One of my client that is running two offices and two remote location that connect to the office via slow internet connection contact me regarding centralized corporate calendar. They need it as a birthday reminder, certification renewal, scheduled maintenance etc. but today only one manager in the office has overview over everything…
The client wanted a solution that could be accessed by office employers via Outlook and also by remote users via Outlook and Web. They are running Exchange and SharePoint 2010 servers so I will need to build the solution on that foundation. This allows me to use Active Directory to authenticate user… one system to rule them all !!
There are many paid “plugins” out there but I didn’t find any acceptable for the client especially given the fact that my client has very tight security demands.
So here is what I did.
In SharePoint:
- Created an Calendar and gave to appropriate users access to it.
- Users log into the Calendar and they Connect Outlook to that Calendar
1) Select calendar widget
2) Click Connect to Outlook
In Outlook:
This is what users see in Outlook
1) Click Calendar
2) Select both personal and other calendar (other is the SharePoint one)
3) This is your personal calendar
4) This is the SharePoint Calendar
You then have two chooses when you use the Calendar.
Remember to always select SharePoint calendar before you start making appointments to the SharePoint calendar..
When you want to use the calendar choose from
- New Appointment : This makes an “appointment for all but without reminders
- New Meeting : This makes an “appointment” visible to recipients and will also add reminders for the selected users.
My client will use Meeting Request so users will have reminders… as SysAdmin I can have these users auto agree to any meeting request for one day, the day that we will input all the corporate reminders that they have today….
This is straight forward and most Outlook users probable know how to use already.
