Sharing calendar availabilities.md

Sharing calendar availabilities

The state of calendar sucks. It doesn't help that USF's Google Workspace isn't set up for us to view each other's free/busy calendar status. Nevertheless, it's important we're able to easily figure out who's free for (e.g.) a leadership meeting.

Here's how leadership currently runs our personal & team calendars:

• We have a group compsigh Google Calendar, to which we add club events and leadership meetings (including meetings that don't include all of leadership — we invite who's involved, but this way everyone knows it's happening)
• Most team members prefer we create events on the compsigh calendar, then invite each individual involved, so they don't have to see both
• Often, due to existing personal setups, we'll use a team member's personal email account (instead of their USF email) so it fetches the availability already on their calendar
• For personal setups, it's not recommended to have several calendars, each for classes, work, etc. because when inviting, events on non-primary calendars are not auto-blocked, so those time slots appear as free (again, the state of calendar sucks)
  • If possible, it's recommended to use one calendar with all relevant times you're busy (classes, work, etc.) blocked on it
    • See this message from Edward on how to share availability
    • At minimum please share free/busy status with everyone else