Need an online calendar

November 22, 2008 9:20 AM

Looking for some sort of online calendar program to schedule events for a large community organization.

Anyone know of a free (or cheap) calendar solution? It could either be hosted on some other site or something that I put on to our website. Want it so that other members can view the calendar but not edit it; would also like to be able to differentiate between types of events, perhaps by color-coding or something like that; ultimate wish list would include some sort of reminder feature, where it could email members prior to events.

posted by Saxon Kane to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Have you looked into Google Calendar? I think it can do everything you want, but your members would need to have Google accounts, AFAIK.
posted by peacheater at 9:28 AM on November 22, 2008

Google calendar has some design constraints you need to work within... We use it on our community site (~12 board members + 100 members) to schedule some events. There are only a few people who can edit it (which is what we want right now) so it works perfectly.

It doesn't inherently have a way to meet your reminder and email feature however.
posted by SirStan at 9:38 AM on November 22, 2008

Google calendar does have a reminder feature (even works with SMS in addition to pop-ups and email), but it has to be set on an individual basis iirc.

You can set up multiple calendars to get the type/color-coding.
posted by idb at 10:14 AM on November 22, 2008

You can also set up the associated Gmail account to forward calendar reminders; if you have the "target" email address be a mailing list, it would notify everyone on the list of the upcoming event.
posted by rkent at 10:24 AM on November 22, 2008

Ditto on GCal -- it's flexible, meets your requirements, etc.
posted by davidmsc at 10:36 AM on November 22, 2008

Response by poster: I have considered google calender (I use it for myself), but the problem is that there are 100+ members, mostly academics, who do not have google accounts and would be too lazy to set one up. Can I make a public google calendar and link to it from a webpage?
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:49 AM on November 22, 2008

Yes, you can directly link to a Google Calendar as a public web page. You can also embed it into other sites too.

The "subscribe a list" approach would work too.

FYI You can sign up to a google service using a non-google account, e.g. [e-mail] can be a google account.
posted by idb at 11:18 AM on November 22, 2008

We use Google calendar with academics where I work and my DOT contacted google, paid some unsubstantial amount of money and set us up with an organizational account. We not only have access to an online calendar, but we can set up appts by checking each other's calendars (you only see your own appts. Other people's appts. are viewed as "busy") and sending invitations to events. If the calendar is open on your computer, you can set reminders. It's pretty cool and we really like it.
posted by suzeQ at 11:39 AM on November 22, 2008

If you want to send out reminders to everyone, you can subscribe a mailing list's e-mail address to the Google Calendar.
posted by qvtqht at 10:14 PM on November 22, 2008

We use Google Calendar embedded on our company intranet, with six color-coded types of events (HR events, paid holidays, other holidays, investor events, volunteer events, paydays). Everyone in the company can see it and no one needs to have a Google account.
posted by Joleta at 8:20 PM on November 23, 2008