merge user's outlook calendars in SharePoint 2010

Question

In our new SharePoint installation we've created a sub site for one department. If I add a calendar there, can I somehow merge the individual Exchange/Outlook calendars of the five members of that department so that we can quickly see where everyone is and where there is free time? Thanks.

UPDATE: So, looks like there is no way to do what we want. Thanks for the tips guys. Microsoft were supposed to be removing shared calendars from Exchange since 2007, and encouraged us to use SharePoint instead, but I can't see the point as the shared calendars in SharePoint are the exact same. In these days of mobiles to exchange syncing surely people are generally only going to want to enter information once - in the place that it'll show on their iPhone or whatever. I certainly have no interest in adding an appointment to my personal calendar, my technical staff calendar, and my Project X calendar, but this appears to be what is expected. Is that right?

Answer 1

Short answer:yes overlay the calendars in the sharepoint view. The downside is that this is a temporary setting and will reset on refresh. Better might be to configure a group calendar. See this office article for details.

Answer 2

From the sharepoint perspective, probably not (my experience is with SP 2007 though). However, through outlook you can. Basically create a team view and add the sharepoint calendar to outlook then follow the below instuctions.

http://www.timeatlas.com/5_minute_tips/general/merging_microsoft_outlook_calendars

Answer 3

We have been working on an Outlook add-in to solve this exact problem. We started to notice this issue in 2007 and when SharePoint 2010 did not solve the issue, we decided to act. The add-in is called, ProperSync for Microsoft Outlook, and can connect your Outlook folders to any SharePoint calendar, contact or task list respectively. Not sure if you have given up on the search, but you may want to check out www.propersync.com for more information.

*Disclaimer - I am part of the ProperSync team and hope this has been a useful and relevant posting.