Shared calendars now sync to mobile phones

Microsoft

We are rolling out a feature update that enables shared calendars to sync to mobile phones. This update will make it possible to sync all your Office365 shared calendars to your mobile phone for any permission level (view, edit, or delegate permissions). In addition, you can now share a calendar or accept shared calendar invitations from Outlook on iOS and Android.

 

Existing shared calendars will not be upgraded as part of this change, and they will continue to sync only to Outlook on the web, Windows, and Mac. Only shared calendars that are accepted after these changes are released will sync to mobile phones.

 

The shared calendar will only sync to mobile phones if:

  • The calendar is shared between users who are both hosted in Exchange Online
  • The calendar is accepted from a sharing invitation using Outlook on the web, iOS, or Android

 

We'll be gradually rolling this update starting on 9/18 and rollout will be completed by 9/22.

 

You can find more details about shared calendar improvements at the article located here.

117 Replies

@Julia Foran new feature have reached my installation yesterday...only after 2 years: thanks!

@Julia Foran - when - if ever - will this functionality be available to on-premise Exchange users?.  I run a rather large shop and have no need or desire to go to Office 365 - we already have our cloud presence built with rather expensive fully-licensed Microsoft products.  My users cannot view shared calendars using Outlook for smartphones and I can't help but feel Microsoft is keeping all the good stuff for themselves. 

 

Your help appreciated

 

jbw

Hi James,
The way that we support shared calendars to sync to mobile devices uses technology only available in Office 365, so we are unable to bring this feature to Exchange On-Prem.

@Julia Foran 

Julia,

How do I delete shared folders in an IOS outlook app on my phone and IPad Pro?

 

Don

@Julia Foran 

 

Is there any time-line for group calendar support on Outlook mobile, for IOS and Android?

 

We are very frustrated by the lack of support for your own calendars.

 

It is quite silly when you think about it.

@Julia Foran 

Any update on the mobile feature for Group Calendars? Seems like a pretty big gap .... Per Microsoft Agent it's best practice to collaborate across an org with this type of calendar:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/shared-calendar-vs-group-calendar-which-one-s...

Any update is greatly appreciated.

@jrobinson - we are working on this right now! We are looking to launch Group Calendars in Outlook mobile in the coming months... Thanks for your patience.

 

Would be kind enough to help us understand what your use cases/workflows are for this feature? 

@Ravin Sachdeva 

Client has a group setup in o365 - it has a calendar for them to manage scheduling for delivery/pickup for the employees in the field. They all need to see it, no individual should 'own' it...

Mobile is huge since they are traveling 

Hi @Julia Foran 

We're able to share a calendar with other Office365 users in our organization.

The updates sync readily between desktop Outlook 365 where we can view and edit, however, on Outlook for iOS, we can only see the event as "BUSY" -- we're not able to see the subject or the detailed description in the event from the iOS app.  Is this a known limitation?  Are we not sharing the individual calendar correctly?

Thanks for any insights here,

Randall

@RandallM That's not expected behavior; could you shoot me a private message with your email address and I'll follow up further with you.

Hi@RandallM @Julia Foran i am facing the same issue: Outlook on iOS shows the events as free/busy.

Latest Outlook and iOS version.

 

Any advice?

 

Thank you.

@dimitrispavl1400 Do you have permissions to the calendar only, or do you have permissions to the entire mailbox?

Hi @Julia Foran , I have full access to the SM.

Can you try removing the calendar and re-adding it from Outlook Mobile? There's an option to add the calendar if you navigate to Calendar, tap your picture in upper-left and then select the option to add a calendar (it's an icon with calendar and a '+' sign).

@Julia Foran 

 

Hi Julia....

 

It's been a while.  We exchanged some messages a couple of years ago re: Outlook365 cross tenant "instant sync".  At the time it seemed that this was just "on the horizon".  I was wondering about any progress.

 

I also sent you a note regarding two issues with writing O365 calendar data with MSGraph.  One issue was the inability of Exchange to handle a high "change" load.  The other was a OWA UI issue where an all day event written by MSgraph would show on 2 days instead of the day it was scheduled.  This goes away after you refresh the screen but it generates a lot of confusion (and customer support calls).

 

Here is the link to the message I sent and your response.  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/office-365-calendar/shared-calendars-now-sync-to-mobile-phone...

 

Finally, I was wondering if we'll ever see the Outlook Scheduling assistant be able to deal with more than the user's main calendar.  I saw where the ability to include personal calendars was released however I have customers who need to look at multiple calendars using this function. I've written a Power Automate script to move "other calendar" data into a user's main calendar when there are changes but  it's basically a hack to get around this issue and isn't all that easy to deploy.

 

I'd appreciate it if you get back to me on some of these items. 

 

BTW, nice summary video for new calendaring feature for Ignite2020

 

Regards

 

Bill Figures 

Quite innovative ideas I must say

@Julia Foran Kia ora Julia,

 

Great feature, although I echo the feedback from a few others. 

 

Some of our users have access to 30+ calendars (direct reports of the executives they support) so these all sync to mobile. They do unselect them, but periodically the app seems to reset and they all reappear and crash the app trying to load so much info at once. 

 

It would be great if you could retain access to view from desktop/OWA, but only show certain ones on mobile. Perhaps those in a specific calendar group, so you can still view a small number of essential calendars. 

 

Have raised a UserVoice - https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/293349-outlook-for-ios/suggestions/41823130-allow-control-over-...