Apps
Calendar
Your mailboxes' calendars at their own address, with Day, Week, Month, Agenda and Year views, Find a Time, repeating events, time zones and meeting invitations sent and answered by email.
Calendar is at calendar.cactive.com.au. Calendars belong to a mailbox, so everyone in a shared mailbox sees and edits the same calendars, and invitations go out from the mailbox's address. Mail links to Calendar from its sidebar, and Mail's Today button (the calendar icon in its header) shows the day's events without leaving your inbox, with Yes, Maybe and No on invitations. Links to Calendar's former place in Mail (/<org>/calendar) open here.
Access
| Scope | Allows |
|---|---|
calendar:read | See calendars and events in mailboxes you're a member of. |
calendar:write | Create and change calendars and events, answer invitations, import events. |
Every role has both. Being an admin doesn't open a mailbox's calendars: like mail, they're for the mailbox's members. See Roles and scopes.
Calendars
Each mailbox starts with a calendar named Calendar, its default: invitations from other people land there, and it can't be deleted. Add more (up to 50) with + next to Calendars in the sidebar, each with a name, colour and description. Tick or untick a calendar to show or hide its events, or choose Show only this in its … menu; that choice is kept in your browser. The menu also edits the calendar, imports or exports an .ics file, or deletes it with its events. If you belong to more than one mailbox, choose which one's calendars to see under Mailbox.
Other Calendars adds dates from other apps, read-only and never stored as events:
- Tasks: your due issues, sprint starts and ends and releases from Tasks. Choosing one opens it in Tasks.
- Birthdays: your contacts' birthdays, with their age when the year is known (a 29 February birthday shows on 28 February in other years). Choosing one opens Contacts.
Views
| View | Shows | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Day | One day's hours, with all-day events above. Phones open here. | D |
| Week | Seven days (or five without weekends). | W |
| Month | Six weeks, three events a day and how many more. | M |
| Agenda | The next 30 days as a list, days without events left out. | A |
| Year | Twelve small months, each day shaded by how much is on. | Y |
| Find a Time | When you and your guests are free (below). | F |
Today (T) and the arrows (J and K, or → and ←) move through time; the small month in the sidebar picks a day. C makes a new event, / searches and S opens Settings; ? lists every shortcut. Print prints the view as shown.
Times are shown in your browser's time zone. An event keeps the time zone it was created in, so a weekly 9:00 meeting in Melbourne stays at 9:00 Melbourne time across daylight saving changes, wherever you view it from. All-day events are dates and show on the same days everywhere. Add up to three other time zones in Settings to see their hours beside yours in Day and Week.
Making and moving events
Click an empty time in Day or Week for an event of your default length there, or press and drag down the column to set its start and end. Click a day in Month for an event at the start of your working day, or the all-day row for an all-day event.
Drag an event to move it, to another day too, or drag its lower edge to change when it ends; in Month, drag an event to another day. Events without guests or repeats move at once, with Undo. Moving a repeating event or one with guests opens it with the new times, so you can choose which events change and whether guests are emailed.
Events
An event has a title, start and end (or All day), a time zone, a repeat rule, a calendar, guests, a location, a description, a reminder and how it shows your time (Busy, Free, Tentative, Out of office, Working elsewhere). New events start with the reminder and length you choose in Settings.
Repeat offers daily, weekdays, weekly, monthly (on a date, or on the first to fourth or last weekday) and yearly rules for the start date, or Custom…: every N days, weeks, months or years, the weekdays of a weekly rule, and an end (never, on a date, or after a number of times).
Changing or deleting one occurrence of a repeating event asks whether it applies to This event, This and following events or All events. Changing all events' time or repeat rule drops changes made to single occurrences. This and following events ends the series before that occurrence and starts a new series there with your changes (a new repeat rule applies from there on; a repeat that ended after a number of times keeps the rest of them); guests get both. Deleting this and following ends the series before the occurrence.
Search
The search in the header finds events whose title or place has every word you type (accents and case don't matter), from a year back to two years ahead: upcoming ones first, then earlier ones, one row per repeating event. Choosing a result shows its day and opens it.
Find a Time
Add guests, choose how long, and Find a Time shows the week: for each day how many times suit everyone, and for the day you pick, everyone's busy times on a timeline with the times everyone is free marked. Suggested times lists the first ones within your working hours; choose one, or click a timeline, for a new event at that time with the guests invited. Past the week's last working day it opens on the next week.
The event dialog has the same for one event: the day of the event for you and the guests, and Find a time moves the event to the first time in the next two weeks within working hours when nobody is busy or out of office.
Only times and busy status are shared, never titles or details; events marked Free, cancelled events and invitations someone declined don't count, and tentative or working-elsewhere time doesn't block a time. Guests outside the organization can't be seen and are listed as such. The calendar API answers the same for up to 20 addresses and 62 days at a time.
Invitations
Add guests by email address (Contacts and people you've written to are suggested). When you save, guests get an invitation by email from the mailbox's address, with the event attached as iCalendar (text/calendar), which mail apps such as Apple Mail, Outlook and Gmail show with buttons to answer. Uncheck Email guests to save without emailing. Updates go to every guest; removed guests and the guests of a deleted event get a cancellation. Changing the time asks guests to answer again.
Invitations need the mailbox's domain to be active; otherwise the event is saved and Calendar says the invitations weren't sent. They count toward your organization's daily sending limit.
Answers come back by email and update each guest's status on the event: going, maybe, not going or awaiting reply. Answers are accepted only from the guest's own address.
When a guest delegates the invitation to someone else, the delegate is added to the event with the guest's role, awaiting their answer, and the guest shows as delegated. Some mail apps let guests propose a new time or ask for the latest details; the message shows Accept new time and Decline (accepting moves the event and sends everyone the update; the guest who proposed counts as going, the others are asked again), or Send latest (sends that guest the event as it is now). Only the organizer sees these, and only for guests of the event.
When someone else invites the mailbox, the invitation is added to the default calendar as tentative, with a dashed edge, until you answer Yes, Maybe or No on the event; your answer is emailed to the organizer. Delegate hands the invitation to someone else: they get the invitation and the organizer is told. Propose time sends the organizer another time for the event (or one occurrence); nothing changes until they accept it. The organizer's updates replace the event (your answer is kept unless the time changed), and cancellations mark it canceled. Updates and cancellations are accepted only from the organizer's domain, and invitations in spam are ignored.
Reminders
Reminders show while Calendar or Mail is open in a browser tab: a notice at the reminder time with the event's time and place (once per browser for each app's tabs). Allow Desktop alerts (Settings → Reminders, or on a reminder) to also get system notifications when the tab is in the background. To get reminders when neither app is open, turn on Email reminders for the mailbox in Settings → Reminders: each reminder then also arrives in the mailbox's inbox (and on phones that sync it).
Settings
Settings at the foot of the sidebar opens over the calendar. They're saved on your account, so they're the same on every computer you sign in on, except email reminders, which belong to the mailbox.
- General: the day weeks start on, the view Calendar opens in, whether to show weekends and declined events.
- Working Hours: when your day starts and ends, and which days you work. Outside them Day and Week are shaded, and Find a Time doesn't suggest times.
- Time Zones: up to three other zones shown beside the hours.
- New Events: the reminder and length new events start with.
- Reminders: desktop alerts in this browser, and email reminders for each mailbox.
- Your Calendars and Other Calendars: the same as the sidebar's.
On your phone and Mac
Links to Calendar open the calendar in the Mail and Home phone apps when they're installed. Calendar on Mac shows the mailbox's calendars when the mailbox is added as an Exchange account; see Apple devices.
Import and export
Import .ics adds the events in an iCalendar file (up to 5 MB and 2,000 events) to a calendar; events already there (same UID) are replaced. Times without a time zone are read in your browser's time zone. Export .ics downloads the calendar with time zone definitions, repeat rules and changed occurrences. Properties Calendar doesn't show, such as attachments or other apps' fields, are kept and exported again.
API
The calendar API lists occurrences in a window with repeating events expanded, searches events, and creates, changes, deletes, answers, imports and exports events.