[teampractices] Tracking team member calendars?

[Kevin Smith]

I have just now posted a question on the talk page of
https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_IT/Calendars to ask who actually
uses the WMF Sick/Vacation calendar, and whether it should be
decommissioned.

Pretending to schedule a meeting is a viable way to determine if one person
is in or out. It falls apart when you are curious about 5+ people. Is it
possible to set up group aliases in google calendar, allowing you quickly
set up a meeting with a certain 10 people?

Another option is adding everyone's calendar to your own, and then
checking/unchecking them to overlay their availability. That is also fine
for a person or two, but pretty painful with a dozen people.

But asking people to update both their own calendar and a team (or WMF)
calendar is asking for the two to be out of sync. As any programmer knows,
not having a single authoritative source of information is error prone.

I see problems, and I see solutions that cause other problems. I don't yet
see a panacea.



Kevin Smith
Agile Coach
Wikimedia Foundation



*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Help us make it a reality.*

On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 2:27 PM, Arthur Richards <arichards at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> I have found the easiest/most useful method to add vacation time as
> calendar events on my own personal calendar (as Guillaume described). This
> lets others trying to schedule meetings with me see when there is a
> conflict without having to double check against another calendar (one that,
> if everyone actually used it, would be rather noisy and difficult to parse
> through).
>
> I was also under the impression that the WMF sick/vacation calendar was
> defunct? Regardless, I personally stopped using it long ago when it was
> clear not many people were using it - or checking it.
>
>
> On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 1:00 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks all, and especially S for pointing out existing documentation. We
>> so desperately need a single place to find all this wisdom.
>>
>> I remain torn about whether or not to set up team calendars.
>>
>>
>>
>> Kevin Smith
>> Agile Coach
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>>
>>
>> *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
>> the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. Help us make it a reality.*
>>
>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 7:15 PM, S Page <spage at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Do we have any best practices for tracking team member vacations,
>>>> travel, etc.?
>>>>
>>> We have several :)
>>>
>>> The description of WMF Sick/Vacation calendar
>>> <https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=wikimedia.org_ljc5vdg9vevjf5l948m1fsk5u4%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Los_Angeles>
>>> in https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_IT/Calendars says
>>> Add sick, vacation, working remote, OOO, holidays, etc. to this.
>>> That's pretty definitive. Yes it can fill your Google calendar window
>>> ,but it's easy to uncheck a calendar. It's only viewable by
>>> wikimedia.org members
>>>
>>> Meanwhile
>>> https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Staff_handbook/Benefits#Time_Off_Benefits
>>> says "These instructions include how to add your time off plans to shared
>>> calendars", but... they don't! Maybe someone copy-pasted from
>>> https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/ADP_Employee_Self_Service_Portal#Coordinating_Time_Off_with_Calendars
>>> which echoes Guillaume's reply:
>>>
>>>    1. Put your time off on your calendar, and copy (or invite) your
>>>    manager. ...
>>>
>>> (but doesn't mention shared calendars).
>>>
>>> Note you can view an event and More actions > Copy to *Another calendar*,
>>> so creating two calendar events isn't twice the work.
>>>
>>> Nick Wilson (Quiddity) replied:
>>>
>>>> The two teams I work with (CL and Collaboration) both use their team's
>>>> gcalendar (using copied events from personal calendars) to track member's:
>>>> vacations, extended-sickdays, traveldays, etc.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Using a team calendar instead of WMF Sick/Vacation allows staff to be
>>> more open about "out today for drug rehab", and you can use it for
>>> intra-day absences ("Out until 1pm, note missing the deploy"), but doing so
>>> means WMF is inconsistent.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> --
>>> =S Page  WMF Tech writer
>>>
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>>> teampractices at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Arthur Richards
> Team Practices Manager
> [[User:Awjrichards]]
> IRC: awjr
> +1-415-839-6885 x6687
>
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