Forum Discussion
Sharing personal calendars with work profile and showing busy times
You're absolutely right — and what you’re experiencing is a known limitation of .ics calendar subscriptions in Outlook.
What's Happening?
When you subscribe to a personal calendar via an .ics URL, Outlook will display the events as read-only, and these events:
Appear in the calendar view
Do not show up in Scheduling Assistant availability
Do not mark you as 'busy' for others trying to book time via the Scheduling Assistant
This is by design — .ics subscriptions are treated as external, informational calendars, and not "first-class" calendars in Exchange that Outlook uses for free/busy lookup.
What Are Your Options?
To get your personal busy times to appear in Scheduling Assistant, you have to sync or integrate your personal calendar in a way Outlook natively understands as availability. Here are a few solutions:
Best Option: Add Personal Account to Outlook with Publishing Enabled
If your organization allows it, you can add your personal calendar (e.g., Gmail, Outlook.com) as an account in your work Outlook app:
Go to File > Account Settings > Account Settings
Add your personal email account (Gmail/Outlook.com)
This brings in the personal calendar as a native calendar, not just a subscribed one
Events now show up in Scheduling Assistant as long as the calendar is marked and Outlook is using "Show as Busy"
You may need to enable syncing or delegate sharing from your personal account.
Alternative: Use Microsoft Power Automate to Copy Events
If you’re not allowed to add personal accounts directly:
Use Microsoft Power Automate (Flow) to copy busy events from your personal calendar to your work calendar (as private placeholders)
These events will show up as "busy" in Scheduling Assistant
You can customize this to:
Copy only events marked as “busy”
Set the subject to “Private Event” for confidentiality
Keep it in sync automatically
What Won’t Work
Subscribing via an .ics feed (what you did)
Importing a static .ics file
Viewing a calendar in “overlay” mode — it shows up visually but does not influence your free/busy availability
Unfortunately, Outlook does not natively aggregate free/busy data across different accounts. But here are some effective workarounds:
Option 1: Use Outlook's "Publish Calendar" + Subscribe to iCal Feed
This allows you to mirror your personal calendar into your work calendar as "read-only busy times" (or vice versa).
Steps:
From your personal Outlook.com account:
Go to Outlook Web → Settings ⚙️ → View all Outlook settings → Calendar > Shared calendars
Under “Publish a calendar”, select the calendar and choose "Can view when I’m busy"
Copy the ICS (iCal) link
In your work Outlook account:
Go to Outlook Web → Add calendar → Subscribe from web
Paste the ICS link and name it “Personal Busy Times”
This will now appear in your calendar view and your free/busy status will update in Scheduling Assistant.
Note: It may take several hours for changes to reflect and update frequency is limited (not real-time).
Option 2: Use Power Automate (Advanced)
If you're comfortable with automation:
You can set up a Power Automate (Flow) that syncs "busy" events between your work and personal calendars.
This can creat placeholder events in one calendar based on the other.
Requires permissions and careful setup, but offers near real-time syncing.
Start here:
https://powerautomate.microsoft.com
Option 3: Use a third-party calendar aggregator
Tools like:
Calendly
Cron Calendar
Reclaim.ai
SyncGene
These allow you to:
Connect multiple calendars (work + personal)
Show unified availability
Prevent double-booking
Use calendar overlays in scheduling tools
Calendly, for example, supports Office 365 + Outlook.com + Google, and lets others see your true free/busy times.
Limitations
Microsoft Exchange/Outlook doesn’t allow Scheduling Assistant to query free/busy data from non-Exchange calendars (like Outlook.com or Gmail) natively.
Cross-tenant free/busy sharing (e.g., from your work org to Microsoft personal) requires admin-level trust settings—unlikely in personal accounts.
Best Practical Approach
If you're looking for simplicity:
Use the ICS “View when I’m busy” subscription method
Add that feed into your main calendar (and do the reverse)
Educate team members that your "busy time" is merged from both calendars
If you want real-time syncing and automation:
Consider Power Automate or tools like Reclaim.ai