On-Line School Calendar

[AJWhite1970]

Hi

 

Up to now, our school calendar has been done using MRBS and it's worked fine both internally and for parent access.

 

However, as the calendar becomes more complicated and with year groups sometimes split, it is now possible for example that Year 7 could be on two different field trips at the same time, three year 7 sides could be playing rugby at 10am on a Saturday against three different schools etc which is something MRBS doesn't handle well (or at all...).

 

Preferably I'm looking for something free to do this (can room booking + do this?) or happy to purchase something professional.

 

Recommendations most welcome

 

Regards

Andrew

[edutech4schools]

Sign up for Google apps for Education Google Apps for Education | Official Website or Office 365 Home

 

I think both have free calendar although I only use GAPPS at my schools which has shared calendars which can have room bookings etc.

 

Both are free.

[ICS_Tech]

Sign up for Google apps for Education Google Apps for Education | Official Website or Office 365 Home

 

I think both have free calendar although I only use GAPPS at my schools which has shared calendars which can have room bookings etc.

 

Both are free.

 

I would not recommend Office365 for this task.

MS took away the proper ability to publicize & Embed a calendar not too long ago.

 

We had some similar needs (although not as complex as yours sound) and ran into the following issues-

 

1) Will not work with Office 2007 (this is documented, so I can't fully blame MS for it)

2) You CANNOT import a calendar (we had a done an export of a calendar file from our previous calendar solution) into a Shared Calendar. - Importing only works for personal/standard calendar

3) You cannot embed shared O365 calendars

4) The color categorizing you spent much time on organizing and using is wiped out when you share your calendar with the public.

 

Now, if those issue don't apply to your situation, then maybe there's some potential. But it left a very bad taste in my mouth to stumble into these issues one at after another for what seemed like it should be a simple/basic need.

[NotSoFast]

I love Google Apps, but we have found event times sometimes display incorrectly for parents due to time zone settings. Having looked into it, I don't think there is a fix as the settings reside on the client. We have ended up putting the time into the event title as well.