Calendar

Every user gets a personal calendar. You can schedule meetings and share calendars among users via the web interface, your mobile or desktop computer.

The calendar module supports:

The user can be given the following permissions on the module

Type	Description
Change calendars	Ability to create new calendars. While still following ACLs for existing calendars.
Change categories	Ability to create new categories. Global categories can only be created by the System Administrator.
Change resources	Ability to manage resources and resource groups.

Calendar Types

There are two calendar types:

Owned calendar
- owner field is set.
- All users act on behalf of the owner.
- Accepting invites or sending invitations is done in the owner’s name (secretary model).
Shared calendar
- owner field is empty.
- Each user acts as themselves.
- Accepting invites or sending invitations is done in the current user’s name.

Invites

Invites are events organized by another user (possibly on a different server).

Constraints:

Participants cannot reschedule the event.
Allowed actions:
- Move to another calendar.
- Delete from calendar.
For recurring invites:
- Move/Delete applies only to the full series.
- Individual instances can be declined.

Personal Calendar

Every user with access to the calendar module has a personal calendar by default. If a user is not allowed to create or modify calendars, and does not have at least one writable calendar, a dialog is shown prompting the user to create a new personal calendar.

Subscribing

You can subscribe to shared calendars via the more options menu button next to calendars:

You can unsubscribe at any time via the more options menu next to the calendar.

Add remote calendar

In the more options menu shown above you also find the “Add calendar from link” option. That option allows you to add a remote public calendar published in vCalendar (*.ics) format.

Note

There’s also a DAV client module that allows you to add remote caldav calendars (like Nextcloud or iCloud) that synchronizes bi directional.

Import and export

You can import and export vcalendar (*.ics) files via the more menu:

Sharing

Sharing calendars works similar to the default procedure. By default calendars are only visible to the calendar owner. You can change that at the Default permissions.

After sharing a calendar the sharee is then able to subscribe to the calendar and see it in its list.

Calendars have the following permission levels

Level	Description
Read free/busy	The user may read the free-busy information for this calendar.
Read only	The user may read the events in this calendar.
Update private	The user may modify per-user properties on all events in the calendar, even if they would not otherwise have permission to modify that event. These properties are all be stored per-user, and changes do not affect any other user of the calendar. (freebusy status / alerts)
RSVP	The user may modify the participation status of any Participant object that corresponds to one of the user’s ParticipantIdentity objects in the account, even if they would not otherwise have permission to modify that event
Write own	The user may create, modify or destroy an event on this calendar if either they are the owner of the event (see below) or the event has no owner. This means the user may also transfer ownership by updating an event so they are no longer an owner.
Write all	The user may create, modify or destroy all events in this calendar, or move events to or from this calendar. At this level users can see private event texts
Manage	The user may modify the permissions for this calendar.

When someone invites another GroupOffice user they will be owner/organizer of the event, the event will be added in the receiving user’s personal/default calendar. Because that user is not the organizer he will only have RSVP permissions.

Users can share a direct link to a specific day and view in the calendar by copying the address in the browser.

Views

The calendar module comes with multiple views. Either merged in one regular view or each calendar displayed unerneath each other in separate rows.

You can select a view in the middle of the top toolbar. There are 5 type of views:

../_images/day_column.png — Day column view

The day column view can show 1 to 7 days in a row. Each day being a column. The current day will show circled with the accent color. When the current day is visible a time bar will show at the current time. New events can be added by clicking and holding down the mouse button at the start time then drag the mouse down to the end time and let go. This will open a new event window with the selected time entered.

An unmerged view will put the calendars underneath each other:

Each row in this view will be a single week. When you select the month view, it will show all the weeks in the select month. You can create a multi day event by press the mouse button in one day and releasing it in another. The week numbers and dates are links to the column view with the selected week or day.

The year view is an overview of a full year. It will show dot with the event for each day. The day, month and weeks are clickable to navigate to a specific view.

If multiple calendars are selected, the user might want to split the events of each one. The split view will show a row for each calendar. it can show 1 to 7 days depending on the selection that is made.

../_images/picker_select_view.gif — Selecting a time span

Select any custom date range by dragging over the date picker. The Calendar view adapts to your selection. Selections of 2 till 7 days will show the columns view. Selections of over 8 days will be displayed in the week row view. If the user is looking at the split view selection up to 7 days will remain visible.

There is a trick to create a larger split view, The address bar will show something like:

#calendar/split-5/2025-06-15

The number 5 is the amount of days to show starting at 15 June 2026. You can replace this in any view with any number Because larger numbers will likely not fit on your screen in a usable manner, this is not part of the user interface.

Settings

Calendar settings can be found under My Account -> Calendar

Users are able to change their default calendar for incoming invites and new event. They can set the raster size for the column view. This is used to snap the duration when dragging, moving or resizing an event on this view the timespan will snap to 1 hour, 30 minute, 15 minutes or 5 minutes.

Users can select a default view to start in when they open the calendar. They can select a default duration for the month view (where each row is a week) In this view events are created with a single click. If a multi-day event is created here the default duration value is ignored and GroupOffice will default to full-day instead

In the settings users can choose to automatically process the incoming invites. When the checkbox is enabled. GroupOffice will periodically check for new e-mail with an ICS attachment. If the attachment is an invitation it will be added to the default calendar the event can then also be accepted or declined from the calendar.

After the event is added the organizer could send an important update. This can also be auto applied.

Resources

It’s possible to create resources in GroupOffice to manage meeting rooms or company cars for example. The resources are organized in groups and can have multiple administrators per group. Administrators must check and approve resource bookings. The resources are part of the calendar module and also work together with custom fields.

Creating groups

Groups are useful to organize resources. You could have the following groups for example:

Meeting rooms
Cars
Books
etc.

To open the resource group management go to:

Calendar -> 3-dots top right -> Resources… -> + button next to Groups

Enter a name for the group and click “Save”. You can also select the custom field sets you want to use with this type of resource. For meeting rooms you might want to create a field set with a check box for lunch, a beamer or a text field for the number of persons.

It’s required to add at least one administrator to the group. A group administrator must check and approve a booking.

Note

Permissions for administrators

Administrators will automatically be granted write permissions for the resources in this group when you add them. Permissions will NOT be automatically removed because this might lead to unwanted deletion of permissions.

Creating resources

After you set up a resource group you can add resources. Go to:

Calendar -> 3-dots top right -> Resources…-> + button next to Resources

Enter a name and click on “Save”.

Note

Permissions

Give users that need to book this resource read permissions. They don’t need write permissions. If you give them write permissions they will be able to accept their own bookings and that’s probably not what you want.

After at least one resource is created users can subscribe to the corresponding resource calendar.

Video meetings

To plan a video meeting, users can insert a link to the video meeting in the location field When configured, there will be a button with a video camera and plus sign next to the field.

GroupOffice currently has two modules providing video meeting links:

Creating categories

GroupOffice supports three types of categories - Global categories: Those can only be created by the administration. They are always available to be used by any users. - Per calendar categories: The access depends on whether the user has access to the calendar they belong to. They are only shown when the user is subscribed to the calendar. - Personal categories: Only for the user who created it. Not seen or usable by others. Permission to create / change categories is given in the Calendar module permissions.

Creating appointments

../_images/new-event.png — Event dialog

When creating a new appointment, users can click and drag on any of the calendar views to select a time period. The default calendar is the calendar selected in the list of calendars on the left. This is indicated by a background color. The checkbox is to show/hide the event on the calendar. The above form window is shown when a time period is selected.

Title: Title of the event

Calendar: Calendar this event is saved into. Only calendars the user is allowed to write into are shown.

Location: Can be a physical location of a meeting link

All day: When active the event only has a date and time will span the full day independent of the timezone.

Recurring: This will show a list of common recurring rules. It will take the start value as first occurrence. If the needed rule is not in the list or the user would like to specify an end time, click Customize for more options Invite people / Add resources: see below

Reminder: available options would depend in the chosen calendar and whether the event is all day or not. The calendar default is the default for new events. Users can set this to None (no reminder) or pick a different time. Reminders are set per user. Another user with access to the event will not have the reminder set but they can choice to set a reminder for themselves.

Categories: Users can add 1 or more categories to the event. The category’s color will be displayed in the calendar view.

Free/Busy: This is set per user. Each user can indicate whether they are shown busy or free in the schedule during this event.

Visibiltity: there are 3 options. - Public: users with read access to the calendar can see the content of the event. - Private: users up until write own access can not see the content but do see you are busy. - Secret: the event is only every shown to the owner of the calendar.

Invite people / Booking a resource

The invitation field in the event form will show a list of Principals. A principal is an individual or a resource.

When a principal is added the current user is also added as organizer. Organizers are recognized by the icon in front. When searching for participants some individuals are shown in bold. This indecates they are local GroupOffice users instead of external contacts. Local users, for example, can grant others free/busy access to their calendar.

Resources also have an availability schedule. They consist of a single calendar that is equal to their schedule. The availability schedule of a user is a bit more complex. It is based on the following rules:

The user is subscribed to the calendar.
The Include in Availability property of the calendar for the user is “All” or “Attending”.
If “attending”, then the user is a participant of the event, and has “accepted” or is “tentative”.
The user has Free/Busy permission for the calendar.
The event’s “privacy” property is not “secret”.
The Free/Busy status of the event is “busy”
The event is not cancelled.

When the event is saved a confirmation dialog appears asking to send an e-mail to all administrators of resources, and all participants (internal and external) they can then accept or decline the invite.

The administrator of the resource must approve the booking unless you are an administrator yourself. When an individual accepts an invite the organizer will receive a reply with their participation status.

Replies are immediately processed for internal users. Participation replies from external users are processed when the e-mail message is viewed or if automatic email reply processing is enabled in the settings.

Accepting or declining a booking

When you are a resource administrator and you get an e-mail like displayed above, you can click on the link to open the booking or you can subscribe to the resource calendar and accept the request from there.

You can change the status to Accepted or Declined in the dialog. After saving it, an e-mail will go out to the user.

Notifications

Event reminders include five distinct alert types:

Invited
- Shown when: An event is created via automatic email invitation import.
- Removed when: The user changes their participation status or the event is canceled.
- Stale when: The event has started.
Updated/Cancelled by Organizer
- Shown when: An event is updated via automatic email import.
- Removed when: The event is changed or removed by the user.
- Stale when: The event has started.
Created for You
- Shown when: Another user adds an event to your calendar.
- Removed when: Only manually.
- Stale when: The event has ended.
Alarm
- Shown when: At a predefined alert time.
- Removed when: The user acknowledges the notification.
- Stale when: If the event has ended.
Alarm per Instance
- Shown when: The user sets an alarm for a specific instance of a recurring event.
- Removed when: Only manually.
- Stale when: After the instance has ended.