Sovereignty Spotlight: Booking / Scheduling

Have you every considered the sensitivity of the data in our booking and scheduling of meetings? The names of who we talk to and when we meet should be private, unless we have a reason to make it publicly known. Who has a right to access this data? If you are using an American service for this, then according to the US CLOUD act, the US government can have access.

Calendly and Microsoft Bookings are examples of scheduling systems that are controlled by American companies. There is a popular open source alternative to these called Cal.com which I have been using for a while. Because it is open source, it can be hosted in a way that is digitally sovereign, located in Canada and controlled by a Canadian company. And that is what I did. You can book time on my calendar here: https://cal.gv.ca/david

Cal.com is fully featured and can integrate with many different conferencing and calendar systems. For example, you can set it up with Zoom, Jitsi, Element, Google Meet, Teams, etc. Google Calendar, Apple, Outlook, Exchange, and others. I set mine up using the CalDav protocol to connect with my locally hosted calendar. See the cal.com app store for the complete list of integrations.

Other options: For those using the NextCloud ecosystem, I found an app called Appointments which has similar basic features. Do you know of other alternatives? Please let me know.

Do you want to have digitally sovereign scheduling for your organization? Schedule a time with me or sign up here to get started: https://survey.gv.ca/contact

CanShield Digital is writing a new series highlighting tangible alternatives to typical software that organizations choose. What software would you like to see in a Sovereignty Spotlight?