Office 365 is a cloud-based service that combines MS Office apps and other productivity apps from Microsoft. It is more of a software as a service (SAAS), meaning that users pay for the services on either a monthly or annual basis. The good thing about using Office 365 is that you don’t have to install the apps on your PC.
One standout feature on the Office 365 platform is the group calendar that allows co-workers to communicate better. The good thing is that the group availability calendar can be shared via SharePoint or Outlook. The process of setting up the Office 365 calendar can be complicated and will require you to have administrator privileges.
Setting a Shared Calendar on Office 365
Whenever you create a group event on the shared calendar, all members within the group will receive a notification via Outlook. However, you can change the calendar permissions if you want some members to not receive the notification. The permissions feature is quite a plus as it allows you to limit who can access the group calendar.
Setting up a group availability calendar is quite challenging. However, once you understand the process and have administrator privilege, you can easily create it via the SharePoint calendar list feature.
Open SharePoint, and under the List tab, you will see a Calendar feature. Click on the Calendar tab and select the General Settings button, and there you will find the Title, Description, and Navigation. Make sure you set the calendar’s title, which is the name of the event, you can add a description explaining what the event is all about.
Move to the Group Calendar Options to share the calendar on Office 365 with the rest of the team. You can also use the resource reservation feature to reserve a room for your meeting on the shared calendar.
Benefits of a Group Availability Calendar
Calendar features come in quite handy, especially for co-workers collaborating on various projects. SharePoint calendars can be hooked on various Office apps, for example MS Outlook or Office 365. The administrator can also set up policies to limit which members can access the calendar or group events. You can also set the SharePoint calendars on your pages or intranet sites. However, the SharePoint calendar may take up too much space on your intranet site or pages. You can change how the online calendar for groups is viewed on the SharePoint homepage.
System admins can edit the calendar web part to display only upcoming events. Users can also set up alarms on the calendar on items they are interested in.
The generic calendar can also be used to display various types of events including internal events or employee birthdays. The SharePoint calendar can be used to book rooms and other office resources such as the projectors, or other shared resources in the office.
Bottom Line
Calendar features are quite essential when working on team projects. The other thing is that the admin can set limits on the calendar events. SharePoint shared calendars can also be hooked to other Office apps such as Outlook and Office 365.
