ZCO, categories/tags, and resource calendars

[nsmarler]

We are using the ZCO 6.0.5797.4 with ZCS 6.0.4_GA_2038 on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. We use resource calendars to allow us to have an overall composite view of vacation time for employees by inviting the resource when scheduling vacation time on the employee's calendar.
I have a user who is our office manager, with Windows 7 and MS Outlook 2007, and wants to use Outlook's color categories to colorize sick time as red, and vacation time as green, through Outlook itself.
All employee's calendars are shared to the office manager as Manager (not Admin). He has created two color categories in Outlook: Sick (red), and Vacation (green).
Sick time (red) works fine. There is no "Sick" resource calendar, so sick time is always specific to an employee's calendar, for which the office manager is Manager. If he categorizes an event as "Sick," it turns red and shows fine for him (but the employee sees no change in color in his/her own calendar).
So, the first issue is that if he categorizes an event on the employee's calendar, and the event is NOT invited to the resource calendar, everything is fine--except that the employee doesn't see the color change, and the office manager would like them to be able to do so. I'm not sure what to recommend for this issue, as I'm not sure that forcing colors on a shared calendar is part of the intended behavior.
However, the second issue is more complex. If he creates a vacation event in the employee's calendar and invites the Vacation resource calendar, then the event appears both in the employee's calendar--and on the Vacation calendar--as it should. However, if he then attempts to categorize the event in the employee's shared calendar by changing it to Vacation (green), then it will show as green in his view of the employee's calendar until the next send and receive cycle, at which point it will revert to the same default color as the rest of the employee's calendar appears.
Again, the employee never sees the color change anyway.
So, I suppose there are three separate questions:
- Can shared calendars and resource calendars for which a user is a Manager or Admin reflect category changes initiated through the Outlook connector? (FYI, changing tags in the web interface causes the tag to be stripped the next time Outlook syncs if the event is modified in Outlook).
- Can other users whose calendars are managed by the office manager see tag/color changes initiated by the office manager on their own calendars? Or are tag/color changes only intended to be visible by the user who is setting up the categories in Outlook?
- Is this an issue because Outlook is making changes that are tracked/maintained locally for which there is no real server-side equivalent?
I found a couple of other threads which reference this issue partially, but no resolution. One suggested removing the "clear categories on mail" rule that Outlook 2007 adds by default, but as with that user's example, this did not affect the Outlook calendar.
I realize this is complex and comparatively insignificant, but it's yet another issue where users insist that this behavior works consistently on Exchange (argh).
Thanks very much in advance for your help.

[fsiegel]

This is sounding like enhancement 30523, which depends on a couple of other enhancements, 5210 and 1810. You can read through these and see if this is what you are looking for. They are slated for much later on -- perhaps you can make some noise, and we can schedule this in a more timely manner.