Forum Discussion
MicrosoftEnhancements to O365 Groups Calendar in Outlook - Never miss an event sent to a group.
Groups in Outlook is being used by millions of users worldwide to improve collaboration and be more productive working with a group of people – be it for project collaboration, organizational groups or classroom groups.
One key feedback we have received from you is that users sometimes miss group events as the invites sent to a group do not show up in the members' personal calendars.
Responding to this feedback around lost or missed group calendar invites, we will soon be rolling out a key enhancement to group calendar feature. With this enhancement, members of a group would always receive a copy of an event that was sent to a group in their personal inbox (in addition to the group mailbox), irrespective of their subscription settings for that group. Members can then action (accept/tentative/decline) on that invite just like they do for their personal calendar invites in their inbox. This way, members will always be in the know of all the group calendar events, and the event organizers can confidently create events without the fear of members missing events.
Thanks for your continued feedback for O365 Groups, and keep it coming.
This enhancement will be available to all O365 Groups users in the coming weeks. So, take it for a spin and let us know how you feel.
Additional Info: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Schedule-a-meeting-on-a-group-calendar-0cf1ad68-1034-4306-b367-d75e9818376a?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
86 Replies
One of the issues that we have noticed, is that inviting a team (or group) to a calendar event will push the information to the users (individual) calendar, but updates made are not always pushed. Example: In our organization, the Operations Shop will routinely invite a smaller group (such as our Administrative shop--which contains 5 personnel) to an event. So: Ops->Admin (group)->Individual. But, if Ops changes the time or date of the event, the Admin (group) will receive the update, but not the individual. Is there something that we are missing? Perhaps the individual MUST accept the invitation in order to receive future updates? Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
- Ethan LiHello! I'll work with you and our engineering team offline to see what the issue is.
Ravin Sachdeva that is complete nonsense Your message is more than two years old and that feature is still not available. That group calendar is horrible and wasn't updated since existing I feel. There is still no possibility for setting granular permissions as for regular calendars and what is the sense of a calendar if I can't follow the events in it?
- Ethan Limagichappens, can you explain further which feature is not available? By default, all group events sent to the group (whether from the group calendar or not) are sent to individual mailboxes; you can also create group appointments on the group calendar (without sending it to anyone's mailbox).
Ethan Li thanks for the answer. When sending an invitation to the group mailbox or creating a new event it is only placed in the group calendar and is not showing in every individuals mailbox. That is only the case if you follow the mailbox and accept the appointment. Maybe you can share further instructions how that should work? The group calender also can't be viewed on the mobile version of Outlook, why is that not working? If I go to groups there and click calendar I just see my own. Also it is not possible to set granular permissions like for other exchange calendar, if someone needs more rights it requires an owner who is the owner of all the group content all at once which should not be the case. Hope you can help on those topics. Thank you.
Is there a setting to turn this off on a per O365 Group basis? It REALLY doesn't work for some users and wow, one just let me know in no uncertain terms in a hallway encounter just now.
It would be great if Microsoft recognized that settings changes like this have to be controllable by the tenant admins. Workflows/culture vary from company to company -- or even within it.
Thanks,
Adam
- Ethan Li
Hi Adam,
Could you explain more what you were looking to turn off?
There's currently two types of calendar scenarios that your group in Outlook supports:
- Appointments: Open the group calendar, and select "New appointment." The appointment you create will only live in the group calendar--no invitations are sent.
- Meetings: Invite a group (from your calendar or from the group calendar), members will receive an invitation in their inbox, unless they explicitly opted out of receiving meeting invitations from the group.
In set-unifiedgroup if -AutoSubscribeNewMembers is set to $false AND -AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents is ALSO set to $false this would not occur. At least for new members of the O365 group. Is that correct?
I really wish this was easily controllable behavior from the powershell cmdlet.
I have set up some of my clients to use an O365 Group for a shared mailbox (eg. enquiries@xyz.com) and a shared calendar, which is primarily used for keeping track of appointments with their customers, etc.
All staff need to access and update the shared calendar, but only a few need to check the inbox.
In theory this scenario works, however not all appointments that get entered into the group calendar appear in everyone else's copy of the shared calendar within Outlook 2016. If they un-check the box to display the group calendar and re-check it (or restart Outlook), viola - the appointments sync.
I have tried different settings via the tenancy Admin (eg. making all group members also owners) but it doesn't make any difference.
Am I missing something, or is this a known problem?
Thanks
Ray
Hi! I am wondering if there is a way, now or in the future, to have the group calendars and personal calendars separated. We do NOT want to see all the entries in the group calendar in our personal calendar and for the moment this is preventing us from rolling out group calendars within the company.
Like others here we too are stuck still having to use Public folders due to how Group calendars function.
We have a company calendar and often you may just want to add an appointment. That's fine as this seems to work as intended from Outlook by starting it as an appointment and not adding any invites. From OWA you have to deselect sending to the group.
The issue for us, like many others here again, is that you may have appointments or events that while do require users to be invited, because they need to attend or for supervisor and manager approval, simply do not require the whole group to be invited. The group just needs to be able to to see the events on those group calendars for status purposes.
Anyway this is keeping my company from being able to finally get rid of Public Folders and move to groups. Sending calendar invites to the entire group, when you specifically deselect the group and pick just users you wish to receive it, is UNACCEPTABLE.
Items added to group calendar not showing up in the individual mailboxes. Group memebers are invitees. Anyone else having this issue?
