Sharing Outlook Calendar Data

[emmfan]

Wanted to find out if anybody has found a pleasing solution to sharing Outlook Calendar data in a small network setting, without having to resort to an Exchange server. I found a couple of products that look like they might work and I'll probably go ahead and download the trials to test them out.

Schedules4Team (http://schedules.4team.biz)
OsaSynch Pro (http://www.vaita.com)

What I want to be able to do is to share Calendar events selectively, not having to reveal all events, even a free/busy indication. Not sure if this is a reasonable requirement or not. :oops:

[Jason Dunn]

I tried a product called Outlook4Team, and it was a disaster - after 8+ months, I couldn't get everything working properly, or get the staff at my church to use it. It had some really stupid limitations, like not being able to rename the project folder name - so you'd have "Project 1", "Project 2" and other similarly vague names.

Damn Microsoft for removing folder sync sharing in Office XP!!! :evil:

[emmfan]

Thanks for the input. Actually, I was looking at a product from the same company called Schedules4Team which seemed to be essentially a subset of the Outlook4Team application. But then it turns out that their current version is incompatible with Activesync, and that I would have to essentially unload Activesync before starting Outlook each time, in order to have access to the functionality of Schedules4Team, which is totally unacceptable.

They did say that they will have a new version in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, that version solves the Activesync incompatibility and maybe even those limitations that you encountered. Anyways, I guess I'll have to revisit it again in a little while.

That's the strangest thing that MS would remove folder sync from Outlook XP. Then again, I'm not even sure that would be the solution that I'm looking for, since I essentially want to have inidividual calendars that would have certain "public" activities published to a team calendar.

I looked at OsaSync Pro, but from what I could tell, that program essentially just synchronizes Outlook folders between computers on a network, which really goes beyond merely sharing them.

I'm just kind of baffled because it seems like what I'm looking for would be a pretty obvious requirement in small groups (at least it seems natural and obvious to me :p).

[Jason Dunn]

That's the strangest thing that MS would remove folder sync from Outlook XP.

Not so strange. They want everyone to buy Exchange server. :evil:

[bagemk]

I'd advise everyone to stay away from OsaSync.

On (e-)paper, this looks like such a good solution. I paid the money for the Pro version and have been trying to use it for six months. All I can say is that it is a disaster.

Superficially it appears to work, apart from the numerous obscure error messages that pop up every few days, but it commits the worst form of sin this software can: it loses data. When you find calendar appointments dissappearing or contacts vanishing, you cannot trust it.

The software is updated every week or so which, to me, indicates it's flakiness.

To add insult to this, the developer was very rude when I complained, stating that he couldn't possibly handle all the errors that Windows could return to his code!

There is one good thing about this software: you appreciate just how good ActiveSync is :)

[Jason Dunn]

Lots of interesting information about solutions to this in my front page post... (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.php?topic_id=16562)