Calendar Sharing

Note: Further testing with the solution below has produced mixed results. I no longer trust that the "solution" is really a solution so, test it yourself or just ignore it. I'm out of enrgy on this one.......

Problem: Our organization provides calendar sharing for our users with MS Exchange server and Outlook clients. The calendar sharing has been working okay until a few weeks ago when an Mac user wanted to use Entourage to view and update a shared calendar. She reported that she could see the shared calendar and even add entries, but unfortunately her entries could not be seen by the Outlook user who shared the calendar. You ask, "Why do I care about this?" Well, it's simple; I just love those Mac users to death!! (Actually, we secretly wish all the users would discover Google Calendars so we could get out of the Exchange business all together. But, so far it hasen't happened).

Solution: The Outlook user had given the proper permissions to access the shared calendar (File menu/Folder/Properties for "Calendar"...). As it turns out, giving the Entourage user the proper permissions to view and edit the calendar is not enough. After several days of trying to find out why, I finally discovered that I needed to make the Entourage user a "Delegate". That is:

1. On the Outlook Tools menu, choose Options
2. On the Options window, Select the Delegates tab
3. Hit the Add button and select user names to add to the delegates list
4. Make sure the delegate get "Editor" permission to the calendar

After this, the lucky Entourage user can actually edit the shared calendar and have the changes seen by the Outlook user. If the changes still don't show up right away, the Entourage user can select "Synchronize Now" from the Calendar menu.

NOTE: On my way home Friday I had a bad feeling about this blog (it was Friday the 13th after all). I did some further testing today (Monday the 16th, not a particularly spooky day). I found 2 things worth mentioning:

1. With "Editor" permissions given by the delegate process above, I couldn't delete my own items from the shared calendar using Entourage. To get around this, I went into Outlook again and elevated the permisions to "Publishing Editor" for the Entourage user. Then I was able to delete anything I wanted to.
2. The "Synchronize Now" doesn't exactly do it now as I would expect. First of all the "Synchronize Now" option is sometimes grayed out until you switch away from the calendar and then switch back. And, when you finally select the option, it takes up to a minute to acually synchronize.

I guess I should be grateful that this thing works at all ......