How to Sync Public Exchange Calendar with Shared Calendar in Commit?

[techresq1]

Hello,

I found a related post, but was unable to suss out the answer to my specific question.

We are moving into CommitCRM. we have a Shared Public Calendar in Exchange with all our appointments. We would like to sync that calender into the "Shared" calendar in CommitCRM.

i attempted to sync, choosing the folder location in Exchange Public Folders\...\Our Calendar and checked off "synchronized shared.." in Options and performed a sync.

however, it dropped all the appointments into my Employee calendar, and did not place any of them in the Shared folder.

per above, how can we move all our shared appointments from our Public Calendar into the CommitCRM Shared calendar INSTEAD of moving them into the Employee calendar of whomever is logged on?

If that is not possible, how do i batch move all the current appointments out of my CommitCRM employee calender and into the CommitCRM shared calendar.

TIA

[Support Team]

Hello techresq1,

In RangerMSP each employee has its own calendar, plus there is one calendar which is Shared.

Once you add an Appointment to the Shared calendar in RangerMSP all employees can see it, even if they don't have permissions to see other employee calendars.

The Shared calendar is usually used for global office events such as company meetings, birthdays etc.

Each Employee syncs its own RangerMSP calendar with their Outlook (or Exchange) folder.

In order for employees to be able to see the Shared calendar in RangerMSP in their Outlook calendars RangerMSP allows each employee to select to sync the RangerMSP Shared calendar to their Outlook calendar as well (in other words, both their RangerMSP calendar and the Shared calendar will be synced to/from their Outlook/Exchange folder).

To move an Employee appointment to the RangerMSP Shared calendar you should double click the appointment in RangerMSP and un-check the '[V] Emp.' check box. This will move the appointment to the Shared calendar.
That said, I would normally not recommend using the system in this way but rather manage a separate calendar for each employee. The reason for this is that using only the Shared calendar will prevent you from using several features which are available when you use a separate calendar for each employee. For example, you can easily print a list of all scheduled on-site visits for a specific employee - as long as the visit are logged in their calendar. Another example would be to print all the Technician Service Forms for all open issues which are scheduled for on-site visits today for a specific employee.

Anyway, there are pros and cons for each method and you should probably test this and find out what works for you.

Sherry

[techresq1]

Thanks for the prompt reply; I appreciate your help and expertise.

We have several hundreds of appointments current in our Exchange Public calendar, not to mention a multi-year record of past appointments, and I was hoping to be able to drop these all in a lump into the Shared folder, and then move forward using only Commit, reassigning appointments as needed to different users and preserving all the past records for everyone to see during this transition. As it stands, my CommitCRM user has ALL our calendar items assigned to it, and NONE in the Shared folder.

Is it possible to do this in an effecient(sic) fashion, such as syncing the Exchange Public Calendar into the Committed Shared calendar(is this possible?) or crafting some kind of batch operation or do I have to manually set each appointment out of my Employee folder into the Shared Folder by unchecking the Emp. box as you suggested?

that would be a boatload of extra work for us, and I'm trying to avoid it.

[Support Team]

Unfortunately it looks like there is no work around here :-(

Anyway, I think that during the transition phase (probably several weeks but usually not longer than this) employees will still be using both systems as you were all sharing the same Exchange folder in Outlook rather than using separate calendar folders.
Then, the dispatcher/employees will assign appointments to specific employee in their own calendar in RangerMSP and these will be synced with their Outlook/Exchange folder.

I hope this helps.

Sherry

[techresq1]

Oh well, Thanks anyway. We can work around this until everyone's on the new software, it's just not as convienient as it could be. I sincerely appreciate the input.