2018-04-17

How to share calendar using Google Calendar and Google group

I have been using calendar for as long as I can remember. In the simplest form, we have traditional calendar that we hang on the wall or put on our desk or a diary that we bring with us everywhere we go. We not only look at them to know the date-month-year, we write on them to remind ourselves on various events, appointment, or things to do. But when we had event or appointment, it is up to us to add them to our own calendar. And when the event/appointment change or cancelled, we have to update our own calendar or we could missed the event or we could be embarrassed to come for appointment that has been cancelled or changed. Would it be nice when someone schedule an event or appointment with us, it will automatically appear in our calendar and updated as it changed?

Fast forward, we now have calendar in almost all of our mobile phone instead of the more traditional one. Even better, some company like Google has provided a calendar service that is in the internet. Users can access to them wherever they go with any device they use. Best of all, we can use it for free.

This online calendar also means that we can easily share our calendar with other, which will help us to schedule (or re-schedule) appointment with them. With many people are using Android phone nowadays, many people already have access to this service provided by Google in their phone whether they realize it or not. Even if you are not using Android phone, you can still access this service through the website or application in your phone provided by Google.

In this post, I try to show you how we can utilize Google Calendar and Google Groups. The setup using Google Groups is optional, but it is recommended as I will explain below. Many of the steps below will need to be done using web browser though. Bear in mind that Google may change the design of the site, so the steps shown below may be different, but I think it should be quite similar.

Step 1: Create a Google Groups and invite people to join the group (optional)

In order to share a calendar, you only need to give permission to other user to use the shared calendar in step 3 below. But I think it will be better to group the people that have the view access to Google Groups. The Google Groups can also be used to communicate among the group, so it will be useful if the group communicate frequently. If you already have Google Groups for your group, you can skip this step.

First, you need to go to go to Google Groups website and log in with your user and password. Click “Create Group” button to create a new group. You will be presented with the screen similar to screen below. Then you will need to enter a unique Group name to identify your group and Google will generate the Group email address and the group web address or URL (it start with something like: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/yourgroupname). Google will display warning if this group email address is already taken. You can leave the other setting as shown in the screen below, and click “Create” button. If you are presented with any setting page after you press “Create”, just keep the default value and press “Save my changes”. Keep the group email address and web address/URL you created in this step for later use. If you forgot the group email address or the address, you can go to “Setting ->Group Setting” to retrieve it.

Next, you need to invite the people you want to communicate and share the calendar with. Click “Manage” and then “Invite members” as shown in the screens below. You will need to enter their email addresses (separated by comma) and the invitation message that will be sent to their email. Make sure you only invite those who are in your group.

Alternatively, you can send the group web address/URL to the people you want to invite, and they can apply for the membership of this group. In this case, you will have to approve their request once they applied to this group.

Step 2: Create a shared calendar

To create a new calendar, first you need to go to Google Calendar website. If you already signed in to your Google account from the previous step, most likely you do not need to sign in again. If you skip the previous step or you signed out for some reason, you need to provide your username and password again. Once you enter Google Calendar, you can see the available calendar that is available to you on the left side, including your personal calendar. You can share your personal calendar, but then others may be able to see all your personal appointment. I recommend you create a separate calendar that you would like to share with others. Click the “+” sign near the list of the calendar to “Add other calendars” and choose “New calendar”. You can then enter the name of your calendar, the description, the Time Zone. Don’t worry about the time zone, and just put the time zone where you live.

Step 3: Share your calendar

After you have created the new calendar, you can share the calendar with other people. First you go to the calendar setting and go to “Share with specific people” and click “Add People”. You can then add the email of the person you want to add, or add the email of the Google Group you have created previously. If you add the group in the email, all the member in the group will be granted privilege to the calendar and can access the calendar. There are a few type of the privilege. I recommend to grant “See all event details” to the group, and add those who can “Make changes to events” directly in the calendar for now.

Step 4: Users need to add the shared calendar

After we have created the calendar and share with the people we want to share, the calendar may not be automatically added to their Google Calendar account. When they go into their Google Calendar account or check the calendar in their Android phone, the shared calendar may not appear. The permission has been given to them, but they may need to add the calendar by themselves. This step will show you how they can add the shared calendar so that it will appear in their Android phone or Google Calendar account.

If the person receives email notification from the Google Calendar when they got invited to the shared calendar, they can click the link in the invitation email to add the calendar. But what happened to the user that does not receive the email notification/invitation? This could happen when the user are adde
d to the Google Groups on later date.

Looking at the email invitation sent by Google Calendar, the link to add the shared calendar looks like this: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?cid= followed by the Calendar ID of the shared calendar in the setting page. In the example above, the calendar ID is “123456@group.calendar.google.com” so the link to add the share calendar will be: https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=123456@group.calendar.google.com.

This is the format Google use at the time this post is written, but it may change in the future. If that happens, just look at the email invitation sent by Google Calendar.

But how can the user that was just added to the Google Groups to know the link knows the link to the Google Calendar? One way is to add this link when the new user is added to the Google Group so that the new user to the group will immediately notified on the calendar link.

 

Step 5: Create your appointment/event

Now that the shared calendar has been created, you can start adding event/reminder that will appear to the calendar of the invited people. However, when creating the event/reminder need to be created under the new shared calendar, not under your personal calendar. Remember to change the calendar where you want to create your event/reminder to the shared calendar.