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finsfree's avatar
finsfree
Copper Contributor
Jul 30, 2019

Creating a Department shared Calendar in Office 365?

Hello, I'm fairly new to Office 365. I have been asked my a department head to create a shared calendar that the whole department can use (view, edit, etc...).   It seems like there are a couple ...
office 365
ChrisWebbTech's avatar
ChrisWebbTech
MVP
Jul 30, 2019
Not saying it's not a solution, just depending on the situation Groups are meh. And honestly, I don't see them getting expanded on much going forward. I think they are more confusing for most users than using existing calendars. Hence why I asked if they used SharePoint or Teams already, if not then Training the Office 365 Groups method probably the route to go, but there are some variables here.
finsfree's avatar
finsfree
Copper Contributor
Jul 31, 2019

Thanks for the great feed back BTW.

What I am looking for is a way to share a department calendar with about 200 users. I would also appoint a few select people to be the ones to administer the calendar (add events, delete, etc...). I am thinking only 5 people would be the admins of this calendar. The rest would only need to view it. I want the calendar to just automatically show up in their office 365 outlook.

Yes, the users also have smart phones as well.

I would like to keep it as simple as possible so I thing Sharepoint & Teams is out. These people are like robots and don't really care about learning something new.

  • ChrisWebbTech's avatar
    ChrisWebbTech
    MVP
    Jul 31, 2019
    I would look into old fashioned resource / shared mailbox. You can add everyone access and i want to say it’ll show up in outlook with read and not just full access but I can’t recall. Then you can give the five people Delegates access.

    • finsfree's avatar
      finsfree
      Copper Contributor
      Jul 31, 2019
      I was kind of leaning toward "Groups". What would be the difference between a Shared Mailbox vs Groups?

      If I made a shared mailbox essentially I would be creating a user in Office 365 with a general name like "Purchasing" and then share that user's calendar out to all the users I want? Can you get granular with the permissions with a shared mailbox?

      Sorry if I'm getting detailed here.
      • VasilMichev's avatar
        VasilMichev
        MVP
        Jul 31, 2019

        If you need it to auto-appear on Outlook and mobiles, you don't have much choice. Groups-based calendar will be easiest to handle for end-users, as newer versions of Outlook feature the "All Group Calendars" node where it will appear automatically. But Outlook mobile still doesn't have support for Group calendars. And as Chris mentioned, you might have troubles with permissions (we do have a parameter to make the calendar read-only for members, but it doesn't seem to be working as expected).

         

        Shared mailbox calendars can now be opened in Outlook mobile, but both on the desktop and mobile it's a manual process and you will need to instruct the users accordingly. The other benefit is that you can get very granular with permissions. And you can even publish the calendar/embed it on a webpage or "tab" it in Teams. But it adds some management overhead overall.

         

        PF-based calendar is another common option, but there is no way to access those on mobiles.

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