Calendar sharing
A feature that makes your schedule visible to team members so they can check free time and set up meetings easily.
Calendar sharing is a mechanism for making your schedule information visible to others so that each person’s free time can be seen.
Designing sharing levels
| Sharing level | Visible information | Suitable for |
|---|---|---|
| Free/busy | Only whether time periods are free | Outside partners, other departments |
| Titles only | Event titles and time periods | Members of the same department |
| All details | Title, location, attendees, notes | Direct manager, secretary |
| Edit permission | Can add / change events | Secretary, assistant |
Balancing it with privacy
By setting medical appointments and personal events to “private,” the time period is shown as “busy” while the details stay hidden. In the iCalendar format, an event’s CLASS property can specify PUBLIC / PRIVATE / CONFIDENTIAL.
For scheduling with people outside the organization, besides calendar integration through the CalDAV protocol, there are also scheduling tools that show the other person only your free time without publishing your whole calendar.
Criteria when adopting it
When designing calendar sharing for an organization, where you set the default sharing level changes how much of people’s schedules is visible within the organization. Setting the default to “all details” overexposes personal events, while setting it to “private” means sharing has no effect in the first place. For example, make a two-tier setup of “free/busy within the organization, titles only within the same team” the default, and widen permissions individually only for those who need it.