Forum Discussion
Sharing personal calendars with work profile and showing busy times
Hello all,
I have a personal email address, which ismailto:email address removed for privacy reasons, and I have shared the calendar of this account with my work profile, which is an Exchange account and has an email address of mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons
I have tried sharing my personal account calendar with both "Can Edit" and "Can View all Details" settings, and neither setting has resolved the "problem"
I have also shared my work calendar with my personal @outlook account and I can see appointments for both accounts in my personal account as well.
The sharing of the calendar has worked as expected and when I am on my work computer and looking at my calendar in the work Outlook client I can see my personal calendar. I have overlaid them so that I can see appointments that are in my personal calendar as well as the work calendar.
So far so good.
The intent of this sharing was to allow appointments to be booked in either my work or personal calendar with the appointments of the other calendar being visible
"The Problem" is that when I am at work and booking an appointment, the appointments that are in my personal calendar (email address removed for privacy reasons) do not show up in the Scheduling assistant view. To be clear, I can see them in the Outlook client calendar, however they become "not visible" when I go to book an appointment. It is also true that other people in the work company can not see my "busy" times from my personal calendar. So this leaves open the possibility of people booking time with me when I have something booked in my personal calendar.
"The Ask". Is there a way that I can have my personal shared calendar's busy times show up as busy when I, or other people at my employer, are booking an appointment with me?
The problem also exists in my personal calendar. That is, I can see my work appointments when I am looking at the calendar, however, if I go to book an appointment, my work's busy times are not visible during the appointment booking process.
Thanks
You're absolutely right — and what you’re experiencing is a known limitation of .ics calendar subscriptions in Outlook.
What's Happening?
When you subscribe to a personal calendar via an .ics URL, Outlook will display the events as read-only, and these events:
Appear in the calendar view
Do not show up in Scheduling Assistant availability
Do not mark you as 'busy' for others trying to book time via the Scheduling Assistant
This is by design — .ics subscriptions are treated as external, informational calendars, and not "first-class" calendars in Exchange that Outlook uses for free/busy lookup.
What Are Your Options?
To get your personal busy times to appear in Scheduling Assistant, you have to sync or integrate your personal calendar in a way Outlook natively understands as availability. Here are a few solutions:
Best Option: Add Personal Account to Outlook with Publishing Enabled
If your organization allows it, you can add your personal calendar (e.g., Gmail, Outlook.com) as an account in your work Outlook app:
Go to File > Account Settings > Account Settings
Add your personal email account (Gmail/Outlook.com)
This brings in the personal calendar as a native calendar, not just a subscribed one
Events now show up in Scheduling Assistant as long as the calendar is marked and Outlook is using "Show as Busy"
You may need to enable syncing or delegate sharing from your personal account.
Alternative: Use Microsoft Power Automate to Copy Events
If you’re not allowed to add personal accounts directly:
Use Microsoft Power Automate (Flow) to copy busy events from your personal calendar to your work calendar (as private placeholders)
These events will show up as "busy" in Scheduling Assistant
You can customize this to:
Copy only events marked as “busy”
Set the subject to “Private Event” for confidentiality
Keep it in sync automatically
What Won’t Work
Subscribing via an .ics feed (what you did)
Importing a static .ics file
Viewing a calendar in “overlay” mode — it shows up visually but does not influence your free/busy availability
4 Replies
Thanks for the very detailed response.
I tried the publish and copy the .ics link methodology, and whilst the busy times from my calendar show up in the work calendar, in both the desktop app and the outlook version, if I try to arrange an appointment in my work calendar, the scheduling assistant does not show the personal calander's busy times.
So, unfortunately, the "problem" remains. I can see my personal busy times in the work outlook app, however the personal busy times do no appear in the scheduling assistant.
You're absolutely right — and what you’re experiencing is a known limitation of .ics calendar subscriptions in Outlook.
What's Happening?
When you subscribe to a personal calendar via an .ics URL, Outlook will display the events as read-only, and these events:
Appear in the calendar view
Do not show up in Scheduling Assistant availability
Do not mark you as 'busy' for others trying to book time via the Scheduling Assistant
This is by design — .ics subscriptions are treated as external, informational calendars, and not "first-class" calendars in Exchange that Outlook uses for free/busy lookup.
What Are Your Options?
To get your personal busy times to appear in Scheduling Assistant, you have to sync or integrate your personal calendar in a way Outlook natively understands as availability. Here are a few solutions:
Best Option: Add Personal Account to Outlook with Publishing Enabled
If your organization allows it, you can add your personal calendar (e.g., Gmail, Outlook.com) as an account in your work Outlook app:
Go to File > Account Settings > Account Settings
Add your personal email account (Gmail/Outlook.com)
This brings in the personal calendar as a native calendar, not just a subscribed one
Events now show up in Scheduling Assistant as long as the calendar is marked and Outlook is using "Show as Busy"
You may need to enable syncing or delegate sharing from your personal account.
Alternative: Use Microsoft Power Automate to Copy Events
If you’re not allowed to add personal accounts directly:
Use Microsoft Power Automate (Flow) to copy busy events from your personal calendar to your work calendar (as private placeholders)
These events will show up as "busy" in Scheduling Assistant
You can customize this to:
Copy only events marked as “busy”
Set the subject to “Private Event” for confidentiality
Keep it in sync automatically
What Won’t Work
Subscribing via an .ics feed (what you did)
Importing a static .ics file
Viewing a calendar in “overlay” mode — it shows up visually but does not influence your free/busy availability
Surya_Narayana Thanks for the responses. Ill try the Power automate solution, though I was hoping for something a little easier :)
Unfortunately, Outlook does not natively aggregate free/busy data across different accounts. But here are some effective workarounds:
Option 1: Use Outlook's "Publish Calendar" + Subscribe to iCal Feed
This allows you to mirror your personal calendar into your work calendar as "read-only busy times" (or vice versa).
Steps:
From your personal Outlook.com account:
Go to Outlook Web → Settings ⚙️ → View all Outlook settings → Calendar > Shared calendars
Under “Publish a calendar”, select the calendar and choose "Can view when I’m busy"
Copy the ICS (iCal) link
In your work Outlook account:
Go to Outlook Web → Add calendar → Subscribe from web
Paste the ICS link and name it “Personal Busy Times”
This will now appear in your calendar view and your free/busy status will update in Scheduling Assistant.
Note: It may take several hours for changes to reflect and update frequency is limited (not real-time).
Option 2: Use Power Automate (Advanced)
If you're comfortable with automation:
You can set up a Power Automate (Flow) that syncs "busy" events between your work and personal calendars.
This can creat placeholder events in one calendar based on the other.
Requires permissions and careful setup, but offers near real-time syncing.
Start here:
https://powerautomate.microsoft.com
Option 3: Use a third-party calendar aggregator
Tools like:
Calendly
Cron Calendar
Reclaim.ai
SyncGene
These allow you to:
Connect multiple calendars (work + personal)
Show unified availability
Prevent double-booking
Use calendar overlays in scheduling tools
Calendly, for example, supports Office 365 + Outlook.com + Google, and lets others see your true free/busy times.
Limitations
Microsoft Exchange/Outlook doesn’t allow Scheduling Assistant to query free/busy data from non-Exchange calendars (like Outlook.com or Gmail) natively.
Cross-tenant free/busy sharing (e.g., from your work org to Microsoft personal) requires admin-level trust settings—unlikely in personal accounts.
Best Practical Approach
If you're looking for simplicity:
Use the ICS “View when I’m busy” subscription method
Add that feed into your main calendar (and do the reverse)
Educate team members that your "busy time" is merged from both calendars
If you want real-time syncing and automation:
Consider Power Automate or tools like Reclaim.ai
