Church Techy
Where Tech meets Church
Shared Calendar
Author: Stuart14 Jan
We need a shared calendar and the requirements aren’t big but simplicity of use is a must for the end user. I don’t much care if it’s complicated to setup, but the day to day use must be almost idiot proof.
- I don’t want to use a web service such as Google and would like to keep any data in house.
- but a web front end is fine
- cheap or even free would be ideal.
- must be able to run from a shortcut
- allow colleagues to see my appointments
- allow my colleagues to invite me to their appointments
- allow synching with desktop calendar software (such as Evolution, iCal, Outlook etc.)And a nicety
- allow synching with mobile clients (such as PDAs, Mobiles etc)
Although I’ve said free I could likely persuade the Church to spend a little per license – after all we are talking approx 10 or so staff at present that we need to co-ordinate.
Suggestions of a an application or an alternative way forward willingly taken.
14 Responses for "Shared Calendar"
Definitely try this site called http://www.qlubb.com. It’s extremely simple to use for both the administrator and the users and my buddy from college uses it for his Church group. You can get online in about 10 seconds and anybody in the group can publish to the calendar. They even have things like sign up sheets, reminders, photo sharing and a few other features.
I’ve tried both google groups and yahoogroups and it’s hard to use them beyond just the email grouping features.
Good luck!
Windows Sharepoint Services almost fits the bill. The lack of Evolution and Entourage synchronization may turn you off. Free-ish unless you need their “portal” product, which you probably do not. We have this installed to see if the absense request system will fit our needs.
Plone is free, but uses iCal etc. Plone Desktop and/or WebDAV will help with sync to nearly any platform. This is really much more than a calendar, so for this singular needs it’s overkill. We use this for a few applications. plone.org
o3spaces looks good, but some of the best features are for-pay, and this is not a cheap option. It is free for up to 10 users. o3spaces.com
Projectspaces might be worth a look. I did not consider it for our org due to some of our requirements. http://www.projectspaces.com.
Thank you both – I really did want to stay away from an online product so will look into Sharepoint as the Evolution and Entourage are not deal busters. However, I will look at all suggestions so thank you again.
Stuart – out of curiosity, why are you trying to avoid an Online app? Seems that the synchronization you're looking for almost cries out for an online app. Even better if it's one that really lets you sync and take your copies offline. From what I can see of your list, the only requirement not met is keeping the data in-house and that's met if you sync something locally.
I seem to remember there was some sort of "Open Exchange" project running at one point that may be helpful, but can't remember much beyond that.
Thanks Peter, I'll look into the Open Exchange thing. There are a number of reasons why they don't want a web-app but I should have clarified I guess … a web-app, so long as one can run it locally (using iiS, Apache or similar) would be fine.
Try iZoca.com. It's free and it connects you to all the groups that you paricipate in on their platform.
Thanks Jeff – will definitely give it a look.
Interested to know why it has to run locally?
Apologies Simon – I managed to delete your other post, doh!
To answer your query though … There are several reasons … 1. The external Church infrastructure is not 100% guaranteed to stay up (link to ISP / cabling / power) and getting these sorted are not quick easy or cheap. 2. I am not a fan of cloud computing – though in my professional life it goes against the grain as my job exists to support the underlying interconnectivity for cloud computing. 3. Some of the data is sensitive and its easier to keep in house than teach old dogs ….!
Thanks Stuart I knew of problems of this coming from the actual church leadership, didn't know some of the IT people were still fighting against it too. Hopefully we can eventually change your mind on internet based applications. Calling them all cloud computing is a little too buzz wordy for me.
What ever came of this? Did you find a solution? Thanks.
Hi David – unfortunately nothing did become of this. I did lots of research even went so far as downloading lots of stuff to try, etc. Even installed sharepoint for a while – however, time and the credit crunch got in the way.
Me – I just couldn't allocate enough time in my personal life and the church put a spending freeze on which would preclude any form of paid solution. I forget its name now, but there is a paid solution of <$30 per machine that would suit in our case – still $300 is $300!
Hi Stuart- you may want to take another look at iZoca.com. It does basically everything you need it to do except store data on your own servers. You can get an iCal feed to other devices and applications such as iPhone, outlook, etc. Each group on iZoca has a unique calendar that rolls up to members' personal calendar. Groups also have discussions, shared photos, RSVP to events… I think it would be worth checking out- and it's free!
I've come round a bit to the data not being stored locally. So long as mine doesn't get out there then ok :)
Will definitely take another look – hopefully the website will be finished real soon now and I can get them back to looking at what they need out of this type of thing. But at least I now have a few options.
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