A shared calendar permissions review should answer who can see availability, who can read event details, who can edit, and who can act on another person's behalf. Inventory every team calendar, public link, group share, and delegate. Match each permission to a current job need, remove stale access, and test the resulting view from the recipient's account.
Inventory calendars and owners
List primary calendars, project calendars, booking calendars, resource calendars, public event calendars, and any personal calendar being used for business. Record the accountable owner, purpose, audience, platform, and next review date. Flag calendars owned by former staff or accounts that will soon be removed.
For each calendar, export or record the current sharing list. Include named users, groups, organization-wide defaults, public visibility, embedded links, delegates, and third-party applications with calendar access. A person can lose a direct permission while retaining access through a group or broad organization setting, so inspect every route.
Understand the available permission levels
Google's calendar sharing guidance distinguishes free-and-busy visibility, event-detail access, editing, and permission to manage sharing. Microsoft explains in its Outlook delegate guidance that editors can change calendar items, while delegates can also schedule and respond on the owner's behalf.
Translate platform labels into plain duties. A scheduling assistant may need delegate access, while a teammate coordinating availability may need only free-and-busy information. Do not give edit or sharing control merely because it is convenient during setup.
Review private-event behavior separately. Platform settings can hide details from ordinary viewers while allowing an explicitly configured delegate to see more. Test with a harmless private sample instead of assuming the label behaves the same in every client.
Compare access with current roles
Ask the calendar owner and manager to classify each recipient:
- keep at the current level
- reduce to a narrower view
- move to a group-managed permission
- remove because the work or relationship ended
- investigate because no one knows why access exists
Check contractors, former staff, temporary project groups, personal email addresses, and external partners first. For group-based access, review the group membership and its owner. A clean calendar list can still be overly broad if the underlying group is stale.
Make changes in a recoverable order
Capture the original state before editing. Add or confirm the replacement owner before removing the only administrator. Reduce one access path at a time and avoid changing organization-wide defaults during an individual cleanup.
If a calendar is public or broadly visible, confirm that this is intentional and that event titles, locations, attendee data, descriptions, conferencing links, and attachments are appropriate for that audience. Move sensitive work to a calendar with narrower defaults rather than relying on every event creator to remember an exception.
Test the effective result
Create test events containing ordinary details, a private event, a recurring meeting, and an attachment link with separate file permissions. Ask representative users to verify what they can see and change. Confirm that an editor cannot manage sharing unless intended and that a delegate can perform only the approved actions.
Test mobile and web clients if both are used. Permission changes may synchronize differently across applications. Reopen the sharing panel after the test and record the effective settings.
Close the review
- Assign an accountable owner and backup for every shared calendar.
- Remove direct access for people who no longer need it.
- Review the membership and ownership of every shared group.
- Disable unintended public or organization-wide visibility.
- Verify private-event and delegate behavior with test entries.
- Check attachments separately because file permissions can differ from calendar access.
- Record the reviewer, approvals, changes, and next review date.
Repeat the review after staff changes, an external project ends, a booking tool is replaced, or a calendar changes purpose. The goal is a calendar that remains useful for coordination without exposing more schedule detail or control than the work requires.