I was hoping to get advice on the best way to set up a calendar in Office 365 for vacation/time-off request approvals. Would the best way be to create an email address and have the calendar items associated with that email? Or creating a group? Or creating a room for those requests and calendar events? Thanks!

I know this is a few years late, but I had the same problem. Although I used a Room, my belief is that a Resource would also work. We wanted a shared vacation calendar WITH approvals required. Hope this helps someone. I found this infuriatingly difficult to find a solution. But once I had the solution it was simple. USE OLD Exchange Admin Center- create room ooovaca and save- edit room - booking delegates - select delegates... - add delegates to list - booking options - allow repeating - max booking time 730 (two years) - max duration 0 (unlimited) - save In PowerShellset-CalendarProcessing ooovaca -AddOrganizerToSubject $true -DeleteComments $false -DeleteSubject $false //this is so that viewers can see who made the request (in case they just said "Going to NC" in the subject)set-calendarprocessing ooovaca -allowconflicts $true //so that multiple people could be on vacation at once

What are you wanting the calendar to do? Have an approval workflow or simply show who is on leave or off?You could use a SharePoint calendar and then have users sync it to Outlook, as that will allow you to create an approval workflow around it.

So i would do this a bit different than what people described, but that is probably due to my background. Especially if your current organization is not using SharePoint I think you are going to have trouble getting people to adopt into this. I would do this through a resource mailbox in Exchange Online, atleast in the original scenario of a 30 person company. The more people you have, the more I think you may want to look at a Public Folder, or indeed SharePoint. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/manage/room-and-equipment-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide Create a "room mailbox" called Time Off Calendar. Set the management permissions to be managed by a person. Set that person to be whoever you want to control/approve timeoff requests. Users would submit their timeoff to the resource calendar by sending a meeting invite, and the person in charge could approve or deny it. Adam

Yup, what does Best way mean for you? There are different solutions available for this scenario as part of O365, but no perfect one. For example, if you want easy access on mobiles, things start to get messy. Workflow is another thing, as Loryan mentioned, and depending on how complex the approval process is it might rule out some of the options. SPO-based list is certainly an option, so are shared/room mailboxes, Groups or even PF calendar, but the devil is in the details.

In addition to the comments/questions above, another key consideration is the number of people involved. Presenting the data for 3 people or 30 people or 300 will make a difference.

Best Setup for Office 365 Vacation Calendar

Dean_Gross
Silver Contributor
Feb 01, 2018
In addition to the comments/questions above, another key consideration is the number of people involved. Presenting the data for 3 people or 30 people or 300 will make a difference.
VasilMichev
MVP
Feb 01, 2018
Yup, what does Best way mean for you? There are different solutions available for this scenario as part of O365, but no perfect one. For example, if you want easy access on mobiles, things start to get messy. Workflow is another thing, as Loryan mentioned, and depending on how complex the approval process is it might rule out some of the options.

SPO-based list is certainly an option, so are shared/room mailboxes, Groups or even PF calendar, but the devil is in the details.
- Amy Speer
  Copper Contributor
  Feb 02, 2018
  I'm looking to set up a calendar for one of our clients that has less than 30 users. They want it set up so that two people receive vacation requests and they can approve or deny them. They would also like this calendar to be visible to other employees so they can tell when other co-workers are out of the office.
  
  At this point, I'm thinking either a new email address, group, or perhaps a shared mailbox. Any suggestions?
  - Anette Stjärnkvist Lönnberg
    Copper Contributor
    Jul 04, 2018
    Did the same using a Sharepoint calendar and added a workflow for approval.
    Showing one view of calendar for adding vaccation request, and shows another view with the requests being approved (and "today"). The later for all teammembers being able to see when collegaues are on vaccation
Loryan Strant
MVP
Jan 31, 2018
What are you wanting the calendar to do? Have an approval workflow or simply show who is on leave or off?
You could use a SharePoint calendar and then have users sync it to Outlook, as that will allow you to create an approval workflow around it.
- Amy Speer
  Copper Contributor
  Feb 02, 2018
  SharePoint would be a great idea... but with the level of skill with these users I doubt they'll want to adopt that workflow. Thanks for the idea though!

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Best Setup for Office 365 Vacation Calendar

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