Calendars and automatic status updates

My Calendar is your own. Everyone has one, it needs no setting up, and only you see what is on it—not even an Administrator can open, edit, or delete an event on someone else's My Calendar. It is also the only place an event can change your work status automatically.

A Company Calendar is shared. An Administrator creates it and decides who can see it and who can add to it. Use one for things the team needs in common—a shared vacation schedule, a conference room, an on-call rotation.

Both appear in the same place. Open Calendar and use the dropdown to switch between All Calendars, My Calendar, and each shared company calendar you have access to. The second dropdown filters by Category.

Only Administrators. Company calendars live in Settings, which no other role can open, so creating a calendar, renaming it, setting who can use it, and deleting it are all Administrator jobs.

To create a shared calendar:

1. Select Settings in the side menu, then select Company Calendars.
2. Select Add Calendar.
3. Enter a Calendar Name. This is required, and can be up to 100 characters.
4. Choose a Default Access level. A new calendar starts at No Access.
   • Contributor—can add events on a shared company calendar; can edit or delete events that they created.
   • Reader—can only view events on a shared company calendar; cannot edit or delete events.
   • No Access—cannot see this company calendar at all.
5. Select Save.

Administrators also manage the Category list, in Settings → Calendar Categories. Each category has a Name and a Display Color, and categories are shared by every calendar.

Every shared calendar has a Default Access level that applies to all users. Administrators can then add individual users and teams who need more than that. An entry can raise someone's access but not lower it; the one exception is No Access on an individual user, which keeps that person out whatever the default says. Here are the three levels:

• Contributor—can add events on the calendar, and edit or delete the events they created.
• Reader—can only view events; cannot edit or delete them.
• No Access—cannot see the calendar at all.

To give a person or a team access:

1. Select Settings in the side menu, then select Company Calendars.
2. Select User and Team access beside the calendar, in the Grant Access column.
3. Select Add Users or Add Teams.
4. Choose the Access level, type a name and pick each person or team from the list that appears, and select Save. Teams can be given Reader or Contributor; No Access is for individual users only.

To change someone later, select the access level shown beside their name and pick a new one. The trash button beside them removes their entry.

The Users list on that page shows 25 people at a time. Once it has 10 or more, a Search users by name box above it finds anyone on any page; select Search or press Enter, and Clear search shows everyone again.

The clearest way to set up a calendar only some people should see is to leave Default Access on No Access and add the users and teams who need it. That way nothing has to be taken away afterwards.

Adding a team gives its members access to the calendar. It does not create events for them, put anything on their own calendars, or change their statuses. An event always belongs to the one person who created it.

It depends on the calendar's Default Access. A calendar set to Reader or Contributor applies to everyone, so a new user sees it as soon as they are added. A calendar set to No Access stays hidden from them until an Administrator adds them, or a team they belong to.

If a new user cannot see a Reader or Contributor calendar, look for an individual No Access entry for them on that calendar: it hides the calendar whatever the default says. Remove the entry, or change it to the level they need.

To add them to a No Access calendar:

1. Select Settings in the side menu, then select Company Calendars.
2. Select User and Team access beside the calendar.
3. Add the user, or a team they belong to, with the access level they need, then Save.

How do I give someone access to a company calendar? describes the access levels.

1. Open Calendar.
2. Select New, beside today. (Selecting a day on the calendar itself opens a shorter form with just Subject, Start and End; it saves to the calendar chosen in the filter, or to My Calendar when the filter shows all calendars. Select More options there for the full form. On a calendar you can only read, selecting a day does nothing.)
3. Pick the Calendar to add the event to.
4. Enter a Subject.
5. Set the Start Date, Start Time, End Date, and End Time, or tick All Day to drop the times.
6. Leave the repeat dropdown on Does not repeat, or choose how it should recur. See How do I make an event repeat? below for more information on this feature.
7. Under EVENT DETAILS, add a Location, a Category, a Reminder, and a Description if you want them. All are optional.
8. Select Save.

1. Type the time into the box, or use the time picker your browser offers. Browsers differ: some show a clock icon beside the box, some open a list when you select it.
2. If the box shows AM and PM, check which one is set—it is easy to miss, and it is the usual reason an event lands twelve hours out.

Times are required unless you tick All Day, which runs the event from the start of the first day to the end of the last.

Change the repeat dropdown on the event form from Does not repeat to Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Each opens its own options:

• Daily—every day, or tick Weekdays only.
• Weekly—every 1 to 4 weeks, on the days you tick (Su through Sa).
• Monthly—every 1 to 4 months, either on a weekday you choose (First, Second, Third, Fourth, or Last) or on the date of the event itself.

Then say when it should stop: No end date, End after a number of occurrences, or End by a date. There are limits: No end date stops after two years or 365 occurrences, whichever comes first; End after takes at most 365; and an End by date more than a year after the start is brought back to one year. To keep a series going beyond that, add a new one when it ends.

Yes, on events on My Calendar. Shared company calendars cannot change anyone's status.

1. Open Calendar and select New.
2. Leave the Calendar dropdown on My Calendar.
3. Fill in the subject, dates, and times as usual.
4. Under EVENT DETAILS, choose a Starting status change, an Ending status change, or both.
5. Select Save.

When the event starts, your status changes to the starting status and your return time is set to the event's end. When it ends, your status changes to the ending status and the return time is cleared. Each event does this once. The change is recorded against System Account in your status history, which is explained on the Status Board page.

If you don't see Starting status change and Ending status change at all, the feature is switched off for you. It takes two settings, both of which only an Administrator can change:

• Allow Calendar Events to Change Status must be Yes for the organization, in Settings → Applications and Features.
• Allow future status changes using the calendar must be Yes on your own user record, in Settings → Users. New users get Yes by default.

While either setting is off, no calendar event changes anyone's status, including events that already carry a starting or ending status. Turn it back on and those events work again from then on; a start or end that passed while it was off is not applied later. Saving an event while the feature is off for you removes its status changes, so set them again after it is back on. The statuses you can pick are your own status codes; see Status Codes.

Open the event and you'll see Edit and Delete if you created it. On a shared calendar, Contributors can manage their own events but not other people's, and Administrators can manage any event on any shared calendar they can see. Events on My Calendar belong to their owner alone: an Administrator cannot open, edit, or delete someone else's. One more rule: only the person who created an event on a shared calendar can move it onto their own My Calendar.

Editing or deleting an event that repeats asks which you mean first, with a choice of This event or All events in series. This event is selected for you, so take a look before saving a change you meant to apply to everything.

Everyone sees events in their own time zone, the one set on their user record. You enter an event in yours, and a colleague three hours away sees the same event at their local time—you don't need to convert anything yourself.

This matters most on a shared calendar for people in more than one location. If an event looks like it is at the wrong time, the first thing to check is the time zone on that person's record, in Settings → Users.

The person whose My Calendar the event is on. Reminders work on My Calendar events only: an event created on a shared company calendar sends no reminder to anyone, even with a Reminder set, and putting one there does not notify everyone who can see that calendar. If you want to be reminded about a shared event, add it to My Calendar too. (An event you move from My Calendar onto a shared calendar keeps reminding you.)

The reminder is sent once, at the interval you chose before the start, and it follows that person's own alert settings. It goes by email if they have email alerts turned on and an email address on their record, and by text if they have text alerts turned on and a verified mobile number—so it can arrive both ways, or not at all. See Alerts and Messages. Times in the reminder are in the recipient's own time zone.

No. InOutBoard's calendar does not sync with Outlook, Apple Calendar (iCal), or Google Calendar. If your team keeps its calendar somewhere else, any event you want InOutBoard to act on—particularly one that should change your status—has to be entered in InOutBoard as well.

An Administrator can turn the whole feature off by setting Calendars to Off in Settings → Applications and Features. That hides the Calendar menu for everyone. Users with the Guest role do not get the Calendar at all, and their dashboard has no Upcoming Events.

Deleting a calendar also deletes every event on it, removes all of its user and team access entries, and clears it from anyone who had it selected as their calendar filter. The application warns you that this cannot be undone, and it means it—there is no way to restore the calendar or its events afterwards.

Only Administrators can delete a calendar, from Settings → Company Calendars. If you only want to stop people using a calendar, changing its Default Access and clearing its user and team entries leaves the events intact.

Deleting a single event is separate and does not affect the calendar it was on.