Share an Outlook Calendar by using Net Folders

If you want to share information, such as a group events schedule, with people in different organizations, you can use Outlook 2000 Net Folders to share information with anyone who also uses Outlook. First, create a group calendar. Then send everyone you want to be a subscriber (member) a copy of the group calendar Net Folder. Each person in the group can enter events, activities, and other information if you've granted them the appropriate permission level. Each time an appointment or event is added or changed, each member's shared calendar will be updated automatically. To share a calendar, you must place the calendar folder in a personal folders file (.pst) that's stored on your computer. You cannot share folders stored on a Microsoft Exchange server.

First, create the group calendar

1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Folder.
2. In the Name box, enter a name for the folder.
3. In the Folder contains list, click Appointment items.
4. In the Select where to place the folder list, click a location for the folder.

Next, publish a Net Folder

1. In the Folder List, select the group calendar folder that you want to share.
2. On the File menu, point to Share, and then click This folder.
3. Click Next.
4. Click Add.
5. In the Type name or select from list box, enter the names of the people you want to share the folder.
   After you enter each name, click To. When you finish entering names, click OK.
6. Click a name in the Member List list, click Permissions, and then assign a level of permission to that person. You can select multiple names to give them all the same level of permission.
7. Click Next.
8. If you want, type some text to describe the Calender folder to subscribers, and then click Finish.

An automatic invitation is sent to each of the potential subscribers. They must click the Accept button in the invitation in order to subscribe.

Tip If you want to place an item in a Net Folder that's viewable by you but isn't sent to other subscribers, after creating the item, select the Private check box.

Outlook 2003 Calendar

The Microsoft Outlook Calendar is the calendar and scheduling component of Outlook, and is fully integrated with e-mail, contacts, and other features. You can view a day, week, or month at once. With Calendar you can:

Create Appointments and Events

Just as you would write in a paper-based organizer, you can click on any time slot in the Outlook Calendar and begin typing. New gradient colors makes it easy to quickly see the current day and time. The current time is highlighted with color only in the Day and Work Week views. You can opt to have a sound or message remind you of appointments, meetings, and events, and you can color items for at-a-glance identification.

Organize Meeting

Simply select a time on your Calendar, create an appointment, and select people to invite. Outlook will help you find the earliest time at which all the people are free. When the meeting notice is sent to invitees by e-mail, each will receive a meeting request in Inbox. When they open it, Outlook notifies them if the meeting conflicts with an existing item in their Calendar, and they can accept, tentatively accept, or decline your meeting by clicking a single button. If allowed by you, as meeting organizer, invitees can counter-propose an alternate meeting time. As organizer, you can track who has accepted, declined, or counter-proposed times, simply by opening the meeting.

View Group Schedules

You can create calendars that show the schedules of a group of people or resources simultaneously. For example, you can view the schedules of all people in your department, or all resources, such as conference rooms, in your building, to more quickly schedule meetings.

View Calendar Side by Side

You can view multiple calendars that you have created as well as those shared by other Outlook users side-by-side. For example, if you have created a separate calendar for your personal appointments, you can view both your work and personal calendars side-by-side.

You can also copy or move appointments between the displayed calendars. Use the Navigation Pane to quickly share your own calendar and open other shared calendars. Depending on the permissions granted by the calendar owner, you can create or modify appointments on shared calendars.

Navigation Pane: “The column on the left side of the Outlook window that includes panes such as Shortcuts or Mail and the shortcuts or folders within each pane. Click a folder to show the items in the folder.”

Link to calendars on Windows SharePoint Services sites

If you have access to a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site, you can view the events lists from that site in your Outlook Calendar. These items will be kept up-to-date and can be viewed side-by-side with other personal or shared calendars.

Manage another user's calendar

With the delegate access feature, one person can use his or her own copy of Outlook to easily manage another person's Calendar. For example, an administrative assistant can manage the Calendar of a manager. When the manager designates the assistant as a delegate, the

assistant can create, move, or delete appointments and can organize meetings on the manager’s behalf.

Calendar Appointments

Calendar appointments and meetings

To set or remove reminders in appointments and meetings, do one of the following:

· For all new appointments or meetings that you create

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. To have a reminder automatically turned on or off for new appointments or meetings, on the Preferences tab, in the Calendar group, select or clear the Default reminder check box.
3. If you select the check box, enter the amount of time before the appointment or meeting when you want the reminder to appear.

· For existing appointments or meetings

1. Open the appointment or meeting.

Note If the Open Recurring Item dialog box is displayed, you must decide whether to change the reminder for the occurrence that you opened or for the entire series. Click either Open this occurrence or Open the series, and then click OK.

2. On the Appointment tab, in the Options group, in the Reminder list, select the amount of time before the appointment or meeting when you want he reminder to appear. To turn a reminder off, select None.

Note For all-day events, the default reminder time is 18 hours in advance. Although you can't change the default for all of the all-day events you create, you can change the reminder time individually on each appointment.

Staff Leave Calendar

In many offices, the details of staff leave and sick leave are recorded and maintained in Excel spreadsheets or some other third-party program. It is also likely that annual leave and sick leave are also recorded as one-day events in the grey area of someone's Outlook calendar. Duplicating data in this manner takes valuable time and resources and risks error.

Depending on the level of analysis required of your leave and sick leave data, you may find that Outlook can do everything that is necessary by utilizing the following ideas, which will require entering the data only once.

If you monitor the leave and sick leave for a small number of people, you can manage staff leave in your main calendar. Each day of leave would be a one-day event and would appear in the grey area at the top of the calendar, along with any other one-day events you may have. However, if you have a large number of leave events, you can easily lose other one-day events and too many one-day events at the top of the calendar can also severely restrict your view of the rest of your calendar

If you prefer to keep a separate calendar just for leave events, you will need to create a new calendar named, for example, Staff Leave Calendar.

The new view that we shall be creating can be for either your main calendar or a separate calendar specifically for leave. The new view will have new fields that will calculate the amount of leave taken and the number of days remaining from the entitlement and from this view we shall be able to produce leave schedules by staff member and by Department.

In preparation for creating the new view, we need to do to following:

2. As staff sick leave is reported or you are notified of staff annual leave dates, create leave events in the calendar, either as separate one-day events or over several days, but only enter the leave day events into calendar days that count as leave days i.e. working weekdays.

3. In the subject of the events, state the name or initials of the staff member and a notation to indicate whether it is annual leave or sick leave.

4. In the Location field, enter the Department where the individual works for e.g., Despatch.

5. Assign the three appropriate categories to the leave events e.g. A/L, AF A/L, Despatch. The categories in this example indicate that the event is annual leave, specifically AF's annual leave and that AF is located in the Despatch Department.

6. Ensure that there is a check in all day event and Show time as free in the calendar items.

7. If you wish to have an automatic reminder of the leave events, you should be aware that Outlook reminders fire only on events in the default calendar and not on events in a calendar that you have created yourself. This may be a consideration when deciding whether to use your main calendar or create a separate leave calendar.

8. Link the leave events in the calendar to the relevant staff contact by clicking on the Contacts button at the foot of the event window and selecting the member of staff from the Contacts folder. Ensure that you have linked the staff Contacts folder to the Staff Leave Calendar folder from the Contacts folder Properties | Activities tab and the leave events will automatically be recorded on the Activities tab of the staff Contacts files.