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I am a metaphor person. I find that for explaining how things work, metaphors usually offer an easy shortcut. I have been known for some strange ones - how using Google Workspace is like wearing clothes (which is always a good idea), for example.
Today, I would like to ask your patience as I introduce you to yet another strange metaphor to explain important concepts around Google Calendar. We will set out to answer questions like:
Why can I have several Calendars inside Calendar, like team calendars?
What are they used for?
Does it make a difference what Calendar I save an event to?
Can I send event invitations as somebody else?
How can I (as an Executive Assistant) not go bananas with all the calendars I manage?
Xzibit knows a thing or two about naming conventions
Calendars are layers
Calendars are layers
Terminology first: Google Calendar is the service we use. The best calendar since Lotus Notes (which didn't look good but was really powerful) and far superior than what ships with Microsoft Whoosh.
Calendars (in the plural) are the separate calendars or agendas that are contained within Google Calendar. It is not the best choice of wording, I agree.
Google Calendar works like in a design application that lets you draw different layers and then stack them on top of one another. Think like this:
You start with a white sheet of paper (which is your personal calendar). You add all sorts of colorful events on it.
Then you add a pane of glass (your boss' calendar). It already comes pretty well coloured if your boss is a busy person. It overlaps with the event on your white sheet.
Then you add a further pane of glass (some secondary calendar of yours, perhaps your team's vacation calendar). It is almost impossible to see the white sheet anymore.
At this point, when somebody says "I need to meet you and your boss", you would first remove that team calendar glass pane. Now you can see your white sheet of paper again where neither you or your boss has an event. You would then create an event on your sheet of paper, invite your boss and whoever wanted to meet you and Google Calendar will magically add the event for everybody.
Pro tip 1: Looking at others' calendars will reveal their working hours.
Pro tip 2: Calendar layers also contain others' working locations for the day.
Secondary calendars
Secondary calendars
By this point, you will probably be able to answer this popular question: "I would like to create a calendar for my team. I want to put stuff on it and I expect everybody to show up." Is that a good idea?
Moment of silence.
No. If you create a secondary calendar, you have created a glass pane for everybody. Anything you add to that pane of glass will not be reflected on people's underlying paper. And that paper (the primary calendar) is what determines the free/busy state.
Plus you cannot force people to look at that secondary calendar you just created. People may or may not add it to their Google Calendar.
Can I hide behind the secondary calendar?
Can I hide behind the secondary calendar?
Perhaps you have a great event coming up and want to send invitations in the name of "Great event" (that would certainly be an eye catcher). Can you?
No. While you can invite people to an event you created in a secondary calendar, it will always get sent from your account. The only exception are delegated accounts, where you manage somebody else's account.
As an Executive Assistant, how can I keep calendars apart?
As an Executive Assistant, how can I keep calendars apart?
I hope they told you on your first day, otherwise how are you still around? But it builds nicely on our metaphor, so for everybody: EAs who manage multiple partners' agendas keep sane by pulling the glass panes apart. Instead of either seeing an impossibly convoluted, overlapping horror show or constantly hiding and showing calendars, they open several tabs of Google Calendar and show a single glass pane (partner's calendar) in each tab. This also reduces the chance of scheduling on the wrong calendar.
I hope you liked this and this was useful. I secretly think the software designers have similar concepts in their head when they determine how things work and what does and doesn't fit - and big parts of this is actually Google design cannon in form of something called material design (except that material is not supposed to be transparent). Thanks for reading!
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