Information on Group Calendars
Between business and home, many people find that using an online calendar is a great way to keep track of essential appointments, events and schedules. Online group calendars allow people to not only track their own schedules but also keep up to date on the schedules and events in their family or colleagues' lives as well.
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Definition
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A group calendar is an online calendar that displays events made viewable to a group and can be public or private. The most basic group calendars show the date and times of events while more advanced group calendar applications may include functions such as email notification, subscriptions to changes in the calendar or task integration.
Usage
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Group calendars can be used by any type of group that needs to share a calendar. Common usage scenarios include business colleagues using a shared calendar to coordinate meetings and family members coordinating busy schedules. Group calendars are usually coordinated by an administrator who has full access to add, change or delete events from the calendar and may include additional co-administrators who share duties. Members who do not need to add events to the calendar can be granted read-only access.
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Sharing
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Users do not necessarily need to use the same group calendar system in order to view group calendars. Providers such as Google, Yahoo! and other calendar services often allow calendars to be exported via XML (eXtendible Markup Language), iCalendar format (used in many desktop calendar applications including Microsoft Outlook and Apple iCal) or HTML format.
Free Services
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There are a number of free calendars online which allow for multiple users.
Google Calendar: Google Calendar provides users with a web-based calendar. Users can create calendars with different sharing settings including not shared, publicly shared or shared with a few select people. Calendars can also be shared via XML, iCalendar or HTML format. Google Calendar also allows syncing with many popular mobile devices including Google's Android smart phones and the Apple iPhone.
Yahoo! Calendar: Yahoo! Calendar also provides users with a web-based calendar and gives users the option of sharing their entire calendar publicly, to friends, to only a select group of friends or not at all. Yahoo! Calendars also feature Yahoo! Autosync which allows users to sync their calendar information to desktop personal information managers such as Outlook, Outlook Express and Palm Desktop.
Premium Services
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In addition to free providers, there are also other paid services which offer group calendars.
Microsoft Exchange Server: Exchange is a powerful email and calendaring server package. Typically used in a business environment, Exchange calendars can be shared easily among colleagues within the company as well as publicly, if the administrator allows. Exchange calendars can be synced with various wireless devices including RIM Blackberry, Apple iPhone and various other smart phones.
Backpack It: This web-based service is a premium groupware service that provides group calendaring as well as collaboration tools. It is geared towards business users and can be used to coordinate schedules among colleagues. It allows users to subscribe to calendars using the iCalendar file format.
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References
- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Dharmesh Patel
