Best practice for working with calendars and appointments

Answer every appointment request
If you receive an appointment request, you make a decision using the buttons or menus offered by the program.

Accept or decline, accept with reservation or suggest an alternative date. This is the only way Outlook and especially alternative calendar programs can update your decision in the calendars of all participants.

Do not delete an appointment request
If an appointment request is deleted manually, e.g. because the appointment is already visible in the calendar (subject to reservation), then the appointment is also deleted!

Leave the deletion to the email program by informing your cancellation via the buttons or menus offered by the program.

Send date changes to all participants
Even if Outlook allows you to add more people to an existing appointment and then send the change only to them, the change should still be sent to all participants.

The list of appointment participants will be adapted to the subsequently added participant.

Appointment cancellations
The appointment organizer should always use the appropriate command (button) of the calendar program to cancel an appointment.

In the calendars of the appointment participants, the appointment is only removed when this is confirmed by the respective user via the "Remove from calendar" button. If this is not done, this user continues to appear with the status "busy".

End event series
If a series appointment no longer takes place after a certain point in time, the appointments should not simply be deleted afterwards, but the end time of the appointment series should be changed. Afterwards it is necessary to send the update to all participants.
It is recommended not to run appointment series for more than one year. Then create a new series appointment.

Transfer appointment organization
It is not possible to transfer the status "Organizer of an appointment" to another user. In this case, the appointment should be cancelled or the appointment series terminated at a certain point in time. The new organizer then starts a new appointment or appointment series.

No changes as appointment participant
Outlook generally allows you to edit an appointment or add your own notes. However, an update of the appointment by the organizer overwrites the appointment and thus also the own changes and notes.

Do not move invitation emails
These special messages should not be moved to other folders manually or by inbox rule. MS Outlook in particular requires these messages for further appointment processing in the user's inbox.

After the appointment has been confirmed or cancelled, it is automatically deleted by the email program. This also prevents multiple appointment confirmations, which often lead to multiple entries of appointments.

Selection and use of calendar programs
Experience shows that the programs supported by Mircosoft cause the least problems when working with appointments and calendars and achieve the best results in terms of speed and reliability.

In addition to the "Outlook Web App" (OWA), available worldwide at https://msx.tu-dresden.de, this includes all versions of MS Outlook from version 2007 for Windows and version 2011 for Mac. Further programs are listed in a supportability matrix.

Users for whom the calendar is a central tool should use the calendar programs mentioned here.

Using Calendar Programs from Other Manufacturers
For the occasional calendar use different manufacturers offer calendar programs, which also support the most common Exchange functions.

Our own tests have shown that it is essential to use the buttons and context menus (right-click) offered for appointment actions. Otherwise, calendar inconsistencies will result.

Since programs such as Thunderbird only upgrade the Exchange calendar functionality via several add-ons from different developers, it is important to ensure that the versions are compatible with each other. If a working constellation has been created, the automatic update function of the addons should be switched off.

Calendar Apps of Mobile Devices
The standard calendar apps, no matter which platform, support the integration of your own standard calendar called "Calendar". However, if you want to include other calendars created in the same mailbox or released calendars, there is currently no support from the providers. For the setup of these calendars we offer the DavMail service from the ZIH.