server organization to view schedule status.
The following sections explain how to publish to the different types of calendar servers. Later in this chapter, you’ll also learn how to set up your own free/busy server.
To publish your Calendar folder to Office.com, open the Calendar folder and click Publish Online in the Share group on the Home tab on the ribbon. Then, choose Publish To Office.com or Publish To WebDAV Server, as shown in Figure 35-5.
Figure 35-5. To publish your calendar to the Internet, click Publish Online, and then choose Publish To Office.com.
If you choose to publish your calendar to Microsoft Office Online, the Publish Calendar To Office.com dialog box is displayed, as shown in Figure 35-6.
Figure 35-6. You can configure date range, details, access, and updates when publishing your calendar to Microsoft Office Online.
The Publish Calendar To Office.com dialog box contains the following options:
Time Span In this area, you can specify the range of calendar information by setting the Previous and Through Next options.
Detail In this area, you can select the level of information detail that will be displayed to users viewing your calendar:
Availability Only Only the availability status of the time will be displayed, as Free, Busy, Tentative, or Out Of Office.
Limited Details Displays the availability status as well as the Subject line of calendar items.
Full Details Includes availability status and all information associated with the calendar items.
Show Time Within My Working Hours Only You can limit the display of calendar information to only your working hours by selecting the Show Time Within My Working Hours Only check box. You can configure your working hours by clicking the Set Working Hours link.
Permissions In this area, you can control the access to your published calendar:
Only Invited Users Can Subscribe To This Calendar Limits access to your published calendar to people that you invite (via email).
Anyone Can Subscribe To This Calendar Allows anyone to view your published calendar.
Advanced By clicking the Show button in the Advanced area, you can elect to have private items also displayed and to have updates occur with the server’s recommended frequency.
Upload Method In this area, you can control the uploading of your calendar with the following options:
Automatic Uploads Enables the automatic updating of your published calendar.
Single Upload Enables the one-time publishing of your calendar with no further updates.
Update Frequency Choose this option to update the calendar based on the server settings regardless of your configured send/receive settings.
If this is your first connection to Microsoft Office Online, you will have to register for a Microsoft Windows Live ID (if you don’t have one) and go through online registration for the Windows Live service before your calendar is published. You will be prompted to sign in to your Microsoft Office Online account.
After your calendar has been published, you will be asked whether you want to send email notifications to people whom you want to access your calendar.
Note
When sending email invitations to others to access your calendar, Outlook 2010 will include this notice: “This calendar is shared with restricted permissions. To subscribe to this calendar, you need to enroll the email address to which this email message was sent with a Windows Live ID account.”
Your calendar information is now shared using Microsoft Office Online, and other users who have received your email invitations can view that information.
You can also publish your free/busy schedule to another server using FTP, HTTP, or a share on a file server. For example, if you don’t use Exchange Server in your company, you might set up a web server on your network to enable users to publish and share their free/busy information. Using your own server eliminates the need to use the Microsoft Office Online service and the need for users to have a Microsoft Windows Live ID account (which is required to use the Microsoft Office Online service).
You can publish to local or remote FTP or HTTP servers, making it easy to publish free/busy information to servers outside your organization. For example, you might work at a division that doesn’t have its own web server, but the corporate office does have a server that you can use to publish your free/busy information. Publishing to a file requires a share on your computer or on a local file server. However, that doesn’t mean that users who need to access that free/busy information must be located on the local network. You might publish your free/busy information to a share on your local web server, for example, but remote users can then access that free/busy information through the web server’s HTTP-based URL.
You must know the correct URL for the server to configure the free/busy URL in Outlook 2010. Here are three examples:
Note that schedule files use a .vfb file name extension. Also, the first two examples assume a virtual or physical folder named Schedules under the root of the specified server URL.
Tip
INSIDE OUT You can specify the URL with replaceable parameters
In addition to specifying the URL string explicitly, you can use two replaceable parameters in the URL string:
%server% This parameter represents the server portion of the email address. For example, with the address chill@tailspintoys.com, %server% would resolve to tailspintoys.com. If you specified the URL http://%server%/schedules/chill.vfb, Outlook 2010 would resolve the server domain, and the resulting URL would be http://tailspintoys.com/schedules/chill.vfb.
%name% This parameter represents the account portion of the email address. Using the chill@tailspintoys.com example, %name% would resolve to chill. If you specified the URL http://%server%/schedules/%name%.vfb, for example, Outlook 2010 would resolve the URL to http://tailspintoys.com/schedules/chill.vfb.
If you need to include www in the URL, add it like this: http://www.%server%/schedules/%name%.vfb.
If your profile includes an Exchange Server account, specifying %name% in the URL string will result in Outlook 2010 trying to use the X.400 address from your Exchange Server account, causing the publishing of the free/busy information to fail. Instead of using the variable, specify an explicit name.
Why provide replaceable parameters if you can just type in the correct URL? You can use Group Policy to control the Outlook 2010 configuration, and one of the policies controls the free/busy publish and search URLs. You can define the publishing URL using replaceable parameters in the policy, and those parameters are then replaced when users log on, resulting in the correct URL for users based on their email address.
Configuring Outlook 2010 to publish to an FTP, an HTTP, or a file URL is easy. Follow these steps to configure Outlook 2010 to publish your free/busy information:
Click File, Options.
Click Calendar, Free/Busy Options.
Click Other Free/Busy.
In the Free/Busy Options dialog box, select Publish At My Location.
In the Publish At My Location text box, type the fully qualified path to the server on which your free/busy information is to be published.
In the Search location box, specify the server to search. This server will be used to view other users’ free/busy information. (See the following section for additional details on configuring search locations.)
The Free/Busy Options dialog box includes a Search Location box that specifies where Outlook 2010 will search for free/busy information when you create group schedules or meeting requests. Specify the URL or file share where the group’s calendars are published, and Outlook 2010 will search the specified URL for free/busy information.
These global settings can work in conjunction with Exchange Server, providing a search location for calendars not stored in Exchange Server. In addition to these global settings, you can specify a search URL for individual contacts. You would specify the search URL in the contact if the contact’s free/busy information is not stored on the Microsoft Office Online service or another server specified in the Search Location box.
Follow these steps to set the free/busy search URL for a contact:
Free/busy information is refreshed automatically at the intervals set in the Free/Busy Options dialog box. (Click File, Options, Calendar, and then Free/Busy Options to configure these settings.)
You can refresh free/busy information manually as well. The command to do so does not by default appear in the ribbon, but you can add it. Right-click the ribbon and choose Customize The Ribbon. From the Choose Commands From drop-down list, choose Commands Not In The Ribbon. Locate the Publish Internet Free/Busy command, add it to the ribbon, and then click OK. When you need to update your free/busy data, click Publish Internet Free/Busy on the ribbon.
Outlook 2010 enables you to send your calendar to other people via email, either by clicking the E-Mail Calendar button on the ribbon or by right-clicking the calendar and then choosing Share, E-Mail Calendar. A new mail message form will be opened, and the Send A Calendar Via E-Mail dialog box will be displayed, as shown in Figure 35-7. In this dialog box, you can select the calendar to send and configure the date range and amount of detail that the calendar contains. When you click Show in the Advanced area, you can enable the display of information marked as private, include attachments in the calendar, and specify the layout of the calendar as either Daily Schedule or List Of Events. When you click OK, the calendar is written into the email message as text and as an attachment.
If you are using an Internet free/busy server to publish your availability, you can use email to send a vCard containing your free/busy URL to others who might need to see your availability. To email your free/busy information to others, you must first link that information to a vCard, as follows:
Open a contact item containing your own contact information.
In the Show group of the Contact tab, click Details. The Details page appears, as shown in Figure 35-8.
In the Address box in the Internet Free-Busy area, type the address of the server containing your free/busy information.
Click Save on the Quick Access Toolbar to save any changes, click File, Save As, and then select vCard Files from the Save As Type dialog box.
In the Save As dialog box, type the name of the file, and then select the location where you want to save the file.
Click Save to create the vCard.
You can now send the vCard to other users, and they can reference your free/busy information. For more details about using vCards, see the section Sharing Contacts with vCards, on page 466.
You can change the free/busy status of an item easily. One method is to right-click the item, choose Show As, and then select Free, Busy, Tentative, or Out Of Office. The second method is to open the item (by double-clicking it, or right-clicking it and then choosing Open), and then select Free, Busy, Tentative, or Out Of Office from the Show As drop-down list in the Options group on the ribbon.
Outlook 2007 included a feature called Group Schedules that you could use to view the calendars of multiple people at one time, which was handy for seeing availability for a group of people at a glance. This feature has been replaced in Outlook 2010 by calendar groups. Calendar groups offer the same capabilities as Group Schedules, but with the added benefit that some of your calendar groups get created automatically. These include the Team calendar group, which shows the schedules of everyone who reports to you, and the My Peers calendar group, which shows the schedules of everyone who reports to your manager.
To view the default calendar groups, first open the Calendar folder. In the Navigation pane, you should see two groups: Team and My Peers. Place a check beside a group to view the calendars of the group members, as shown in Figure 35-9.
As Figure 35-9 shows, the default view for a calendar group is Schedule View, which shows the individuals on the left and their schedules on the right. You can control whose calendars are shown by selecting or clearing the check boxes beside the names in the Navigation pane. To close the calendar group, clear the check box beside the group name.
In addition to giving you a quick, overall view of the group’s availability, you can use calendar groups to schedule calendar items. For example, if you want to schedule a meeting with someone in a group, just double-click a time slot in someone’s schedule. Outlook opens a new meeting request for the individual using the specified time slot. You can also right-click in a time slot and choose different types of calendar items from the menu, such as recurring events and appointments.
You can also view the calendar group using the other standard calendar views, such as day or week. However, only the Day view is really very useful (and then only if you have sufficient desktop space for Outlook) unless you overlay the calendars. To choose a different view for the calendar group, simply click a view on the Home tab.
The default calendar groups can be very useful, but you might want to create your own calendar groups. For example, maybe you have people working for you who don’t report directly to you, and therefore their Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) accounts don’t reflect you as their manager. These people will not show up in your Team calendar. Alternatively, perhaps you are working on a major project and would like to see the calendars of the other people who are working on the project with you. Whatever the case, you can create your own calendar groups easily, as follows:
Open the Calendar folder, and then, on the Home tab on the ribbon, click Calendar Groups and choose Create New Calendar Group.
Outlook opens a dialog box to prompt for the name of the group (see Figure 35-10). Enter a name of your choice and click OK.
In the Select Name dialog box, select the people whose calendars you want to view and then click Group Members.
The new calendar group appears in the Navigation pane, as shown in Figure 35-11. The calendar group is displayed along with any other individual calendars or groups that you have selected. Use the check boxes beside the groups and individual calendars to control which ones are displayed.
If you already have several calendars displayed in Outlook, but they are not part of a group, you can create a group containing those calendars easily. Place a check beside each of the calendars that you want in the group, then click Calendar Groups on the ribbon and choose Save As New Calendar Group. Outlook moves the calendars to the group in the Navigation pane. If you later decide that you want to move some of or all the calendars to different groups, you can. The next section explains how.
If you want to move a calendar from one group to another, just drag it to the desired group. Note that if you hold down the Ctrl key while dragging the calendar, Outlook displays a plus sign (+) beside the calendar, the standard sign that a program will copy the calendar rather than move it. This is a false indication, however, as the calendar is still moved and not copied. But this could be fixed in a subsequent hotfix or update.
It’s easy to remove a calendar group. Just right-click the calendar group in the Navigation pane and choose Delete Group. Outlook displays a dialog box for confirmation. Click Yes to delete the group.
If you don’t have Exchange Server in your organization, you can still publish your free/busy information so that others, whether inside or outside your organization, can view that information for scheduling purposes. As explained earlier in this chapter, Outlook 2010 can publish to FTP, HTTP, or file URLs. Which type you choose depends on the availability of such servers in your network, whether outside users need access to the free/busy information, and firewall and security issues for incoming access to the servers. For example, if your network does not allow FTP traffic through its firewalls but does allow HTTP, HTTP would be the choice for your free/busy server. However, keep in mind that publishing and searching are two different tasks that can use two different methods. You might have users internal to the network publish to a shared network folder, but outside users would access the information by HTTP. Naturally, this means that the target folder for publishing the free/busy information must also be a physical or virtual directory of the URL that outsiders use to view free/busy information. If your free/busy server must be located on the other side of a firewall from your users, FTP or HTTP would be a logical choice for publishing.
After you decide which access methods you need to provide for publishing and viewing free/busy information, it’s a simple matter to set up the appropriate type of server. There are no requirements specific to free/busy data for the server, so any FTP, HTTP, or file server will do the trick.
Note
You can use Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) running on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or later to host free/busy FTP or HTTP virtual servers. If you need no more than a maximum of 10 concurrent connections, you can use Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista to host the site. Windows 7 allows up to 20 concurrent connections. Note that this is a licensing restriction, not a technical restriction.
The following list includes points to keep in mind as you begin planning and deploying your free/busy server:
FTP Set up the virtual server to allow both read and write permissions for the physical or virtual folder that will contain the free/busy data.
Note
For the best security, configure the server to require authentication and disallow anonymous access. Passing FTP authentication for free/busy information via Outlook 2010 isn’t supported in Windows Vista, but you can do this in Windows XP and Windows 7 (by different methods). Keep in mind that you then need to provide authentication information to everyone who needs to access the server for free/busy information. Remember to configure NTFS file system permissions as needed to control access if the directory resides on an NTFS file system partition.
HTTP The physical or virtual directory containing the free/busy data must be configured for both read and write permissions. If the directory resides on an NTFS file system partition, configure NTFS file system permissions as necessary to allow access to the directory as needed. You can disallow anonymous access, if desired, for greater security. Users who attempt to access the free/busy data are then required to provide a user name and password when publishing or searching.
File Configure folder and file permissions as needed to allow users to access the shared directory. For better security, place the folder on an NTFS file system partition and use NTFS file system permissions to restrict access to the folder and its contents as needed.