Category sharing with shared projects

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Errol Sayre

I think this is another one I remember seeing else where.

Is there anyway in Entourage 2004 to make sure that shared project items
will end up with the same categories on all ends of the sharing scene? We've
been using categories to set the status (Confirmed, Tentative, Cancelled,
etc.) of events and need to be able to share these.

Basically, I need much more control over things than Entourage gives and am
thinking I should have pushed for NUDC...

Thanks for all the help...

Errol Sayre
 
D

Dave Cortright

I think this is another one I remember seeing else where.

Is there anyway in Entourage 2004 to make sure that shared project items
will end up with the same categories on all ends of the sharing scene? We've
been using categories to set the status (Confirmed, Tentative, Cancelled,
etc.) of events and need to be able to share these.

No, categories are not shared. I note that many of my categories are
relative (e.g. Friend, family, co-worker, partner) so it wouldn't
necessarily make sense for others.

I'd suggest you simply do your encoding in the title field for the event.
 
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Errol Sayre

Hmmm. That's exactly the conclusion I came to... It would make some sense
for Categories not to be shared... However, due to the many other
idiosyncrasies of Entourage, my work group is using the categories as a way
to distinguish between "Confirmed", "Cancelled", and "Tentative" calendar
events. As this has been the best way for us to be able to keep events
separated and be able to distinguish between them when printing schedules,
we need to either maintain these categories over the shared project or find
an alternate way to distinguish these events that would work for calendar
printing and others.

We had considered using a separate project called "Cancelled" events that
would help us keep track of items that we needed to keep but didn't want to
see on the calendar... However this approach would take items from all other
projects and then we'd need a way to distinguish them to "undelete" them if
the cancelled event was reinstated...

I propose that Entourage should share any categories from shared items. If
there are personal categories, they most likely won't be involved with items
in shared projects. The integrity of the event needs to be maintained across
the board... If one person marks a shared item as the "EMERGENCY PAY
ATTENTION TO THIS EVENT!!!" category, it should show up in everyone's shared
projects.

Thanks for the reply, by the way :)

Errol Sayre
 
D

Dave Cortright

Hmmm. That's exactly the conclusion I came to... It would make some sense
for Categories not to be shared... However, due to the many other
idiosyncrasies of Entourage, my work group is using the categories as a way
to distinguish between "Confirmed", "Cancelled", and "Tentative" calendar
events.

Thinking about this more, there is already a mechanism built into Entourage
to support Accept/Decline/Tentative for meeting requests. why don't you
simply use the Invite button in calendar events and send the invitation via
e-mail? Then recipients can individually accept or decline, which gives you
more resolution that a single category per event can.
 
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Errol Sayre

That feature only is available to invitees... Most frequently the events in
the calendar are for a workgroup and the events are being shared in a
project that all members subscribe to... As such, sending invitations are
redundant and impractical. Typically the person entering the event in the
calendar is the one who sets this tentative, canceled, or confirmed status
anyway, which means it's fundamentally impossible to use that feature. Which
is why we use the categories...
 
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