OfficeCalendar v4.5
I am currently researching this capability for our company (sharing
calendars or setting up a Group calendar, or setting up a resource calendar)
without the use of an Exchange server. Our requirements are these:
1. Cannot be published to public Internet (privacy reasons)
2. Must not be outsourced -- need to internally maintain, own, and control
3. Color of Categories must be able to sync to other user's Outlook when
bringing in events from shared calendars
4. Must have control at an admin level of who can see and/or create/delete
events to a shared calendar
5. Need to be able to create new event to appear on other user's personal
calendars that are shared (for tasking purposes)
6. Need to be able to set event reminders for others
Strictly regarding Calendar functions (not true collaborative workspace
environments), the current leader on our board is OfficeCalendar
(
http://www.officecalendar.com).
This does nothing more than calendars, but was fairly easy to setup. You
have an option to use the default configuration of an MS Access DB on a
separate machine (preferrably a server) or MS SQL Server. We chose MS SQL
Server because it is expected to surpass 50 users and we did not want Access
boggin down.
I would recommend looking at OfficeCalendar if all you need is to create and
share Outlook calendars.
There is an optional piece that will allow one to publish their calendar to
Online OfficeCalendar (which looks very similar to OWA), but if you choose
not to configure that piece, everything can stay internal to your network (or
even exist on a server available for sync on the open Internet -- though
authentication appears to be pretty basic).
A simple plugin is all that is required for the end-user. This adds three
buttons on a toolbar within Outlook.
1. Configure
2. Sync to Server
3. Sync to Web
We set it up on a server running SQL Server 2005 that is in our DMZ, so we
can openly use it in the office, and still have the option of syncing events
when on the road or at home so long as we are authenticating using our VPN
software.
Hope that helps.
Dan