Blameless Event ownership transfers

Doing it wrong

Hayden has messed up event scheduling before and plays it save: Everything stays as it was, Hayden will just not show up. Eventually, somebody points out that you can decline your own events without the event catching fire, so Hayden declines.

Quinn continues the event. Recently, the team began recording the events, which helps busy VIPs keep up to date if they miss one.

Problems arise when somebody needs to dial into the Meet and can't - because the Meet is old and doesn't support telephone numbers yet. Quinn didn't know that was possible (but dial-in is fairly recent), but can't fix it because only Hayden can edit the event. Hayden doesn't want to edit the event out of fear to send tons of messages to the VIPs, or (even worse) they'd have to RSVP again.

When the third VIP misses the event because of a lack of dial-in and somebody brings up going back to Webex, Hayden removes the Meet URL and adds it again. To everybody's horror, nothing changes. No dial-in. Quinn's reputation is in tatters.

It all goes south when a VIP asks Quinn to share the recording with a director not present at the event. Quinn can't share it! To everybody's dismay, they discover that Hayden still owns each and every of these confidential recordings. The next day, Quinn calls in sick.

Doing it right

G Suite is powerful but can be overwhelming for newbies. "Quinn has a private Gmail account, who needs training" doesn't fly with the onboarding team in Hayden & Quinn's office. HR and L&D made sure Quinn got a thorough introduction to their productivity tools.

Hayden is also an avid blog reader and knows exactly what triggers calendar notifications: Changing the web conferencing field will cause an update to be sent - but only changing the start date/time of the event (and recurrence) will reset the RSVP status. Therefore, Hayden can calmly edit the event and NOT send an update notice. People's Calendars will get updated silently, but nobody gets emails.

Hayden's favorite blog has kept silent about Meet URL changes, but that changed today, lucky Hayden:

• When you remove an existing URL, you can add it back. That servers as an undo feature.

• When you remove an existing URL, save, then edit again and add a URL, you get a new one.

Hayden removes the URL, saves the event (no updates, thanks).

Hayden also knows that the person who created the Meet URL owns that Meet's recordings. So Hayden changes event ownership to Quinn.

Then, Quinn edits the event and adds a new Meet URL. Quinn will own all recordings in the future. And, when saving: No updates please. Quinn also removes Hayden from the guest list.

• Event ownership corrected

• Meet recording ownership corrected

• No email sent.

Quinn and Hayden owe each other a couple of beers.