My calendar is schizophrenic. We've tried therapy. We've tried medication. Unfortunately, work/life balance is suffering as my multiple personalities fight for calendar time. The problem is simple:
I have no unified calendar.
That's sort of scary. There is no one place where I can go look to figure out where I am supposed to be and when. There is no one canonical source that I, or someone else, can consult when committing my time. It isn't from lack of effort. My Outlook calendar is "supposed to be" my canonical calendar. I try to keep it up to date. Unfortunately, the natural compartmentalization of my world means it is an uphill battle.
First, there is Outlook. The corporate standard my organization uses for calendaring (against an exchange server). Coworkers schedule meetings against it. I sync it to my phone. It represents my day to day view of where I should be.
Then there is Salesforce.com. This is where our sales organization schedules my time. It holds customer meetings, prospect meetings, partner meetings, marketing events and webinars.
Then there is google calendar. This is where I've been experimenting with my personal calendar. It is nice because it is easy to share with my friends and family.
Unfortunately, three calendars equals three distinct views of the world. Salesforce has a mediocre Outlook integration. Those that have used it know how fragile it can be. Microsoft's implementation of ical is so non-standard Google usually just throws up its hands and give me an error telling me it can't be imported. In the rare times when it all works well, the process is manual and a pain.
One of the interesting trends in Enterprise 2.0 is the drive for tools that unify work/life management without compromises. It will be interesting to see what evolves for unified calendaring. Perhaps Google's enterprise unit will solve the problem. Perhaps Microsoft will embrace the coming changes in work patterns and extend it's office dominance. Perhaps someone like myself who has to deal with the problem on a daily basis will leverage the impressive toolsets available today to create an elegant solution to calendar schizophrenia.
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