Executive Assistant Tips

Check you Manager's Calendar Permission

A major concern that can face Executive Assistants is too many people being able to see what their manager is doing. We often find that the Calendar permission settings of very senior managers are dangerously wrong - and we have checked more than 5000 in more than 500 organisations. 

What's happening? In a nutshell, when the settings are incorrect, the whole organisation can see the Executives' Calendar details. That means that any staff in the building can see exactly what their Executive's appointments are. They can read the notes about their meetings and find out far too much! They can delete meetings scheduled in the manager's Calendar. They can write new meetings straight into it as well.

In less than 2 minutes you can easily check whether the settings are correct in your boss' Calendar.

Here are the steps: 1. While the boss is logged on, go to their computer. 2. Right click their Calendar. 3. Click Properties. 4. Click Permissions. 5. Check that the permission for Default and Anonymous are set to "none". 6. Check who else has permission and revoke/grant it as required. If you have Default set to anything other than "none", all other people in your building (and possibly across the entire department) will be able to view the Calendar details. Setting it to "none" means that by default people can see when the boss is busy but not what they are doing.

If you have a good idea to share with EAs, please use the Contact Us page and let us know about your experiences.