Forum Discussion
MicrosoftShared calendars now sync to mobile phones
I was doing some testing this morning. I couldn't find out how to make it work with a calendar from a "Shared Mailbox". I didn't see how in OWA or Outlook iOS to send an invite to another user. That was part of the stipulation of how it works - you need to send a sharing invite using a mobile app or OWA and the person needs to accept the invite in OWA or an Outlook mobile app.
I did however get it to work with a calendar that I created under my own 365 account. That calendar showed up under my account settings in Outlook iOS then I invited a co-worker. Then he accepted the invite via Outlook iOS. He could then see my shared calendar in his Outlook iOS app, native iOS calendar (!!) and Outlook PC calendar.
If someone can confirm that this SHOULD work with a "Shared Mailbox" calendar and provide some instructions on how to do that, what would be awesome!
Thanks,
Jason
- Julia Foran
Hi Andrew, John, & Jason,
Thanks for your feedback! To answer the questions:
Support article link:
Good catch on that link. Sorry about that -- it's been updated to point to this support article.
Shared mailboxes
- Yes, it works for shared mailboxes as well.
- You can share the calendar from any Outlook application, as long as you send a sharing invitation so that the recipient can accept from Outlook on the web, iOS, or Android. This applies to user, resource, and shared mailboxes.
- From Outlook on the web: Login to your own mailbox first, and then click your picture in the top right to view Account options. There will be an option to "Open another mailbox". Enter the shared mailbox name to login to the shared mailbox via OWA. After you're logged into the shared mailbox, you can navigate to the Calendar module & share the calendar to yourself or to other users. Then you (or the other users) just need to accept the invitation from Outlook on the web, iOS, or Android.
- From Outlook on Windows and Mac: These clients only offer an option to send a sharing invitation for read-only permissions. Accepting invitation sent from Windows/Mac will work, but people have asked how to grant edit permissions for a shared mailbox calendar (since it doesn't currently send an invitation)? A workaround would be to (1) send a sharing invitation from Outlook on Windows/Mac for read-only permissions, (2) update the calendar permissions in the Folder Permissions dialog (that doesn't send an email) to Editor, (3) have the recipient accept the calendar from the original sharing invitation. Even though the original invitation was for read-only permissions, the calendar will be added as editable because that is the effective permissions.
So this is a great update and long over due, however I can not help but feel that this feels clunky. The fact that you can not use previously shared calendars and you have to accept it from the web or iOS is odd.
Is this some sort of desktop issue this will be fixed at some point with Windows and Mac?
- Julia Foran
Hi Will,
I agree that the story should be simple: share & accept from any client, and have the awesome new experience everywhere. That is certainly the plan, and where we want to be, but it's a journey to get there. Today's release is just step #1 :-).
Some more details:
- Windows & Mac: The web, iOS & Android clients were able to finish their changes sooner so that's why it's currently accept from one of those three. We're working on a way to detect accepts from Windows clients without any client changes (including legacy clients like Outlook 2013) and plan to release those changes in Q4, which would change the statement to "Accept from any Outlook client but Mac". The Mac client has always stored the list of shared calendars in a local list on the computer, so there's no magic we can do in the service to detect those accepts. To include Mac in the list of clients that you can accept from, changes are being made in the Mac client. Updating shared calendars support (for sharing, accepting, & syncing) is a top priority for Windows & Mac, and you can expect more updates about those clients as timelines become clearer.
- Existing shared calendars: We wanted to have an "opt-in" model for a few months before we started upgrading existing calendars. There are hundreds of millions of shared calendars in the system, so it will take a while for us to upgrade them all. Having an early, opt-in release allows us to get feedback before we start automatically upgrading all shared calendars. But existing shared calendars will be automatically upgraded in the future (no timeline yet though).
Hi Julia,
Thanks so much for the additional information. We've been looking forward to this feature for a long time.
I'm currently testing with a "Shared Mailbox" calendar. I followed your steps for sharing it via "Outlook on the Web (OWA)" and that worked just fine. 1) Login to my OWA, 2) 'Open other user mailbox' and get into the shared mailbox 3) go to the calendar and hit the Share button. I can even select edit permissions and they worked great. The person that accepted the invite in Outlook for iOS was able to see the calendar in Outlook for iOS, Outlook for PC and even iOS native calendar app. They made some changes and it successfully synced back.
However I'm still not having any luck trying to send a sharing invite from Outlook on the PC. I'm on the latest Outlook 2016 click-to-run edition so I should have all of the latest features. Through the Office 365 admin portal Shared Mailbox interface, i've given myself full permission to the mailbox and I can see the calendar in Outlook for PC. But when I right-click on the calendar and hit Share, my only option is to "Email Calendar" which I believe just sends a static copy of my calendar via an ICS attachment. The "Share Calendar" option is greyed out.
If someone has had luck sending a sharing invite for a "Shared Mailbox" calendar via Outlook for PC, please let me know how you did it.
Thanks again!
Jason
- Exact same problem, admin user couldn't do it either.
Great to see this functionality on the way!
How can I send a sharing invite from a shared calendar that doesn't have an attached shared mailbox?
Has anyone answered this question? I have a public folder calendar that will not share to IOS.
