Allow people outside my Exchange server to view calendar and create appointments

Question

Our employees' emails are on an Exchange Server (and using Outlook 2013) while our students get their email through some kind of partnership with Google Apps.

I would like to find a way where my students can view my Outlook calendar and make appointments during my scheduled office hours.

I remember being a student and being so frustrated when I would show up at my professor's office and they would be in a meeting, or had a queue of students waiting.

I would like to alleviate that frustration for me and my students, but how can I accomplish that?

Answer 1

You have a few options:

1) Create a Google Calendar and import into Outlook - this method is read-only so you can not change your appointments in Outlook, you must use Google Calendar

2) Use a free or pay software to sync your Outlook Calendar with Google Calendar. The downside is that for any changes in Outlook to make it to Google, you must be online and using Outlook. Students can make changes on Google Calendar, but the changes won't show up until your sync software brings in those changes to Outlook.

I think option 1 is easier and may suit you if you're not too concerned about having to make appointment changes in Outlook.