Reasons why iCal Server can't be my company's calendar server

Question

I want to believe. I don't want to use Exchange. But after testing iCal server and iCal 3 for a few days, I've found it's not going to cut it for us- a 60 person creative agency. Here's why:
-There's no concept of "blocks time". So, let's say I don't want the office to know that I'm going to a job interview, but I do need to block out the time so nobody tries to schedule me to a meeting. In other systems, I can make a private event, and have it block time. In iCal, locally stored events (which are therefore private), are invisible to the network. I can't have my time reserved without announcing why. Sneaky code phrases are possible, but shouldn't be needed.
Similarly, I can't define if an "all day" event keeps me busy or not. I'd be inclined to list a week's vacation as an all day event starting on Monday and ending on Friday. But for co-workers to see that I'm gone in scheduling, I have to list it as an event from 8A on Monday to 5P on Friday.
-There isn't any group support. Perhaps I have a project team of the same 6 people. There's no way to group those 6 under a heading, and check their meeting availability all at once- you can only invite individuals. The Address Panel has 3 of the 4 headings of Directory.app, but no Groups. Every time this project team gets together, I have to add the same people.
I would think I could make a group in Address Book, but that's not working.
-Delegation is all or nothing. I can't delegate that co-workers can see one of my public calendars, but not the other.
-The Availability Panel can't show what events are blocking someone's time. You have to have them turned on in the iCal view to know that.
Please, please tell me there are just things I don't get about iCal3/iCal server, and if I just did things differently, I'd be OK. Is there something I'm missing, or is this really how it works?
(This was also submitted to apple.com/feedback, and [email protected])

Answer 1

Maximilian Reiss wrote:
Hi - haven`t looked yet at point 1 and 4, but also dislike point 2 and 3. Actually, afaik point 2 (individual delegation) is just a iCal (client) GUI limitation. I think the server would support it.
Group support regarding the client side is more or less there, just not in the new address panel. If you type the group name in the invitee field while editing an event you get the group.
I hope you filed bugreports for that at bugreport.apple.com
OK, here's another one. Window: Address Panel magically changes format for reasons I can't see. When I started this thread, I was in "Open Directory Lookup" mode of Address Panel. When you're here, you're only pulling addresses from OD.
When I returned to playing with iCal this morning, Address Panel was bringing back Address Book entries. When it's this way, yes, you can have a group defined in Address Book, and use that group as a shortcut to invite multiple people.
During the process of experimenting, Address Panel somehow reverted to Open Directory lookups. I'm not clear what controls this behavior.
So, yes, you can use Window: Address Book to pull up AddressBook.app, and drag a group from there into your invitee window. But is there a more integrated way (where leaving iCal isn't required) to invite a local group?