We all have access to each other's calendars, however, there is still an awful lot of confusion generated in scheduling meetings by having to look at each person's calendar on an individual basis. I am looking for a way to see an overview of the entire company calendar. We currently use Outlook and we have the capability to see an overview as a bar chart - It would be more helpful to see actual appointments.
Group calendaring and scheduling is a tough problem - and there are a lot of solutions.
It sounds like you work is a fairly big office, given that there are 7 assistants coordinating schedules. We also wrote about this topic in last April's Meeting Advisor column as well, so be sure to check that out. We mentioned this last April, but it recently got some good press again. This is a powerful group scheduler that got a great review from CNET two weeks ago. Notes is a combined email, calendaring, database system that's quite mature.