Calendar Overview

SmarterMail's calendar feature takes the burden out of organizing your schedule and is accessible simply by using a standard web browser on any desktop, laptop or mobile device. Calendars can also sync to desktop and mobile email clients, calendar apps, and more. SmarterMail's calendar system is extremely flexible and includes many options that make it easy to keep track of important events, including:

The ability to create and sync multiple personal calendars.
Fully configurable appointments with optional recurrence rules.
Email notification and notification within SmarterMail of upcoming appointments.
Overlay view to display multiple calendars, tasks and conference rooms on the same calendar.
Invitation send status. (I.e., a banner appears on an appointment if the invitation has not been sent.)
Attendee and invitation status tracking.
Conference room availability and scheduling.
Attendee availability information.
Online meeting creating and scheduling, which means you can create an online meeting to be used for a meeting as part of creating and sending the meeting invite.
Complete integration with Outlook (for Windows and Mac), eM Client, mobile apps, and more.

To view multiple calendars or tasks at once, simply click the checkbox next to the resource you want to show/hide. The options available are based on a user's personal calendars and task list PLUS any shared calendars, task lists or conference rooms that have been shared with you and subsequently mapped to your calendar.

Navigating Your Calendar

By default, when you first access your calendar, the Agenda view will be displayed. This view displays all of the meetings and appointments that are scheduled for the following 2-week period, beginning with the current day. You can change this view to whatever you like, and when you close your browser, SmarterMail will store which view you were last using, then open that view the next time you open your calendar. If you delete browser cookies, the calendar view will reset to the Agenda view. Essentially, there are five (5) different Views that toggle between the different ways that SmarterMail displays your events:

Month - The monthly view displays all appointments and tasks scheduled for the month, with the current day highlighted. It serves as an at-a-glance type of calendar that outlines a general idea of the upcoming events over the next 30 days.
Week - The weekly view is intended as more of an agenda-type view and displays all appointments scheduled for the week. If configured, this view also displays the start and due dates for tasks.
Day - The daily view is a planner-type view that displays all appointments scheduled for the day. If configured, this view also displays any applicable start or due times for tasks.
Agenda - The Agenda view mimics the Month view, but instead of displaying all appointments and events as a calendar, a rolling 14 days is presented in list form, starting with the current day. Shared calendars and resources can be shown or hidden, and the list can then be printed out and handed to a personal assistant or other individual.
Schedule - A horizontal view of your subscribed calendars with the time of day arranged vertically. This allows you to organize your day by seeing the appointments you have at what time, and on which calendar. The current time is shown with a horizontal red line.
Timeline - Similar to Schedule view, but the time of day is arranged horizontally and each of your subscribed calendars is arranged vertically. THe current time is shown as a vertical red line.
Grid View - The Grid View displays all events in your calendar, each on its own line. Every event and appointment is listed only once: recurring tasks are denoted with a check mark in the "Recurring" column. The All Appointments view makes it easier to find appointments and events as virtually everything in your calendar is listed in one area and easily searchable. NOTE: Tasks, availability-only shared calendars and conference rooms are not displayed in the All Appointments view. Recurring events that have expired (will no longer recur) are displayed with a checkmark in the Recurring column but will show an (Expired label on the End Date.

There are a few ways to distinguish between the various types of appointments and events:

Each calendar source has its own color, so you can easily distinguish which calendar the event belongs to. These colors can be customized at any time.
All-day appointments only appear at the very top of your calendar when viewing appointments by Day or Week, or viewing your Schedule.
Recurring events are denoted with circular arrows to the right of the appointment listing.

In general, the following options are available when viewing calendars:

View Selector - Allows you to select how you want to view your calendar: By Month, Week, or Day, or viewing as an Agenda, Schedule, Timeline, or Grid.
Choose Date - Allows you to select a specific day, then go to that day.
Filter - Allows you to filter the events in a specific calendar based on whether appointments have attachments, or by their category. For more information, see Categories.
Actions (⋮) -
- Add to Outlook - Select Add to Outlook to import all calendar appointments to Microsoft Outlook for Windows. Note: Add to Outlook is not available for Outlook for Mac.
- Subscribe to Calendar - This allows you to subscribe to internet/web calendars, such as a sports teams' schedule, the payroll calendar from your payroll provider, a holiday calendar you find on the internet, and more. (NOTE: When viewing subscribed calendars on a mobile device synced via EAS, that calendar may allow edits. However, those edits do not sync back to the web calendar, and while they may appear on the user's calendar who edited the item, that edit will be overwritten the next time the subscribed calendar updates from the source.)
- Import ICS File - An ICS file is a calendar file that's saved in a universal format that can be used in several email and calendar programs, including Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar. When moving from one of these applications, SmarterMail can import your existing ICS so you'll have any and all events and appointments set up in your previous calendar app.
- Print - Prints the data displayed in the current calendar view.
Day/Week/Month Navigation - At the top, right of the calendar view are Previous and Next arrows that allow you to move your view forward and backward. That means, to the previous/next day, week or month, depending on which view you're using. There is also a "Today" button that returns you to the current day, or to the week or month where the current day is located.

Viewing Calendar Event Details

When looking at your calendar in webmail only the barest details are initially displayed in order to save space. However, there may be times when you want to view more information about a specific appointment.

Mousing over an appointment will open a modal window (no clicking is required) that shows you more detail about a given appointment. This gives you a quick, all-encompassing view of the appointment with details such as the date/time of the appointment, the location, and the organizer. Additionally, you can click on the calendar item. This opens the item in a pop out window, giving you all of the information about the appointment. This includes information like the list of attendees, a description of the event (if one was written), the event's location, the ability to view and/or download any attachments that were added to the appointment, and much more.

Sharing and Shared Calendars

SmarterMail gives users the ability to share their primary or secondary calendars with others who share the same domain name. Shared calendars -- whether you've shared them or they're shared with you -- are automatically "mapped" to the people they're shared with. So nothing needs to be done once a calendar is shared.

Shared calendars appear under the Calendar View area. By default, each user has a personal calendar called "Calendar." This is where you create your appointments. You have the ability to share this calendar with others, or you can create additional calendars and share those as well. Any calendars shared with you will also appear in this list. For more information on how to share your calendar, or map to a shared calendar, take a look at the Sharing Overview page in this help documentation.

Sharing and Shared Tasks

Just as with Calendars, SmarterMail gives users the ability to share their tasks with others on the same domain. In addition, users can "map" tasks that others share. The difference is that tasks do not necessarily need to appear in your calendar. The ability to display task start and end dates, as well as completed tasks, is set in the Calendar Settings area.

If tasks are set to display in your calendar, then Tasks, the default task list created for you, and any shared and mapped tasks, appear under the Shared Calendars area. For more information on how to share your tasks, or map to shared tasks, take a look at the Sharing Overview page in this help documentation. Please Note: Even though tasks may be displayed in your calendar, if you are syncing your calendar with a desktop and/or mobile email client, the task will not show up on your calendar. Instead, they will generally be considered notifications and will display in mobile and/or desktop clients accordingly.

Improving Calendar Responsiveness

For the best calendaring experience, a user's calendar files should not exceed 3 - 4MB. SmarterTools recommends that users enable Calendar Auto-Clean to keep past calendar events from cluttering up their calendar views and exceeding the recommended size limit.

System administrators can set the default Calendar Auto-Clean setting for a domain within the domain's configuration settings. The User Defaults template can then set a user's Calendar Auto-Clean setting to use that Domain Default or set it to Never, 3 Months, 6 Months or 12 Months. Domain administrators may also modify this setting per user in the user's configuration options.

Please note that although system and domain administrators can enable Calendar Auto-Clean for a user by default, the user may still adjust the setting or turn it off within their Calendar Settings. Therefore, it is important to monitor user' calendar files periodically and contact users that are exceeding the recommended limit.