Timeshare managing solution.

May 20, 2010 4:29 AM

I need to set up some kind of simple shared calendar for a group of four families that share a summer cottage. We need it in order to sort out who has booked what weeks and to book the free weeks.

It would be great the solution also included some kind of message board.

The key thing however is the calendar. The simpler the better. Im not that happy about google calendar - especially since not everyone has an account.

I have acces to a server so i would be able to do some setup if needed.

Any suggestions?

posted by FidelDonson to computers & internet (4 answers total)

I'd stick with Google Calender, myself.

especially since not everyone has an account

Why is this a factor? It seems that whatever you choose, at least some of those people/families will have to do something they aren't used to doing. Why is it better if everyone has to do something new and unfamiliar?
posted by jon1270 at 5:05 AM on May 20, 2010

With Google calendar you can make a calendar public, just have one person manage the calendar and the others can just request changes.
posted by wongcorgi at 5:55 AM on May 20, 2010

If you really don't want people to have to sign up for things, then the easiest way is to make an Excel spreadsheet up.

Each column should indicate one day in all the months you want to cover. So it should start 1 2 3 4 up to 28 29 30 then back to 1 2 3 4 for the next month.

Each row should be the name of the person you want to get holiday dates from.

Each person should then mark an X in the dates for each of the months they cannot do on the row relating to their name. Mail it out, get them to fit it in and send it either back on onwards to someone else. If it comes back to you then you'll need to merge the results into one document.

It should therefore be easy to spot the free dates as they won't have any X's in the column.

If you want to spruce it up a bit:

- Mark each of the weekends in a slightly different background colour. This makes it easier to spot when the weekend are.
- Either above or below the day include the first letter of the name of the weekday (ie. M T W T F S S). This, again, makes it easier for people to understand.
- Make a Conditional Formatting rule up for the entire grid that says when the cell contains an "X", set the background colour to red. Again, easier to understand and read.
- At the very bottom, create a formula that counts the number of X's in the range of cells above it and indicate if this total is 0. This will show you exactly where there are free days. For example, =IF(COUNTIF(E4:E12, "X")=0, "Yes", "") will display a "Yes" indicating this is a good day to go if there aren't any X's between E4 and E12.
posted by mr_silver at 6:47 AM on May 20, 2010

Doodle might work for you.
posted by look busy at 7:25 AM on May 20, 2010