Best calendar applications for group planning?

Hi all,

My department at my nonprofit organization is hoping to create a "team calendar" that gives us the big picture on all of our events and projects. We're looking for the following attributes:

--Extensive and customizable color coding
--Ability to view calendar in day, week, month, quarterly views that are easily printable
--Web-based, or ability to publish to the web
--Some kind of "notes" panel or discussion board area, visible when looking at the main calendar, where we can put relevant info or indicate if dates are flexible (eg, a planning process that we know needs to happen toward the end of March, but don't have specific dates for)
--Ideally, smooth synchronization with Outlook and SharePoint

Do you all have any suggestions? What have you used at your organizations with success? Do you know of Outlook add-ons that allow a more functional group calendar?

Thanks for any help you can offer!
-Lauren

Hi Lauren--

I'm so glad you asked b/c shared calendars have been something I've been exploring both for work and some volunteering projects. This article on TechSoup looks at 3 free calendar options, one of which is Google Calendar. I've been using Google Calendar and it works fairly well. There's lots of color-coding options and it does most of the functions you are looking for. Back when I used Yahoo Calendar, I didn't find that it would sync well, but I sync my Outlook Calendar with Google and aside from the annoyance of getting some duplicate appointments in there, it mostly works pretty seamlessly. I don't use SharePoint, so I can't speak to that. The other promising thing is that if you use an iPhone or Windows Mobile device, there's a new beta version of a wireless sync with Google calendar.

Anyone else have a favorite for shared calendar solutions?

Best,

Megan

We use google calendar for both our personal lives and our work. For a long time a big grief of mine with gcal is that you couldn't sync multiple calendars together (I'm sure google will rememdy this in their time). But i found a application currently that is free (not sure how long) that will sync all google calendars into your outlook calendar.  Here's the link: http://oggsync.com/ . Regarding sharepoint, I would guess that you could import the ical feed from the gcal into sharepoint ... though not sure how automated you could make that. Anyway good luck let us know what you pick out.

Mark

I also like the Google calendar.  The color coding makes it easy to distinguish different people's schedules.  Also, I like the "overlay" feature which allows you to look at several calendars one of top of each other, like a transparency.    The sync with Outlook worked okay for me.

Google calendar is quite amazing.  There are many things in gcal that are not in other Microsoft offerings

- gcal has an iphone application and more devices soon no doubt

- gcal can be seen by anyone on the internet simply by sending them a link.  To add events you simply have to logon to  google using any email name.   You do not need to use Gmail to add events to Gcal.

- Gcal can be embeded in any web page so it looks like your website has the calendar built in.  

- If your fellows really want to us the Virus Transport Protocol otherwise known as Outlook, then you have many ways to link gcal to outlook.  

- Members of a group can have one or more group calendars, and one or more personal calendars and each calendar can be set to that certain humans can see the calendar while others can not be seen.

well that is off the top of my head.   I only wish that Google would have a shared address book system and take on the world of contact managment for non profits etc.  Google calendar is what I call "plays well with others ( other humans and other devices and other software ).   If google can copy that interoperablity to shared contacts,  then non profits will have one less reason to reluctantly lean towards Microsoft.

After reading the responses, I looked at Google calendar, and started to sign-up. Then I read the agreement. Among other things, by using Google Calendar, you agree to let google sell your information to other companies. Also, there may be offensive content displayed (in ads). These issues may not bother you, but I would read the agreement carefully before you sign up to be sure you are not agreeing to something you do not want.

Tricia

We use Google Calendar. I have yet to see an ad.

As for selling our information? How much is Board Meeting Thursday 6:30 worth? If there is significantly private information you want to put on your shared calendar, pay for some other solution. You can BTW make your calendar viewable by only your users.

I also recommend setting up the calendar through Google Apps where users in the same domain can sign up and have access to other collaborative apps (docs, chat, sites, start page)

I set up Google Calendar for one of my smaller non-profit clients just last week.  Everything went very smoothly and it seems to meet their short-term needs.

That said, I believe that Tricia's concerns are more than justified and I applaud her for reading the "fine print." Google, along with MS, Adobe, Intuit and others, is becoming increasingly invasive on our desktops.  Gmail has had glitches. Some people feel that Google's off-line services increase security risk. 

And once people become comfortable with a particular technology, they tend to treat it rather casually and perhaps write more than they should. A board meeting announcement may not seem important, but do you really want others to be able to learn of a meeting to discuss "the new technical breakthrough", "the new marketing strategy", or "the impending layoffs"? 

So I accept Google Calendar as a short-term means of filling a specific business need.  But I don't like the concept and will continue looking for suitable alternatives. In particular, I will try to avoid anything that would result in my clients being so locked in to the service that they couldn't easily migrate to something else.

-ENO

I'm seeing lots of endorsements for Google Calendar here, but I'm wondering if anybody has used Sunbird . Looks neat from the screenshots, but I am not familiar with it and don't know if it has any advanced features.

There are a number of very good group calendaring products.

If Exchange/Outlook is not your cup of tea an dfor many people it is not.

I would consider Hyperoffice and Zimbra to be the best. They each stuff  lots of services that other system cannot  do including single sign-on and getting updates from various calendar sources. Zimbra is the best with dial-up  or lower speed connections. They play well in both MS and Linux environments. You can also limit who can see your calendar, to a select group or everyone in the world.

If you are in a Linux shop I love http://www.opengroupware.org/, it is the complete package and run great along side redhat or ubuntu. Nice Palm and Windows Mobile access.

If you work in groups try http://www.wiggio.com, I know people who swear by it. Me, not so much.

If you want free both Yahoo and Google offer calendaring functions. I have used them both and they both work well and essentially have the same fuctions.

The most underated group calendar is localendar.com. They have zero money to advertise but can compete with the other guys as far as services are combined. My worry is will they be around in 6 months.

WallyDallas  what is in gcal that is not in Outlook/exchange calendaring function. Everything you mentioned I am doing now with outlook/exchange (and no third party apps) plus people do not need to know another logon. I use a WM 6 phone and have access to  five distinct calendars.  I also have acces  via phone or internet with one logon.

Gcal is a very good caledndar program but IMO, is not a group calendaring program but an individual calendar program. Just try doing an automated update of multiple individual  calendars in which you want select items (not all) to be updated?

I am unclear how you rate virus getting with calendaring software but  if you go to Sans www.sans.org  you will see on a per-email / per-per person gmail get 17% more viruses than Outlook 2003 or 2007.  There are a lot of people who prefer not to use MS, I get that but there is no need to trash a product based on old information, rumours, or hearsay.

Sunbird is OK for an individual calendar but does not do group calendaring well, IMHO.