Purpose of Collaboration Services

Question

OK, now I'm admittedly a relative Apple noob, so bear with me.
According to the Mac OSX Server Getting Started Guide - page 15-17:
"iCal Server makes it easy to share calendars, schedule meetings, and coordinate events."
However - as evidenced here - it doesn't appear that iCal Server is intended to share calendars at all, in fact it seems to only allow single users to make their own calendars and whatnot:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2144655&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2238411&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2237812&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2241199&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2147439&tstart=30
Can someone confirm this before I spend thousands of dollars needlessly, and i can go calm down my CEO who is foaming at the mouth to be able to have a single calendar betwixt his iphone and his outlook 2007?
Essentially my requirements (and understanding of how it works) are this:
ipod/iphone users as well as macs, and PC's running Outlook 2007 should be able to connect to a centralized calendar, whereby users can schedule other users for meetings and work items.
Every user should be able to view the calendar and at a glance see what has been scheduled.

Answer 1

In general, what you need to do is use the "iCal Server Utility".
You use that application to create a "Resource" or a "Location". These would be what you would consider a "group" calendar (ie, a "room reservation" or "staff vacation" calendar.)
Once you create this "Resource/Location", then you can allow your users to have read/read-only access to that calendar.
The only tricky thing about this is that Apple inexplicably removed the ability to set permissions to these resource/location calendars from a GUI, so you have to do it via command line according to these basic steps:
First determine the locations' record name in OD:
dscl /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 list /Places
Let's say that is 'vacation'. Next determine the record name of the group you want to add as a delegate. Let's say that is 'testers'.
To see who currently has delegate access do:
sudo calendarservermanageprincipals --list-write-proxies locations:vacation
To add the group do:
sudo calendarservermanageprincipals --add-write-proxy=groups:testers locations:vacation
Do the --list command again to verify the change.
Use -read- instead of -write- if you want read-only delegates rather than read-write.
This has worked fine here. I suggest submitting an "Enhancement Request" to http://bugreporter.apple.com and ask them to put a GUI option in the "iCal Server Utility" for this (it used to be in the GUI in 10.5's "Directory.app" program...)