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philmaynard's avatar
philmaynard
Iron Contributor
Mar 10, 2020

Sending updates in Teams calendar app without unwanted notifications

Modifying meeting invites through the Team Calendar app is sending updates to all attendees which is not what our end users are expecting! Does anyone in the community have any insight on this?

 

As more users within my organisation are making use of Microsoft Teams, they're beginning to bump into unexpected 'features'. For instance, a user was adding a new attendee to a scheduled meeting via the Calendar app in Teams. What they didn't realise is that it would send up an update to all attendees! The expectation was that it would either give the option in the same way Outlook does to only update added or removed attendees OR that it would work in the same way Outlook online does and only send updates to attendees are required - as per this article "Send updates" options for attendees are not displayed in Outlook on the web

 

Does anyone in the community have an insight on if this behaviour is going to be changed? I've raised a Uservoice post in case it's something that isn't currently being planned

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/908686-bug-reports/suggestions/39905293-manage-calendar-updates-the-same-as-outlook-online

  • Nick_H99's avatar
    Nick_H99
    Copper Contributor

    philmaynard Sorry to re-ignite an old thread, but this "functionality" actually caused my email to his a daily recipient limit and now will be without email for 24 hours. 

    • philmaynard's avatar
      philmaynard
      Iron Contributor

      Nick_H99 sorry to hear that!! There doesn't seem to be any movement on this from Microsoft's side that I can see. Very surprised as it seems such an obvious thing to resolve. Let's hope the Microsoft Teams and Outlook developers pick up on this soon...

      • CaptainComedy's avatar
        CaptainComedy
        Copper Contributor

        philmaynard It's a big let down - I'm not going to use the calendar features at all while this is set like this.

         

        I tried using Outlook by importing the sharepoint calendar into it, nope. Doesn't sync with sharepoint site the only way to sync between teams and it's associated sharepoint site is to manage within teams.

         

        Doesn't really make sense.

  • afillmore's avatar
    afillmore
    Copper Contributor

    philmaynard Agreed - this is very frustrating. If you add new attendees to a meeting.. the last thing you want to do is flood peoples in-boxes with meeting notices for meetings they have already accepted. Adding to the confusion about scheduled meetings.. 'Why am I getting all of these notifications?!"

     

    You can't even add documents etc without sending an update to all attendees. 

     

    I didn't realize that if I scheduled teams meetings through outlook.. I'd have more of the outlook scheduling functionality.. I will definitely start doing that from now on. 

     

    Thank you for that!

    • philmaynard's avatar
      philmaynard
      Iron Contributor
      Unfortunately not 😔 It looks like this is a 'feature'. I have a feeling that it's linked to the Graph API current capability. I noticed that in Power Automate, the current version of the 'Update Event (V4)' action has the same issue. This was raised on version 2 but I've not seen any update as yet. I think that until an update on this interface is made, I suspect any integrations with Outlook are going to have the same problem. Here's a link to a User Voice request made on the Update Event V2 issue - https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Ideas/Update-Event-v2-to-send-updates-only-to-new-attendees/idi-p/236165

      (This of course could be a completely separate issue 🙂)
  • Simply use Outlook/OWA to schedule your Teams meetings. The calendaring functionality in Teams covers the basics, but you cannot expect it to be as mature as Outlook's, and it will probably never be. And for channel meetings, I wouldn't expect much changes to happen with regards to the audience anyway.

    • ABirky's avatar
      ABirky
      Copper Contributor

      VasilMichev 

      Unfortunately that totally defeats the advantage of creating the meeting within Teams, which is that you can associate the meeting, it's notes, files, and chat with a channel. It seems to me that selecting who to notify is a pretty basic functionality worth including. I also note that for a recurring meeting created in Teams, I can't make any changes to the meeting from Outlook, which would allow me to access all the Outlook functionality.

      • ShaunJennings's avatar
        ShaunJennings
        Brass Contributor

        ABirky I do apologize for being direct, but if you want Outlook functionality, use Outlook. 

         

        Teams is about collaboration. Why do you want to hide the fact that you are inviting someone to a meeting? Granted, it does get noisy if you are continually adding a new person to meetings before it takes off. Teams notifies everyone on the team so they will stay in touch. Would you want someone to start a video meeting in your channel and you not know about it?

         

        Collaboration is about working together. We want to make sure that everyone knows what is going on and has the ability to get those notifications. If you don't want them, turn them off in your client.

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