Setting Up a Shared Calendar for Your Business

It’s in no way a controversial statement to say that modern technological advancements have drastically changed the way we do everything. From our social lives to education to personal tasks and especially our jobs, the landscape is ever-changing with each new innovation. But when it comes to something like your calendar, you might think, why reinvent the wheel?

Thanks to cloud computing, however, your calendar is a more powerful tool than ever before. Now, every change you make can be seen from anywhere with an internet connection—and shared instantly with anyone in the world. And if you don’t see the incredible value in this very simple feature, why, you’re not thinking big enough. Imagine leading a whole team with a single, universal calendar, featuring project deadlines, meetings, and more, that can be updated in real time and accessed at all times. This can create consistency, accountability, and clarity where more traditional methods might leave discrepancies and confusion.

There are three major contenders for which calendar you should use — Microsoft, Google, and Apple — and in this article we’ll discuss each one, why you might choose it, and some best practices to get the most out of it.

Shared Microsoft Outlook Calendar

If your company is already paying into a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, then Outlook Calendar is included, and may make the most sense for you to use since it is fully integrated into the Office suite (and particularly the Outlook mail client).

Right off the bat, one of the most impressive things about Outlook Calendar is how easy it is to use, especially for a group of people. When creating events on the calendar, you can easily share it with an entire mailing list with the click of a button—and each party on that list will receive an email notification in which they can indicate that they accept, accept tentatively, or decline. Recipients can even suggest a different meeting time if the original meeting time doesn’t fit into their own schedule. Does your team meet up at the same time every week? You can set up recurring meetings with incredible ease. Need to send an invite to someone for an event already on your calendar? From the calendar tab in Outlook, simply drag the event onto the mail icon, and Outlook will compose a message with all the event details for you—all you have to provide is the recipient’s email address.

Getting a Little Extra from Outlook

Do you have team member located remotely? Outlook Calendar has a Time Zones feature. With just a little bit of set-up time, the app will adjust times on event invitations for the recipients, so that they don’t miss that important Skype call due to miscommunication.

When it comes to setting up recurring events, you have the option to leave the end date blank, thus continuing the event indefinitely. Don’t do that. Conditions change, and the more you modify a recurring event, the more you introduce opportunities for confusion. For a weekly meeting, for example, you might want to start fresh every two months with a new calendar entry. However, don’t “cancel” a recurring event when creating a new one, since this will delete any meeting notes stored exclusively in Outlook Calendar. Simply set the end date to the last occurrence before you begin a new item. To ensure compatibility and security across multiple devices (remember, smartphones play a key role in how we do business today), make sure that your employees keep their devices up-to-date with both the latest OS updates and the latest version of the Outlook app. In addition, discourage people using Android devices from installing apps not approved by the Google Play store on the same device they use to access their calendar, since this can create unforeseen security risks.

Shared Google Calendar

Free-to-use and easily accessible to anyone on any kind of device, the Google Calendar is the go-to for those who want a robust, feature-rich, cloud-based calendar without limitations. There’s a web version for easy use on your computer and a streamlined, attractive, and tastefully simple mobile app for on-the-go use. Because of this, it’s perfect for large teams that use a variety of devices, especially those with remote workers or freelancers on their payroll.

One of the biggest benefits of Google Calendars is that each user is able to use multiple calendars, toggling between them simultaneously, allowing you to use one app to manage your personal calendar alongside a team calendar. This comes especially in handy when trying to schedule meetings, phone calls, Skype chats, et cetera—by sharing individual calendars with each other through the app, team members can use Google to automatically find a time during which each participant is available.

Additionally, when you share your personal calendar with others to take advantage of this feature, you can set certain events to “private,” so you won’t have to worry about sharing personal details with the entire office

Going the Extra Mile with Google

With the Google Calendar app on your smartphone, you can set custom notifications before each event. Want to be reminded 10 minutes before? An hour? Two hours? No problem. You can also receive notifications on devices like smartwatches. Alternatively, if you like to start your day with your whole schedule in front of you, you can set up daily emails that contain all of your reminders, appointments, and more, directly in your inbox first thing each morning.

Having a meeting outside the office and worried they might not show up at the right Starbucks (there are, like, a million of those things in any given city after all)? No problem. Google Calendar integrates perfectly with Google Maps. Just select a location, and every other person invited to the event will be able to view it on a map and get specific, step-by-step directions to help them get there.

You can color-code events or even color-code entirely separate calendars to make everything easier to understand. When setting up a shared work calendar, try assigning one color to team meetings, another to project milestones, another to external meetings, et cetera—and see the shape of your day at a glance.

You can attach files to events in Google Calendar—especially from the Docs, Slides, and Sheets apps, which allow multiple people to collaborate on a single file, updating it in real time for everyone who has access.

You can also create “appointment slots” so that anyone attempting to book time with you in the future can see when you’re most available. Like to get all your one-on-one time with clients or employees done between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm? Done.

Shared Apple iCloud Calendar

Apple has their own version of a cloud-based calendar that is accessible to anyone with an iCloud account. Like with all things Apple, it is designed to integrate into their technological ecosystem, making it accessible from your Mac, your iPhone, and your iPad — but it remains locked within that ecosystem, more or less. Because of this, using the iCloud to set up a shared calendar only really makes sense if your whole team is using Apple products. Since Apple computers are heavily favored by people in the arts (photography, graphic design, filmmaking, music production), using the iCloud may be the right call in these industries.

Apple products are also popular among freelancers, making the iCloud Calendar an ideal choice for you if you work in the gig economy, though sharing that calendar can get tricky when interacting with people who use other services. While Apple’s calendar can export events into the Google Calendar, this feature has been known to be imperfect.

Making iCloud Shine

One of the best features about iCloud is that it’s connected directly to Siri. If you say, “Siri, remind me to call Mr. Anderson at 10:00 tomorrow to discuss project billing,” she will add it to your calendar.

There are a number of third-party calendar apps that are compatible with iCloud and will sync with your main calendar seamlessly. This gives you access to a whole range of additional features if you so choose, from apps such as Fantastical 2 and Calendar 5, while maintaining full compatibility. The great thing about these apps is that you can pick and choose the features that matter to you and your business, as opposed to being locked into the core features included in Apple’s native calendar app.

Like with Google, you can integrate map locations into your events; however, it adds a unique feature of being able to calculate your travel time for you, and block out that time from your calendar. You can set a custom time block, or calculate your travel time based on whether you walk, drive, or take public transportation and deliver custom notification based on weather and traffic conditions.

Why Share a Company Calendar?

Shared company calendar allow managers and other employees to see which rooms are available, who is out of office, and keep an eye on major company events. Shared calendars can also help organizations manage company holidays, which is particularly helpful for distributed organizations with employees in offices around the world.