Google has made a significant change to the way secondary calendars in Google Calendar are managed and owned. A secondary calendar is any calendar you create or that someone else creates and shares with you. These differ from your primary calendar and any resource calendars you may manage, which currently remain unaffected by this change. (Refer to the ITS Knowledge Base if you’re unsure whether your calendar is a secondary or resource calendar.)
What’s changing?
- Secondary calendars now have a single, dedicated owner. Previously, secondary calendar ownership was managed using the “Make changes and manage sharing” permission.
- Now, the calendar creator becomes the owner when a new secondary calendar is created.
- Existing secondary calendars created before this change have had an owner assigned based on the existing calendar permissions.
- Based on our testing, the individual who created the calendar and had the “Make changes and manage sharing” permission has been assigned as the owner.
- However, Google has not informed us of how they determined ownership for existing calendars. This includes scenarios such as:
- There were multiple individuals with the “Make changes and manage sharing” permission, and the creator is no longer shared on the calendar and/or no longer has an active U-M Google account.
- No one shared on the calendar had the “Make changes and manage sharing” permission.
- If you notice an owner is assigned incorrectly, reach out to the individual and ask them to transfer ownership to the appropriate person.
- You can now transfer ownership of secondary calendars to another individual at U-M.
- Only the current calendar owner can transfer ownership.
- Secondary calendars cannot be transferred to an external (non-UM) Google account. (They must have a U-M Google account with Calendar access.)
- The individual must be shared on the calendar before you can transfer ownership to them. (They don’t need to have the “Make changes and manage sharing” permission.)
- After you transfer the calendar to another owner, they will receive an email with a link. The new owner has 60 days to accept ownership, and you will remain the owner until they do so. If they never accept, you will remain the owner.
- Once the new owner accepts the transfer, your permission level for the calendar automatically changes to “Make changes and manage sharing.”
Refer to the ITS Knowledge Base for more information on transferring ownership of secondary calendars.