Forum Discussion
Small group shared calendar does not update
Hello, I just migrated a client to 365 from exchange on prem, were trying out office 365 groups for the first time and having a TERRIBLE experience with the shared calendar. This is a small law firm that handles all of their bookings through the shared law firms calendar, and within 2 days they had 5 meetings double booked due to the shared calendar not updating in peoples outlook desktop.
The group was set up and the calendar added under everyones outlook calendar tab. half of the users could not book the calendar even though they had owner rights in the group. We had to rebuild their outlook profiles to get the shared calendar to work. Now, even though they can add appointments directly to the calendar from desktop outlook, the other users have to leave their calendar, click on the group in outlook and open the calendar from there, and as soon as they do the group calendar updates in the calendars tab.
one suggetion I found online was to disable downloading of shared folders in outlook account. I did this last night and they are going to test today...
If this does not work we will be ditching groups and just creating a sharepoint calendar for their team to use.
20 Replies
I'm having the same problem with a client. I've set up a similar scenario on my own tenant and also have the same problem.
Basically everything appears to be OK, users can see & update the calendar, but the updates don't get synced to other users unless they un-check & re-check the calendar in Outlook.
I would think this should be basic functionality for an O365 Group.
I'm about to convert the client to a different solution, since O365 Groups don't appear to work as they should.
If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.
Thanks.Ray
Ray, Maria Kang is the microsoft rep that weighed in earlier in this thread. Maybe she can provide some help here? For me the fix was to uncheck the box mentioned earlier on each clients outlook.
- On the menu select Tools > Account settings
- Click on your account, then on Change More Settings then select the Advanced tab.
- Clear the "Download shared folders (excludes mail folders)" check box.
- Exit and restart Outlook.
Hi Robert.
I've tried unchecking this (and re-checking and un-checking again). It makes no difference.
Thanks anyway, but I'll have to keep searching.
Cheers
Ray
Hi Robert,
Assuming that Outlook 2016 (not web client) is your team's main Outlook client, I'm gathering two issues here:
- Some group members do not see specific groups in the left nav in Calendar tab so they have to go back to Mail tab, go to groups folder and then click on group calendar link found in the ribbon.
- Unable to see all your groups in Calendar tab is a known limitation and we're currently working to address this.
- But in the meantime, one workaround would be to favorite groups to ensure that they appear in Calendar tab.
- Some users could not book the calendar even though they had owner rights in the group.
- Are they getting any errors when try to book events on group calendar? If so, could you please share screenshots with me?
-Maria
Maria,
Let me clarify the issue. It is not what you stated below. All users have the group favorited and see it in the left nav bar no problem.
The issue is that when 1 user adds an appointment to the shared calendar it never shows up on the other members shared calendar in outlook. In order to get the new appointment to show up the user has to click on the group in outlook, and open the calendar from within the group interface in a new window, then the appointment appears on the shared calendar in the new window, and their original outlook calendar window.
Thank you for the clarification, Robert.
Could you please file a support ticket so I can get your logs and pass them to our engineering team?
Regarding some owners unable to book calendar events on group calendar, could you provide me with more details? Is it just group appointment that they're unable to create? Or they cannot send meeting invites to group members either? Any error messages?
Thank you again for reporting these issues.
-Maria
- Some group members do not see specific groups in the left nav in Calendar tab so they have to go back to Mail tab, go to groups folder and then click on group calendar link found in the ribbon.
Ravin Sachdeva any insight here?
- Ravin Sachdeva
Microsoft
It is very weird and doesn't make a lot of sense, but try making them "Members" and "Owners" of the group. I find that in certain uses, these roles are not at all well defined but this can be solved by simply making the members in question both Members and Owners.
