RE: Online calendar for scheduling projects

[jknebel -at- ospreyus -dot- com]

Deborah,

We are currently investigating this possibility now. Our solution is to
create a new mailbox in Outlook that is owned by a distribution list (In
your case, all of the writers and their managers) The calendar is then
created inside the mailbox. Everyone who is a member of the distribution
list can access the new mailbox and calendar.

Now the tricky part.....

This new mailbox has to be set-up on each members machine:
(in Outlook)
Follow the menupath
	Tools > Services
Click on Microsoft Exchange Server to select it.
Click on the Properties button
This will take you to the Microsoft Exchange Server Dialog Box
Click on the Advanced Tab
Click on the Add button
Enter the name of the new mailbox 
Click on OK
This will take you back to the Microsoft Exchange Server Dialog Box
Click on Apply
Click on OK
This will take you back to the Services Dialog Box
Click on OK

The new mailbox will then appear in your Outlook navigation structure. Click
on it, and it will show the new calendar.

The advantage to doing this, is that it requires minimal maintenance from
the IT department!
They have to do two things
1. Set-up a distribution list for your department
2. Set-up the mailbox for your department.


Let me know if you have any issues with this. We are currently testing this
ourselves, and I would like to know how it works for others.

Jhan
Jhan 

**********Please note the NEW Osprey Email Addresses****************
Jhan A. Knebel
Technical Writer, Enterprise Management Solutions
jknebel -at- ospreyUS -dot- com		(704) 943-7950
http://www.ospreyUS.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah Stacy [mailto:dstacy -at- CreativeSolutions -dot- com]

Hi all -

I've searched the archives and didn't find anything, so I'm coming out of
lurk mode...

My department is about to start scheduling for our fall/winter projects.
There are a lot of projects that will be split up between approximately
eight writers. We're trying to find a way to get all of the significant
dates in a calendar that can be viewed by those of us who will be doing the
scheduling. (Last year we didn't have any type of calendar set up - just the
spreadsheet that we use for scheduling - and one writer wound up having
three deliverables due in two days because there was no way to see the 'big
picture.' We don't want to run into that again.) 

In the past, the people doing the scheduling maintained a calendar for each
writer using Calendar Creator. While this was helpful for the writers, it
took way too much time to maintain the calendars. Also, we've tried
Microsoft Project in the past, but found it limiting. 

We just upgraded to Office 2000 and I was looking around in Outlook's help
to find information about posting an Outlook Calendar as a web page. (Btw,
we're running Outlook 2000, Windows 98, PC environment.) I found a couple of
help topics that were _sort of_ helpful and I found a white paper on new MS
Office features on the MS web site, but I'm wondering if anyone has actually
used this feature. If you have used it, what kind of commitment was needed
from the IT department? Is the calendar easy to maintain? Did you run into
any major problems? Did you post the calendar on a personal web server,
intranet, or Net Folder? (I think I'll probably have to go with the personal
web server - the powers that be decided not to allow any more department
pages on the intranet.) How did you set up the additional calendar in
Outlook? (The help directed me to tabs and buttons that don't seem to
exist.)

Thanks much!
Deb