Which Shared Calendar Package Would You Use?

Bob McCown asks: "I manage several websites, both internally and externally accessible. Many of them have event calendars or schedulers. We'd like the ability to have these calendars shared, with the ability to modify them by both a web interface, and at the application level (via Sunbird, an Outlook plugin, or something similar). The web side of our system uses an Enterprise Linux distribution that runs Apache. Ideally, the web side would be written in PHP to minimize time to integrate with the rest of the sites. What's out there that can do this? What have you used before?"

Comments

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[arivanov]

I do not see a point in a shared calendar if it does not tie up straight into project management and work time allocation. None of the packages on the market at the moment does.

As a result any shared calendar deployment usually descends into meetingitus: a well known corporate debilitating disease where people spend more time in meetings about meetings about meetings instead of doing work. In addition to that if you do not have meetings booked your time is considered a fair game and booking time "to do work" is considered very bad manners.

Now, if your calendar ties up straight into your into the project manager view of how much resource was spent on which part of the project as well as salary, overtime and performance management the shared calendar becomes a completely different ball game. Unfortunately I have yet to see such integration in any calendar package.

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[Overzeetop]

Your examples are of publishing - the OP was concerned about mutual shared scheduling, a very different beast.

As for the meetingitus, each person who works in management or higher staff positions understands that people/projects/items get allocated time on a sliding scale. You keep that heirarchy in mind when you get a meeting request and use that to determine when your schedule is "free" and when you just need to get work done. That is true for non-business appointments, too.

I do agree that publishing can have benefits, as can calendar sharing (for schedulers and assistants), but usually the result is just messy. It only takes one or two tech-control freaks in management to tie you up without any hope of getting work done.

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[cenonce]

As much as you can have meetings about meetings, that is not a solution a calendar program (whether it includes project and time management) can deal with. That is a corporate management problem... software that nobody is trained on and knows how to use is not going to help that, no matter how programmable and slick you can integrate it.

I have used expensive all-in-one packages for lawyers like this one and this one, and frankly, they are bloatware with 50 or 60 features you don't need and don't work very well, 5 or 10 features you need and don't work very well, and 5 or 10 features you need and they don't have at all.

I have used WebEx's Web Office, which worked well with Outlook, except it wouldn't automatically sync and you have to pay 60, 70, 80 bucks a month for the service.

I currently run a two person office. We use Mac OS X and Google calendar. Google calendar works well, but it lacks features such as I can't sync my "shared" calendar with my Treo 650, you have to edit the calendar using the web, not iCal (which is really iCal's fault, not Google calendar's), and I can't import my Mac Address Book into Google's contacts. Of course, Address book has its own problems since I can share my address book using .Mac, but my assistant can't change it.

I am excited about the features of Leopard, but I have given up on a total package solution that works well and integrates with other software easily, even in OS X where iSync "should" let software sync easily. You just have to be happy with a decent calendar program, and right now, for me, that is Google Calendar.

Frankly, I know old-time lawyers who have been using a paper system incorporating two day planners, one they take with them and one they leave in the office. The come back from a meeting or court, and they drop the DayPlanner on their secretary's desk, the secretary syncs the books, and gives it back to them. These guys get more done in a day than most people do in three days, because they don't futz around trying to get software to work... or spend time posting on Slashdot either! :)

Almost exactly my problem

[Net0ps]

We've been looking for something similar: a calendaring solution that allows for us to collaborate on scheduling site visits with our internal groups. We've settled on Zimbra so far, but it's only OK for what we need: the calendar has no ability to publish an unauthenticated web page for other internal groups to see, and the notebook/documentation features are extremely weak. It's functional, but we're having to build a wiki to do a bunch of other stuff that it just won't do for us, and only use the calendaring features in it.

I've been Googling (and freshmeat-ing, and SourceForge-ing, and all manner of other searches) and only the web services seem to do this properly. We'd *LOVE* to use Google Calendar for this, because it's exactly what we're looking for, but like all of the other similar services, it's purely predicated on the "you give us your data and we'll keep it nice and safe for you" model. We *can't* do that with this data, so that lets out all of the best implementations. For internally-managed solutions, everyone seems to defer to Exchange these days (or try to re-implement Exchange, as Zimbra and openXchange do), and that just...sucks. Here's hoping Apple's Calendar Server will bring something new and different to the fray.

phpiCalendar isn't bad, but be aware that, like a lot of calendars, it makes no visual distinction between an event that spans four days (like a business trip) and an event that recurs daily on four days (like a daily meeting).

You might try Plans if you're willing to do some CSS hacking to make it look a little nicer--it's closer to the mark, at least.

Shared calendar and synced calendar

[btempleton]

Yes, I want a shared and roamable calendar so I can maintain a variety of calendars -- one that's private for me but which I can add to from any machine, and some that I can share with others -- both read/write and read only, and of course the ability to import easily events from public calendars.

But I also want to be able to sync my 'combined' calendar to my PDA or cell phone's calendar too. Is there anything (on Linux, not Windows) that can do this for me?

Personal example: I want my own private calendar for myself which only I add events to. Then I want a "household" calendar which anybody in the house can add events to, such as "we're going to a party on Saturday" and these events appear to me, and sync to my PDA. Then I may want to publish free/busy on the merged calendar to others who want to schedule me in meetings etc.