View just free busy as calendar?

[janderson]

We just migrated from Oracle collab suite and overall are very happy.

One feature that we used to have was users could view another persons calendar in Outlook even if they didn't have permissions granted, and just see free busy time. This is basically what you're seeing in the meeting request, but some of my users find it much easier to view this way.

Is there a way to achieve this in Zimbra currently, or should I put in an enhancement request?

Thanks.

[phoenix]

Shared Calendars are available in Outlook using the Network Edition Outlook Connector, are you using Zimbra NE?

[janderson]

Yes I'm using NE, but I'm basically looking for people to be able to view just free busy time by default, instead of getting permission denied when they don't have any grants on a user's calendar.

[phoenix]

Then create a public view of the calendar, they don't need anything other than the url of the calendar to see what's in it.

[janderson]

Well this doesn't really meet the requirements of what I'm trying to accomplish.

1. I'd like this to work in outlook, rather than people in the company having to add individual ICS files.

2. I'd like it to be just free busy time and not any details unless permissions have been granted.

So for example, Jim has no permissions on bobs's calendar. Jim tries to add Bob's calendar to his shared calendars in Outlook.

What currently happens: Jim gets a permission denied error.

What we would like to happen: Bob's calendar is added to Jim's list, but he only sees when Bob is busy, and no details about his meetings.

Also, we would like this to be turned on system wide, rather than per user.

Once again, I'm thinking this might be an enhancement, just seeing if there is a reasonable way to accomplish this now.

[sam]

Not possible as of today. You can file an enhancement request in bugzilla and vote for it. In the meantime, you can view people's free/busy data in the meeting request compose form under the schedule tab.

[Rich Graves]

Yes, that's the unique feature of OCS that I miss.

I don't know that ithe desired behavior is even possible in Outlook -- Exchange doesn't do it -- but I recently posted an RFE for the web client:
Bug 22310 - Ability to publish HTML view of free/busy (.ifb) info

[janderson]

Rich,

Since you mentioned interest maybe you want to vote for the enhancement.

Bug 22732 - View Free Busy as Shared Calendar in Outlook

[gregtampa]

is there a way to view the calendar not in outlook but in a browser?

[mmorse]

Sure, so in 5.0 we added the ability to go to http:// server.domain.com/home/username/Calendar.html to see an easily readable day/week/month view. (The publisher must share the calendar specifically or publicly in order for you to see it.)

Another new & cool ability in 5.0.1 is to get free busy info by visiting http:// server.domain.com/home/username?fmt=freebusy which will display an aggregate HTML calendar for all the user's free-busy data. (Of course you can always choose to select "exclude this calendar when reporting free/busy times" if you wish.)