Rejoining the workforce, if only temporarily, has reminded me of what it’s like to be productive. That’s not to say that my education is unproductive, but you do get a sense of accomplishment when you come home every night from a 9-5. You also feel some daily pains when it comes to things like team spaces, both physical and virtual. This is especially true if you’re joining an established team with idiosyncrasies to which you haven’t yet grown entirely comfortable.

I made a reference list of rules to obey when using a team Exchange server or other tool supplying a calendar service. While some of the following rules may seem like common sense to you, I challenge you to check yourself against these rules and see if you aren’t violating at least one of them. Actually, in writing these rules I picked things that I do too, but I won’t tell you which ones.

Raymond’s Rules for Team Calendars (Outlook, Google Calendar)

1. All teammates must agree to use the calendar service as their primary method for personal appointment management and the collaborative scheduling tool. *
2. Each member of the team is accountable for their own calendar.
3. Calendars must be shared with openly with all teammates.
4. All calendars must be up to date to provide for efficient meeting scheduling and accountability.
5. All employees are in one of three states at any given time and their calendars should reflect this:
   • Free/Open – No scheduled events or appointments labeled as “Free” to show they do not require direct physical attention.
   • Busy – Unavailable or occupied during the time of this event.
   • Out of the Office – Time period when the employee is not located on campus. (Includes telework, alternate duty locations, vacation, personal days)
     In the event of an unexpected scheduling change the team member should make alterations to reflect that change as soon as feasibly possible.**
6. Tentative appointments should be firmly changed to “Accepted” or “Declined” as soon as meeting attendance is most likely ensured. ***
7. Exceptions are allowed in the form of incalculably, but necessary, overlapping appointments.
8. It is reasonable to accept an event meeting and cancel in the event of an unexpected change.
9. Do not add/save items on your calendar that do not serve a purpose in scheduling your day. Extraneous meetings and unrelated events that a team member does not effect the workday should be removed.
10. Notes/Changes/Modifications to events made on calendars should be performed and tracked through the calendar service to preserve process continuity and centralized storage for meeting related data on changes or additions.
11. Members who plan to actively attend meetings (i.e. offer input, act on authority, plan to ask questions) should be added by the meeting manager to the official roster and be notified of changes like other participants.

*If this a team cannot agree to dedicated use of the system then the team must agree to live in chaos.
**Enabling permissions for a second office-mate to modify a calendar would allow for support for meeting organization and last minute changes.
***All plans are tentative by nature so labeling events as “tentative” implies a further uncertainty than is experienced daily by mortal beings of this universe.

Casual Tips:

• Any foreseeable blocks of work time in which a teammate prefers to be uninterrupted should be labeled on their calendar.
• Further use of color coding to specify certain complex cases may be used, but it should be thoroughly enforced. For example, teleworking means an out of the office status but you are available for phone calls and will be responding to email just as you would if you were in the office, so a color code or tag may apply to this situation to help coworkers.

As with anything, you may disagree or agree, but I hope you’ll communicate with me either way. If I’ve forgotten something that you think belongs on this list, I’d love to hear it. This is only version one, and there will be other rules to come.

Try printing this off and sharing it with your teammates at your next meeting.