Tip of the Week: Managing Shared Calendar Events during the Zimbra/Google Transition

Until July 7th, Carleton will be divided between people who use Zimbra and people who use Gmail and Google Calendar. Email will flow seamlessly during this time, but there will be some calendar oddities until everyone has transitioned to Google. Here are two things to know about managing your calendar while the campus goes through the transition to Google.

Finding times to meet with other people

Zimbra cannot see Google Calendars, and Google cannot see Zimbra calendars, so if you use calendars to help you find times when multiple people will be free to meet, this time of transition will require a little extra work. (These instructions are also available in our FAQ here and here.)

If you are on Zimbra

If you add an attendee to a meeting, and that attendee has moved to Google, you will see that person’s availability as a solid pale yellow bar like so:

If this happens:

1. Go to https://calendar.carleton.edu/ and log into the Carleton login screen with your regular Carleton username and password. 
2. Pretend you are creating an event in this Carleton Google Calendar but click “Edit Event” rather than actually creating the event.
3. Click the “Find a Time” tab.
4. Enter the other person’s email address to the “Add Guests” box on the right.
5. You should now be able to see whether that person is available at that time or not.
6. Head back to Zimbra and book the appointment, adding the other person’s email address to the attendee list as normal. That person will get the invite and be able to add the even to their Google Calendars as normal.

Here is a short video of me doing steps 2-5.

If you’re on Google Calendar

You won’t get any prompt to help you know whether the other person has moved to Google yet. If you suspect that the person may still be in Zimbra, put their username into this URL:
https://mail.carleton.edu/home/USERNAME?view=workWeek&fmt=freebusy and change the “USERNAME” in that URL to the username of the person you wish to find.

Modifying meeting times

If you invite someone from the other calendaring system to an event (you’re on Zimbra and they’re on Google, or the other way around), and then you modify that event, the other person will get a NEW meeting invitation. Both events will show up on their calendar. We recommend including a message in your event modification stating that this is a modified event. That way the  other person can delete the old version of the event.