I work for a small division (under 10 employees) of a medium company
(500 employees).  We are networked and mostly use Windows XP, though a
few in my division are still running on Windows 2000 (they should be
receiving an upgrade soon).  We use MS Outlook, and we can view
anothers' individual calendar by going to File>Open>Other User's
Folder; ...or we can use the "Group Schedules" feature.  We don't like
the view the Group Schedule gives us; it is not detailed enough and
does not provide monthly views. It also seems a bit confusing for a
few who are not overly computer literate in our office.  The view on
individual calenders (i.e., monthly view) is what we want, but we need
to have a "Master Calender" where everyone's (in our division)
calender plus 2-4 resources (laptop, company car, etc.) can be viewed
on a single calendar.  We
are currently doing this with a large paper calendar located in a
central place.  This seems so archaic to me... What other options do
we have - is their other PIM software we should be using?

Hello tritoshemera-ga:

Based on the situation you have described, and on the assumption that
the individuals are comfortable using Outlook for their own personal
calendars, then it looks like the best solution for you is:

Add-On Products Exchange Central
http://www.ms-add-on.com/products_exchange_eng.htm

This product integrates directly into Outlook (and works with your
Exchange server) to deliver the Team Calendar view (along with the
ability to include resources after you define them in Exchange).

Please check out the product Flash demos to see the service in action.
The links are on the page above. You can also download a 5-user demo
version that will give you 30 days to evaluate the software before
deciding if you want to buy it.

Note, though, that the current pricing for their 'Lite' version is
$755 USD (handles up to 25 users/resources). It's worth it for what
the package delivers, but as you did not indicate a budget I hope that
this is not too pricey! Any other multi-user package that integrates
with Outlook and Exchange would be as expensive. Those that do not
integrate, will require everyone to change their personal scheduling
software.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

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Clarification of Answer by aht-ga on 27 Feb 2004 13:16 PST

Search Strategy:

central calendar workgroup
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=central+calendar+workgroup

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Clarification of Answer by aht-ga on 27 Feb 2004 21:31 PST

Unfortunately, I don't have $755 to lend anyone! 

However, let's say you have 9 people who will all be using this
solution. That's $84/person/yr, or $7/person/month. If we say that
there are 20 work days in a month, that's $0.35/person/day. So, if the
use of this software can save even 10 minutes per person each day,
it'll pay for itself in a few months.

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Thanks much for the answer -- this is exactly the product we're
looking for.  Do you happen to have $755 we can borrow?