Calendly offers a few different ways you can organize and collaborate with other people in your Calendly organization. In this article, we’ll outline some features that admins can use to best manage users and encourage collaborative scheduling. We’ll focus on the following features:
Before we explore each feature, let’s take a quick look at how these features compare:
| Groups | Teams | Shared event types | |
| What is it? | An admin feature that lets you organize users by department, location, job, or more | A team space that lets you create and manage multi-user events, a team landing page, and team logo | A multi-user event type that lets users collaborate without the need of an admin |
| Who is it for? | Admins and group admins | Admins and team managers | All users |
| Example | You want departmental managers to manage their direct reports in Calendly. | You’re working with a cross-departmental team and want to manage their event types. | You want to set up a quick event with your colleagues, yourself, and a customer. |
| Why is it important? |
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Groups
Groups = people administration made easy.
With groups, you can organize, manage, and report on everyone using Calendly in your organization.
Groups work well for departments
You can group people together however you’d like, such as by location, job function, or scheduling need. Most commonly, groups are used for people in the same department.
Let’s imagine you have three different departments within one Calendly account: customer success, sales, and marketing. By creating three separate groups within Calendly, you can separate important admin functions, like:
- Reporting
- Onboarding
- User permissions
Groups let you delegate admin tasks
You can delegate a group admin to manage admin functions. A group admin will have access to reporting around account activation, usage, and scheduling, such as:
- Who has activated their account
- Who has connected their calendar
- What video conferencing platform users have connected
- Total meetings per user, including last 30 days
- Date of last meeting
- Days since last meeting
Groups help you consolidate accounts
Lastly, you can use groups to consolidate multiple Calendly accounts into one account. That way, your multiple departments can live under one account and one bill.
Key group takeaways
Groups allow you to…
✅ Organize individual users by department or other common characteristic
✅ Improve department performance with activity and usage reports
✅ Delegate a group admin to manage users
To read more about groups, check out An overview of groups.
Groups are available on the teams and enterprise plans.
Teams
Teams = where the scheduling happens.
When you create a team in Calendly, you create a team space for admins to control the team scheduling experience. Within this team space, admins can:
- Create and manage multi-user events (round robin and collective)
- Display events on a team landing page
- Upload a team logo
In the below example, we can see the Calendly Customer Feedback Team’s logo and landing page, where people can choose the team event that suits them best:
When to use a team
Most commonly, teams are used for either departmental or cross-departmental scheduling.
For example, let’s say you want to coordinate an event for a cross-departmental team, consisting of members from all over your organization:
Ryan, customer success
Kirsten, product
Melany, sales
You can create a team in Calendly, like a Customer Feedback Team, and set up collective event types for feedback calls. Calendly will only offer availability when all teammates on the feedback call have availability:
Even if teammates are in different groups or departments, they can come together under one team. Accordingly, we can imagine teams as the bridge between groups:
Admins and team managers can manage teams
As an admin, you’ll have complete control over the team, so only you can edit and create team event types. You can also designate a team manager, if you want to share editing access.
However, sometimes users want to be able to quickly set up a collective or round robin event themselves, without needing to go through an admin.
That’s where shared event types come in, which we’ll explore in the next section!
Key team takeaways
Teams allow you to…
✅ Set up multi-user events with teammates
✅ Create a booking page with all your team event types
✅ Have complete control over the team scheduling experience
To read more about teams, check out Set up a team page.
Teams are available on the following plans: standard, Teams, and Enterprise.
Shared event types
Shared event types = great for quick collaboration with colleagues.
Shared event types are for everyone
Shared event types, just like team event types, include collective and round robin events. However, whereas an admin sets up and controls team event types, any user can create a shared event type.
When to use shared event types
Shared events are useful for ad hoc or short-term situations, since they are not regulated or managed by a admin or team manager.
For example, say you need to set up a support call to troubleshoot with you and an engineer. Without needing to find a Calendly admin, you can create a collective shared event type with your colleague. The troubleshooting call isn’t recurring, and doesn’t need to live on a team landing page.
Note
When a host is added to a shared event type, they are notified via email. They have the option to opt out of these notifications by clicking 'Unsubscribe' at the bottom of the email, or from the Communication settings section in their Account Settings.
Team events vs. shared events
Both teams events and shared events are good for collaboration with people from different departments, such as user research or customer calls.
However, shared event types are leaner and don’t have some of the advanced features that team event types offer. The following table outlines some key differences:
| Team event types | Shared event types | |
| Description | Round robin and collective events created within a team | Round robin and collective events created outside of a team |
| Use case | An admin wants to manage and organize their team’s events, landing pages, and logo | Colleagues want to quickly collaborate on an event |
| Permissions | Only owners, admins, and team managers can create and edit | Anyone in your Calendly account can create, any host on the event can edit |
| Event link | Can customize the event link | Cannot customize; event link is randomly generated |
| Team landing page | Included on team landing page | Not included |
| Activity report | Included in activity reports | Not included |
| Extensions and add-in | Can access with Calendly for Chrome, Firefox, and Outlook add-in | Anyone in your Calendly account can create, any host on the event can edit |
Key shared event takeaways
Shared events allow you to…
✅ Open up collaborative scheduling to anyone in your account
✅ Create a quick event without needing an admin
✅ Let users manage and create their own multi-user events
To read more about shared events, check out Setting up and managing shared events .
Teams are available on the following plans: standard, Teams, and Enterprise.