I currently use a shared calendar to manage my part time employee's schedules. They request a schedule via email, and I add it to the shared calendar as a form of approval. I am currently representing their scheduled hours as an event. This
calendar is shared read-only to ensure that everyone can see it to find when people are in the office, but only I can edit and essentially approve the schedule.
This method has multiple drawbacks.
1 - The employee availability is not integrated into Exchange/Outlook when scheduling meetings
2 - I must update events twice, to both create them and end them when the worker needs to end them
3 - I cannot create event exceptions because they will be overwritten during the second update
An alternative would be to have them schedule OOO events during the times they are not in the office. This has the drawback of not being able to approve it, but I would gain the Exchange/Outlook integration.
How does everyone else do it?
This method has multiple drawbacks.
1 - The employee availability is not integrated into Exchange/Outlook when scheduling meetings
2 - I must update events twice, to both create them and end them when the worker needs to end them
3 - I cannot create event exceptions because they will be overwritten during the second update
An alternative would be to have them schedule OOO events during the times they are not in the office. This has the drawback of not being able to approve it, but I would gain the Exchange/Outlook integration.
How does everyone else do it?