One of the difficulties with managing public calendars is the different levels of access control. It seems that the person who needs to add an event to a public calendar is never the person who has editor access to that calendar. As a result, users have to track down the administrator to manage editor rights on a case-by-case basis. The administrator may end up taking the simple approach of making everyone an editor to the calendar. But this approach can result in users editing events that are not their own as well as increasing the chance of synchronization inconsistencies. A solution to this dilemma would be to use a resource calendar.

Although the name 'resource' implies some type of physical item such as a conference room or projector, it's technically just a shared calendar that automatically processes meeting invitations. It's a little known fact that you can subscribe to these resource calendars in all of the supported calendaring programs, including Entourage, Outlook, iCal and Kerio Webmail. By using a resource calendar rather than a public calendar, you can give anyone (even people outside of your mail server) the ability to add an event without assigning them editor privileges. So how does it work?

Anyone can view a resource calendar and add events by simply sending the calendar an invitation. The calendar can automatically accept the invitation and display the event publicly. With resource calendars, users are only allowed to modify their own events, eliminating free-for-all editing of other users' events. It's a great tool for sharing events publicly, and it comes with automatic editor access permissions. No administrator necessary! Of course, an administrator still retains ultimate control.

Important note: in contrast to public calendars, resource calendars hide the details of each event by default. To override this behavior, refer to the Knowledge Base article: http://support.kerio.com/kb/592.