Working with Groups

The primary advantage of creating and working with groups in CalAgenda is the ability to set up meetings and to have all of the invitees' calendars updated to reflect the meeting. In addition to people, groups can be created that contain resources such as meeting rooms. In the same way that the invitees calendars will reflect the meeting, the resource calendar will also reflect the meeting, blocking out the meeting time so that others won't inadvertanly schedule a meeting in the same room at the same time.

If one of your goals is to create a group that includes your whole department, we recommend that you use your domain's admin account to create this group. By doing so, you ensure that everyone within the group has access to the group list and can modify it if necessary, i.e. a staff member leaves the department, a new hire enters, the person who sets up the weekly meetings is out on sick leave, etc. If you don't use the admin account, the group list will reside as a file in your individual Oracle Calendar desktop folder and will not be editable by anyone else on the list.

Besides the groups created using the domain's admin account, there are four types of groups:

• private:only its creator (also known as its "owner") can use it
• members-only:only its members can use it; only its creator can edit it.
• public:anyone on CalAgenda can use it
• administrative:anyone can use it; only the CalAgenda administrator can edit it.

• Creating a New Group. This section describes how you can define a group of CalAgenda users with whom you regularly schedule meetings.

• Scheduling a Meeting Using "Group View". Oracle Calendar allows you to simultaneously view the agendas of several people and/or resources (for example, conference rooms) to see when all of you have free times. This is called a group view and this section explains how to use it to schedule a meeting.