Overlooking the world of SBS2003 and Office Systems 2003

Introduction 

Why a Public Calendar Project?  It is one of the most often asked-for capability in the Calendar news groups.  Teams that have to share calendar information have found the Exchange/Outlook calendars a lot of what they want, but misses a lot more.  Exchange is promoted as a collaboration Medium, yet each person's calendar is privatized--it is basically only accessible as a unit to the owner..  It can be shared, so someone else can also see it as a unit.  But you can't superimpose or merge a lot of individual calendars into one unit and have common access to it.

Microsoft has attempted to fill the perceived gaps piecemeal, using Exchange.  The free-busy facility in setting up meetings collects calendar information from the attendees and allows you to find an un-occupied timeslot for the new meeting.  It amounts to a temporary public calendar, but it doesn't provide common access and is not persistent.  Microsoft provided a way to publish individual calendars to a public folder--but you can't get a merged view, and while persistent, it is static, and can't be updated easily.   

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Microsoft had discovered the Web.  In July, 2000,  Scott Semyan, published an article in the MSDN news, entitled "Building a Web-based Event Calendar"; and it is available as a download.  Now, when you get this up and running, you realize that it is a pathetic attempt at a calendar in comparison to the Exchange/Outlook calendar, but it does solve the persistence and common access projects.  Finally, it has to be recognized that it really is just a tutorial that presents all the pieces you need to create such a beast as a merged, persistent, easily accessible public calendar.

I found this web application particularly interesting because SBS4.5 includes all the resources used in the application plus Exchange.  An Exchange/ Event Agent can be used as the Event Input interface.  This makes it easy for the Outlook user to manage a merged, public calendar, that is persistent and easy to maintain.  It is a little more difficult to set up, and you don't have all the capabilities that you have in the free-busy and recurrent calendar events, but you can't have everything.

Pieces  of this Puzzle 

I will present these pieces on individual pages.

Send mail to Hollis@outlookbythesound.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: October 31, 2003