Privacy vs. Scheduling with Others

We understand your wish for privacy, but it defeats the purpose of having a University calendaring system if you make it difficult to schedule meetings with co-workers. In other words, please leave:

“Share this calendar with everyone in the organization UCSB Connect”
See only free/busy (hide details)

With this configuration, people will not see your meeting titles, but will be able to find a time to schedule a meeting with you.

If someone invites you to a meeting (and it shows up on your calendar) and you don’t wish to meet, you can decline the meeting and remove it from your calendar. Agree to send a response when asked, so the person does not show up to the meeting you are not planning to attend.

Please use common sense when inviting others to meetings. For example, before inviting a University VIP, you should contact his/her office staff to find the proper procedure for scheduling with this person.

Please do not invite another department’s resource (eg, classroom or conference room) without checking with the department first.

Making it Difficult for Others May Actually Make it More Difficult for You

By default, your calendar will be set to "Yes" to automatically add invitations to your calendar.  They will appear as tentative on your calendar.  We understand the appeal of disabling “Automatically add invitations to my calendar” by selecting “No, only show invitations to which I have responded.” If you have set this configuration and did not enable meeting notifications, the meeting will not be on your calendar and you won’t be notified it was created. People may show up to a meeting expecting you to be there, and you won’t even know you were invited.

Similarly, in an attempt to keep people from “booking” a conference room, a resource manager may disable “Share this calendar with everyone in the organization UCSB Connect” and disable “Automatically add invitations to my calendar”. However, this does not disable the ability to invite a resource to a meeting. If the resource manager has set this configuration and did not enable meeting notifications, people may show up thinking they have reserved the room.

In both scenarios above, it would be better to:

  1. Allow meetings to be put on the calendar (enable “Automatically add invitations…”)
  2. Decline the meeting (send a response)
  3. Let people see that their meeting is not on the calendar (enable “Share this calendar…”)

Establish Protocol for Calendaring in Your Department

  1. Let people know if there is a procedure for inviting certain individuals to meetings.
  2. Let people know who can schedule a department resource or whom they should contact.
  3. Instruct people to use “Find a Time” when creating a meeting for a colleague and/or a meeting room to avoid double-booking.
  4. Discuss procedures with your resource managers:
  • set sharing and notification for each resource
  • create meetings on the resource calendar and invite people, or create a meeting on an individual’s calendar and invite the resource
  • accept/decline meetings and notify the person who scheduled the resource