How to find available times for a meeting with several Confluence Users

[James Harris]

We have just installed Confluence 6.8 and Team Meetings, and we have changed none of the relevant default settings. I am the System Administrator. We have several users in the confluence-users group, each with their own Calendar, and in our one Space we have a Calendar (is this called a Team Calendar?) that actually does show all events from all Users' Calendars. So far, so good.

So now I want to schedule a Meeting with two other Users. I expect to find a "button" (or link, etc.) that starts the process, let's call it "Schedule a meeting". It asks me to specify who I want to meet with (and it would be nice if Conference Rooms, video projectors, etc. could have Calendars so they can be scheduled in the same meeting), so I somehow select the two users, and I specify the duration of the meeting (e.g. two hours), and there is a button called "Find next available time", and when I push it, it fills in the date and start time for the earliest two-hour block of time when both of the other two users and I are all available. If I want to see more opportunities, I choose "Find next available time" again, and I can go Back with some kind of "Previous" button, and when I'm done with that process, I choose Save or somehow continue to the other options like attaching files.
However, in fact I find none of this, and no mention of it in any documentation, or help resources, or searching the WWW (which I am pretty good at).

Please advise: How do I get the Calendar software to help schedule a meeting?

[AnnWorley]

Hi,

A lot of the functionality you are describing is available in email client calendars, but Team Calendars is a bit different. It's meant more as a display of a team's schedule than a tool for inviting people to meet.

There are no "resource" objects like conference rooms that you can book. But you can schedule a meeting with more than one person by adding an event and then choosing them in the "who" field on the event. For detailed steps, please see: Add Events.

Our issue tracker is public facing, so if you think the functionality is lacking to the degree that you want to open a suggestion ticket for the dev team, you are encouraged to do so.

Thanks,

Ann

[James Harris]

OK, I think I understand:

What a user needs to do in order to schedule a meeting with multiple persons at a time when they are all available is to find or make (somewhere!) a "meeting planning calendar" that has the ability to include User's calendars, then include the User Calendar for _only_ each person desired in the meeting, then visually look for empty space in the resulting calendar that shows all those User's busy times, then make a note of the desired time, then return to the Space where the Event needs to show, then Choose Add Event (or click the date, which starts a Create Event process, which is the same thing under a different name) then choose Users, start and end times, etc. and complete that process in the normal way.

If this is correct, then yes, I think it was a bad decision to leave out this important function, I think it would take very little code to implement it, and I think I will submit a suggestion to add the feature I originally described. And by the way, I would have need for two more bits of help even to do it this way, and those bits are:

(1) Where would you suggest that a User create this "meeting planning calendar"? That is, where would it actually work, and not interfere with an existing page?

(2) Does a normal User (a member of only the confluence-users group) have the necessary permissions to create such a "meeting planning calendar" and then include the desired other Users' calendars in it?

If my understanding is incorrect, please tell me what you would suggest that achieves the goal but is easier.

Thanks for all your help.

[AnnWorley]

The meeting planning calendar should be on your Team's planning space where you keep meeting notes and project plans etc. You mentioned "in our one Space we have a Calendar (is this called a Team Calendar?) that actually does show all events from all Users' Calendars." 

If the users have shared their calendars the "normal" user should be able to add the calendars to the team calendar.

Please see this guide for a deeper look and tour of the features:  Team Calendars Quick Tour

[James Harris]

Well, we are making good progress now; thanks for all the help. I now think I have reached the condition where I have been given enough information and/or figured out enough to actually invite our users to start using the Team Calendars features. Here is the story, which contains some confirmation of useful documentation, and some issues, suggested improvements, and obvious defects. I hope it's all helpful:

Referring to the recommended help page, "Team Calendars Quick Tour":

A key point is that when a User chooses "Add new calendar" on their own "My Calendars" page, they create a "personal" calendar. It's not actually called that in the documentation, but I suggest that some standard naming be established to differentiate between a "personal" calendar, our "team's calendar" (is this a "Space Calendar"?), and the product name, "Team Calendars". Anyway, if the User completes a "personal" calendar creation and does _not_ choose to restrict access, the default is that it is included in the "Calendars" view that is presented on selection of the "Calendars" menu item in the Sidebar of the Space that that User specified as the "Related Space". Whew. To avoid all this wordiness needed to unambiguously specify which calendar is being discussed, wouldn't it be better to simply define that "Being a Member of a Team" is the same thing as specifying a "Related Space"? If that's not _actually_ the case, then please refer me (and all New Users/Customers) to documentation that explains (a) the correct relationship that makes a User a Member of a Team, and (b) how to effect or dissolve such a relationship. Also, when you say, "If the users have shared their calendars ...", I presume this is the same thing as saying, "If the users have not done anything to restrict their calendars ..." -- correct? I see no mention of a "share calendar" option.

Further: It would be good to mention that the above process can be repeated several times (is there no limit?), and each "personal" calendar is just like all the other ones for that User (unless it has been edited as to kinds of content etc.), and each one can specify a different or the same "Related Space" as another one. (Thus providing a way to make this User a Member of more than one Team, a good thing if that's what it _actually_ means). Also, an example set of calendar names and functions would be helpful, e.g. one for Events called, oh, how about "Jim-Events", and one for Leave, called "Jim-Leave", etc., or is that not what is intended? Also, it would be helpful to point out that you cannot choose the color of a Calendar until it has some content.

Another thing that's not mentioned (at least I haven't seen it) that is _really_ useful, and works well with the other functions that I think I have learned and that I have mentioned here, is that on a User's "My Calendars" page, clicking a calendar in the list on the right dims or un-dims it, and that hides or un-hides its events from places where it is included (is this what is meant by "embed"?), e.g. on that calendar's "Related Space". If this is _actually_ correct, then on the page named "Create, Add, and Edit Calendars", in the blue "i" box, which says

"If you're in My Calendars, you'll also need to enter a Related space. The calendar will appear in that space once you've created it."

it should say something like

"The calendar will appear in that space once you've created it, unless the calendar name on the right side of the page is dimmed."

Bottom line: I think there is much more to learn about Team Calendars (the product) than is presented in "Team Calendars Quick Tour" and "Create, Add, and Edit Calendars". Is there a detailed manual for _everything_ about Team Calendars? If so, I would really like to be able to read it, but I see no reference to it, only a suggestion to ask "the community". In fact, I would like to read the Administrator's Manual for "Everything about Confluence" also.

- end -

[AnnWorley]

Thanks for the pointers and feedback. It sounds like you had to learn a lot on your own that could have been documented.

I found some more comprehensive "_everything_" docs for Team Calendars and Confluence, I look forward to hearing what you think:

• Confluence Server documentation
• Team Calendars for Confluence Server documentation

[James Harris]

Thanks partly to your excellent support, we have decided to subscribe to your paid licenses for Server versions of Confluence, Team Calendars, Jira, HipChat, and some other products. I have requested guidance for how to do that, preserving the _real_ data we have in the trial version, and move everything to a new Linux server.

Thanks again!

Regards,

Jim Harris

[AnnWorley]

Wow, thanks for the kind words - and the subscriptions, too!

[James Harris]

Also, are you confirming that my observations, conclusions, etc. in my last long reply are correct? If not, please correct/clarify.

Thanks again,

Jim Harris

[AnnWorley]

Your description of the functionality is accurate; it sounds like you would like several improvements made to the documentation and terminology. If you enumerate them distinctly I can create issue tickets for the technical writers or dev teams.

How about this: I will have a go at defining the features, and you can refine or approve whether these are the requests you want to make:

A key point is that when a User chooses "Add new calendar" on their own "My Calendars" page, they create a "personal" calendar. It's not actually called that in the documentation, but I suggest that some standard naming be established to differentiate between a "personal" calendar, our "team's calendar" (is this a "Space Calendar"?), and the product name, "Team Calendars". Anyway, if the User completes a "personal" calendar creation and does _not_ choose to restrict access, the default is that it is included in the "Calendars" view that is presented on selection of the "Calendars" menu item in the Sidebar of the Space that that User specified as the "Related Space". 

For this, it seems like you would like better documentation of where calendars live and who they belong to when created, is that correct?

To avoid all this wordiness needed to unambiguously specify which calendar is being discussed, wouldn't it be better to simply define that "Being a Member of a Team" is the same thing as specifying a "Related Space"? If that's not _actually_ the case, then please refer me (and all New Users/Customers) to documentation that explains (a) the correct relationship that makes a User a Member of a Team, and (b) how to effect or dissolve such a relationship. Also, when you say, "If the users have shared their calendars ...", I presume this is the same thing as saying, "If the users have not done anything to restrict their calendars ..." -- correct? I see no mention of a "share calendar" option.

I was actually confusing the share button on a page with a calendar embedded on the page with a Share function for the calendar itself, so that was my mistake. For the rest, it seems like it would be a request for more specific terminology regarding My Calendars, Space Calendars and Team Calendars.

It would be good to mention that the above process can be repeated several times (is there no limit?), and each "personal" calendar is just like all the other ones for that User (unless it has been edited as to kinds of content etc.), and each one can specify a different or the same "Related Space" as another one. (Thus providing a way to make this User a Member of more than one Team, a good thing if that's what it _actually_ means).

A user can be included in as many Team Calendars as they like, of which I understand you're glad. There is probably a resource limit at some point but we have no limit set on how many calendars can be created by a user. The feature request would be to mention in the documentation that users can create multiple identical calendars?

Also, an example set of calendar names and functions would be helpful, e.g. one for Events called, oh, how about "Jim-Events", and one for Leave, called "Jim-Leave", etc., or is that not what is intended? Also, it would be helpful to point out that you cannot choose the color of a Calendar until it has some content.

For this the feature requests would be a) examples of dedicated Calendars and b) to include the detail about color being unavailable before content is added? 

Another thing that's not mentioned (at least I haven't seen it) that is _really_ useful, and works well with the other functions that I think I have learned and that I have mentioned here, is that on a User's "My Calendars" page, clicking a calendar in the list on the right dims or un-dims it, and that hides or un-hides its events from places where it is included (is this what is meant by "embed"?), e.g. on that calendar's "Related Space". If this is _actually_ correct, then on the page named "Create, Add, and Edit Calendars", in the blue "i" box, which says

"If you're in My Calendars, you'll also need to enter a Related space. The calendar will appear in that space once you've created it."

it should say something like

"The calendar will appear in that space once you've created it, unless the calendar name on the right side of the page is dimmed."

On this one it sounds like you would like us to include more in the docs about dimming the calendar on the right side?

I can definitely create the feature requests once I am clear on what they are. You also have the option of creating them in your own words at https://jira.atlassian.com.

[James Harris]

Thanks; I will follow up  on all of your points in a few days. Apparently you are confirming that the level of detail that I am suggesting would be helpful is  not, in fact, available anywhere; correct?

[AnnWorley]

I have not searched Team Calendars for Confluence Server documentation for each of the points you make; I would need to do that prior to opening each feature request to avoid asking the tech writers to do something they already took care of.

[James Harris]

OK. I understand. I will try to do the research you suggest, then submit some enhancement requests based on that research and what I suggest would be an improvement. I have started the research and so far it seems there is no duplication.