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 creation 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 macOS), 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 in the left-hand pane. 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 attached to your calendar, as well as any internet calendars you've subscribed to. SmarterMail remembers which sources you've checked, so your combined view is restored each time you return. (If nothing is checked, the calendar area displays "Select a source to view.")

Navigating Your Calendar

By default, when you first access your calendar on a desktop browser, the Week view is displayed; on a mobile device, the Agenda view is used. You can change this view to whatever you like, and SmarterMail will store which view you were last using, then open that view the next time you open your calendar. (This preference is stored in your browser, so clearing your browser's stored site data will reset it.) In all, there are seven (7) 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 a planner-type view that displays all appointments scheduled for the week. If configured, this view also displays the start and due dates for tasks. Whether weekends are included, and which day the week starts on, can be adjusted in your Calendar Settings.
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 - Instead of displaying appointments and events on a calendar grid, the Agenda view presents a rolling 14 days 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 side-by-side 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. This view is especially useful for comparing calendars — for example, your own calendar next to a conference room's to find a bookable slot.
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 calendars, each on its own line, in a sortable, searchable table. Columns include the Subject, Start, End, whether the event is Recurring or an Online Meeting, its Categories and Attachments, and the Source calendar it belongs to. Every event and appointment is listed only once — recurring events are denoted with a check mark in the "Recurring" column — making Grid View the easiest place to find a specific appointment. It also allows you to select multiple events for deletion or export as an ICS file.

Note: Tasks, availability-only shared calendars and conference rooms are not displayed in the Grid 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 by editing the folder and picking a new Folder Color.
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. Similar icons identify appointments with attachments, private appointments (a lock), and online meetings (a video camera).
Tentative appointments display with distinct styling and a "(Tentative)" label, and completed tasks appear struck through.

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 View.
Choose Date - Allows you to select a specific day, then go to that day.
Filter - Allows you to filter the events displayed, either to only appointments that have attachments, or by their category. When a filter is active, the filter icon is highlighted as a reminder. For more information, see Categories.
Actions (⋮) -
- Add To Outlook - Select Add To Outlook to connect a SmarterMail calendar to Microsoft Outlook for Windows. You choose the calendar, the display name it should use in Outlook, and your Outlook version.
- Subscribe to Calendar - This allows you to subscribe to internet/web calendars, such as a sports team's schedule, the payroll calendar from your payroll provider, a holiday calendar you find on the internet, and more. You give the subscription a name and color, paste in the Calendar URL, and set how often it updates (as frequently as every 5 minutes). The subscribed calendar then appears in your calendar list like any other 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 file — you simply choose which of your calendars receives the events. When the import completes, SmarterMail reports how many events were added, updated, or skipped.
- Print - Prints the data displayed in the current calendar view.
- Export ICS File - Available in Grid View, this exports the selected event(s) as an ICS file that can be imported into any other calendar application.
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.

Working with Appointments on the Calendar

Beyond simply viewing your schedule, you can manage appointments right on the calendar itself:

Click any empty time slot to create a new appointment starting at that time. (Clicking within a task lane in Schedule or Timeline view creates a task instead.)
Drag an appointment to a new time or day to reschedule it, or drag its edge to change its duration. (Recurring appointments and meetings organized by someone else can't be moved this way.)
Right-click an appointment for quick actions: deleting an appointment (or a single instance or the whole series, for recurring items), responding to a meeting with Accept, Tentative, or Decline, and exporting the event as an ICS file.

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 small details 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, the organizer, its reminder, its categories, and icons for attributes like recurrence, attachments, online meetings, and privacy. 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. When someone shares a calendar with you, you'll receive a notification, and the calendar appears on the Shared With Me tab of your Sharing settings, where you attach it to make it visible in your calendar list. For more information, see the Sharing Overview page in this help documentation.

Shared calendars appear in the Calendars list alongside your own. 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 — for example, a separate "On-call Schedule" calendar shared with your whole team, kept apart from your personal appointments.

Sharing and Shared Tasks

Just as with Calendars, SmarterMail gives users the ability to share their tasks with others on the same domain, and to attach task lists that others share with them. The difference is that tasks do not necessarily need to appear in your calendar. The ability to display task start and due times in the calendar view, as well as whether completed tasks are hidden, 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 attached task lists appear in their own list below your calendars, with checkboxes to show or hide them just like calendar sources. For more information on how to share your tasks, or attach shared tasks, take a look at the Sharing Overview page in this help documentation.

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. Auto-clean can be set to Never, or to automatically remove events older than 3, 6, 12, 18 or 24 months. Domain administrators may also modify this setting per user in the user's configuration options.

Please Note: 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 (when overrides are allowed). Therefore, it is important to monitor users' calendar files periodically and contact users that are exceeding the recommended limit.