Best Software/Apps for shared calendars between colleagues?

icebergx

Hi all,

I'm in the process of setting up a maintenance company that will initially employ
1) Two tradesman undertaking most jobs, as they come in from clients
2) Five subcontractors taking-on extra, out of hour or specialist work
3) Myself, allocating the jobs to each tradesman via a shared calendar.

The Tradesman will use 'internal' email addresses and calendars where I can simply insert appointments to attend.
Subcontractors will have their own email address and calendars, where I will send appointments to, in the form of meeting requests (after confirming their availability.)

My hosting is with TSO Host, and I've easily been able to add my email inbox to my email client (Outlook,) but my I'm not sure how to add a calendar.

Also, Office 365 and G-Suite appear to be the most common choices to manage simple calendar sharing system but can anyone recommend any others that might be suitable for my scenario, for a minimal budget?

Thanks in advance,

R.

Handsome90

Could you tells us more what kind of devices the employees will be using to view the calendar?

Do you need enterprise grade calendar apps? Google calendar and Apple calendar are free to use but I have no idea about their privacy policy.

After googling a bit I found Cloudcal and Trello Power-ups

icebergx

They'll all have access to a PC so that's the primary focus, but mobile (phone is almost as important, especially when they're moving between jobs.

After each job is complete they'll need to compile a short report for the client so basic word-processing is also required, so I thought I could use Office 365 Home, but it seems that calendars can't be synced/shared with that as it requires my email host to use Microsoft Exchange.

I've heard of Trello so I'll have a look into that (and Cloudcal.)
Thanks Handsome90

icebergx

I remember there used to be a way to host email addresses on outlook.com. Can this be done, then sync the calendar within outlook.com with the Outlook email client (or any other email/calendar client?)

stragglebod

Google calendars for the appointments, Trello for updating job info, and link the two with Planyway.

icebergx

I've heard of Trello before so just had a quick look.

The vast majority of jobs we'll be doing are basic maintenance.
For example, a client may book us to change 3 lightbulbs, fix the handle on a cupboard and re-silicon the a shower trey. Once complete, we would send a very simple report back to the client (from myself,) telling them what that we'd completed the tasks, and/or if there were any complications that required more work than anticipated.
Would Trello be overkill for something like this? The are, after all, just three minor task (Cards?) for one appointment (Board?).

If I'm getting the wrong 'end of the stick' here, and underestimating it's value, please feel free to put me right.

Cheers,

R.

stragglebod

Not overkill at all, Trello sounds perfect for what you want.

Loads of ways to arrange it, but for something that simple each appointment would be a single card.

You'd use labels to mark statuses (e.g. booked, on the way, in progress, delayed, completed). Or have those as lists and move the cards between lists to update status.

You can add multiple comments to cards to record progress towards all the parts of a job, or do it more formally by adding a checklist to the card.

Handsome90

icebergx wrote: »

I remember there used to be a way to host email addresses on outlook.com. Can this be done, then sync the calendar within outlook.com with the Outlook email client (or any other email/calendar client?)

Although I haven't used the calendar feature in Outlook but I would be surprised if you can't share the calendars to users with Outlook email addresses. Microsoft also has a free to do list but I can't remember whether you can share it or not.

icebergx

Thanks for the advice, Stragglebod.
Something like this:
[Removed]

This is something only I will need to use, and another administrator, at the point we grow to take on more people. Our Tradesman and Sub-Contractors won't interact with this (unless you can think of a good reason for them to do so?)

Also, is there a way to connect/sync this Trello board's tasks/jobs to a calendar system like Outlook or Google Calendar? Furthermore, is there a way to tie all of this into an accounting system like Xero?

Thanks for your help. I'm trying to figure out how all these different elements can fit together to keep my workflow organised, without duplication and unnecessary complications.