Meeting rooms, time off and every team’s week, in one calendar everyone can read.
Offices keep rooms in one system, leave in another and each team’s plans in a third. ManageCal puts them on one calendar, with each team working in its own and one view across all of them.
The problems
Three things every shared office argues about.
01
The meeting room is double-booked every Tuesday
Two teams book the boardroom for the same hour because each looked at a different calendar, or at the same one a minute apart. The meeting that loses starts ten minutes late in a corridor.
Give each room a sub-calendar that refuses overlapping events. The second booking is refused when it is saved, with the one it collides with. A weekly meeting is checked across every week of the coming year, so a clash in March is found in October.
TuesdayRooms
09:0011:0013:0015:0017:00
Boardroom
09:00Weekly leadership
11:00Client pitch
12:00Design reviewRefused
Meeting Room 2
10:00Interview
13:00Design review
Focus Room
14:00Workshop prep
Refused in the boardroom, booked in Meeting Room 2 at one o’clock instead.
02
“Who is off next week?” takes three messages to answer
Leave lives in a spreadsheet HR keeps, and the team finds out someone is away when they do not reply. Put time off on a sub-calendar everyone can read, as all-day events that span the days someone is out.
The type of leave is a choice field visible only to people who can edit, so colleagues see who is away and who is covering, and HR sees why. Nothing about the reason is sent to anyone else.
J. MorenoMon 19 – Fri 23 Oct · All day · Time Off
Person
J. Moreno
Covering
A. Braun
Approved
Yes
Leave type: visible only to editors
03
Each team has its own calendar, and nobody can see across them
Sales plans in one place, design in another, and a client kick-off involving both has to be entered twice and kept in step by hand.
In ManageCal each team is a sub-calendar in one calendar, and one event can sit on several of them. The kick-off appears on Sales and on Design, once. Change it and both see the change; editing it needs write access to both, so neither team can move the other’s commitment on its own.
WednesdayTeams
09:0011:0013:0015:0017:00
Sales
09:00Pipeline review
11:00Client kick-off
Design
11:00Client kick-off
14:00Studio time
Operations
10:00Supplier call
15:00IT maintenance
One kick-off, on two teams’ calendars.
A starting set-up
A calendar an office could start with.
Rooms, teams and people in three folders. A company with several offices can give each one its own calendar in the same workspace, each in its own time zone.
Rooms refuse overlaps
Teams do not: two meetings in one team at once is a busy day, not a clash.
Client is searchable
Search covers titles and the text fields everyone can see, so every meeting with a client is one search away.
Leave Type is editors-only
Colleagues see who is away. HR sees why.
OfficeSuggested set-up
Rooms
BoardroomNo overlaps
Meeting Room 2No overlaps
Focus RoomNo overlaps
Teams
Sales
Design
Operations
People
Time Off
Travel
Company Events
Custom fields
OrganiserText
ClientText
AttendeesNumber
Video LinkWeb address
Leave TypeChoice, editors only
Who sees what
The office manager, a team member and a contractor, on the same Tuesday.
The office manager runs the calendar. A team member books rooms and works in their team’s calendar. A contractor in for the week sees when the rooms are taken, and nothing about who is meeting whom.
Office managerAdministrator
Tue 13
09:00Hiring plan
11:00Client pitch
14:00Pipeline review
Every calendar and every detail.
Account managerAdd only · Modify
Tue 13
11:00Client pitch
14:00Pipeline review
Books rooms, runs the Sales calendar. Leadership is not shared.
ContractorRead only, no details
Tue 13
11:00Reserved
Knows when the boardroom is free.
BoardroomSalesLeadership
Questions
What offices ask before they start.
Does ManageCal sync with the calendars people already use?+
Not yet. ManageCal does not import or publish calendar feeds today, so it works as the shared calendar for rooms, teams and leave alongside everyone’s personal one, not as a copy of it.
Can a weekly meeting hold a room for the whole year?+
Yes. A repeating booking on a room that refuses overlaps is checked against every other booking across the coming year, so a clash months ahead is refused now rather than discovered later.
Can people see a room is booked without seeing the meeting?+
Yes. “No details” access shows the time as Reserved and withholds the title and every field. The details are never sent to that person’s browser.
We have offices in different countries. Does that work?+
Each calendar has its own time zone, and a workspace can hold several calendars. Give each office its own, and a nine o’clock meeting stays at nine local time through daylight saving.
How much does it cost for the whole office?+
One price per workspace, not per person: Team is $20 a month for up to 40 people and Business is $50 a month for up to 100. The Free plan covers 5 people. Prices are indicative while ManageCal is in development, and nothing is charged yet.