Privacy and Group Scheduling in Oracle Calendar

The prominent feature of a central calendaring system is the ability to selectively share information about your schedule with others on campus. Oracle Calendar allows great flexibility in controlling exactly what type of information others may view. You may restrict what others see on your calendar on a meeting by meeting basis, or on a person by person basis. The most common configuration may involve setting the view so that only selected colleagues will see full information about your calendar, while "Rice at large" will see only blocks of time.

The initial privacy settings for your new Oracle Calendar account will be relatively open; by default, all other users will be able to see time blocks on your calendar and to invite you to meetings. To change settings, please refer to the documentation on Controlling Access to your Oracle Calendar calendar.

One of the main functions of Oracle Calendar is to simplify meeting scheduling. If all the proposed participants in a planned meeting are using Oracle Calendar, the program can check schedules for conflicts or propose alternate times when everyone is free. This particular function of group calendaring replaces a series of phone calls or emails to find time slots for planned meetings.

In order for group scheduling to work, you must share with your colleagues times when you are busy. If you do not intend to use Oracle Calendar as a group scheduling tool, you may choose to prevent others from viewing anything about your calendar at all. However, you should be aware that when you choose a security setting which does not allow any information about your schedule to be shared, the program will not be able to determine whether you are free or not for a particular meeting.