Novell introduced sub-calendars in GroupWise 7 and for many people this has become favorite features. Each calendar can have a different color, so private calendar items will show a different color than for example team meetings. Another cool new feature in GroupWise 7 is the possibility to share sub-calendars, so others can see your items as part of their own calendar. Now that’s all very nice, however items from a "received" sub-calendar will not be shown in the main calendar. That way, your co-worker can look at these items, but they will not be part of his or her own calendar.

 

As you can see in the image above, that’s solved in Bonsai with one simple checkbox. The option "Show in Main Calendar" allows you to can present shared items in your main calendar as well, which is a very good improvement of course.

I think this is a really very important improvement, which makes the shared calendar feature very useful indeed. However, I do see one new challenge on the horizon – what will be the effect on the calendar in your mobile device, as it does not support sub-calendars? You might expect these appointments to show up on your device as well, however they are really not your own appointments. Would you want that with just one click in the checkbox "Show in Main Calendar" potentially 100’s or even 1000’s of appointments would be synchronized to the device?

 

Here is something to solve, for sure, and in the end perhaps these devices simply need to get smarter.