Preview how Outlook for Windows is updating Shared Calendars
Published Jul 09 2019 12:35 PM 33.9K Views
Microsoft

Microsoft is continuing to invest in Outlook for Windows calendar capabilities to assist customers in managing their time and connecting with people who help them achieve more.  We are introducing an opportunity for Office 365 customers to preview new shared calendar capabilities aimed at improving the speed and reliability of how they sync.  

 

We are excited to bring you these changes and are eager to get your feedback before we update the default shared calendar experience.  If you are a delegate on someone else’s calendar, if you manage a shared calendar for a conference room, we want your feedback! 

 

Watch this short instructional video to learn how to opt in, learn about the updates we are rolling out and what you need to know.

 

 

Faster & more reliable sync

We’re improving how we synchronize changes you make on a shared calendar to the calendar owner and to everyone else who views that calendar. 

 

For example, if you’re a delegate for your manager’s calendar, you can be confident that the shared calendar meetings and appointments you see in your Outlook calendar matches what your manager sees on their calendar.

 

You can also be confident that new meetings or updated meetings will make it into your manager’s calendar before any other attendees receive the meeting invitations. In the past, changes could take a long time to reach the manager’s calendar, and sometimes the manager’s and attendees’ calendars would get out of sync. Now, the meeting request is sent to attendees’ mailboxes after the meeting reaches your manager’s calendar, so everyone has the same meeting details. Moreover, you’ll notice viewing and editing shared calendar events is as fast as managing your own calendar!

 

Additional changes 

There are some changes you’ll notice in the preview of the updated shared calendar experience since it’s somewhat different from your previous Outlook calendar experience.

 

When you are the organizer of a meeting in a shared calendar – for example, on behalf of your manager:

  • You will be able to extend or end a recurring series, and it won’t impact the exceptions for that meeting that occurred in the past.
  • Outlook will automatically send updates to only those attendees you changed on a meeting list.
  • If you are drafting a meeting, it will not auto-save it to your Drafts folder, use the Save button or Ctrl-S instead. It will save as a draft meeting in your manager’s shared calendar.

If you’re an event or meeting attendee or a recipient of a shared calendar event:

  • When you choose “Do Not Send a Response,” Outlook does not send a response in an email, but the organizer and other attendees in Office 365 will see your response in the Tracking status.

 

When forwarding a meeting to a new attendee with attachments, you can’t attach additional files. The new attendees will be able to view all existing attachments when they receive the forwarded meeting.

 

We appreciate hearing about what you think of the updated experience so please opt-in to try it out and then use shared calendars as you do today. 

 

Opt-in to try it outOpt-in to try it out

 

After opting in, you’ll see (preview) appended to the calendar name for each shared calendar and know that the improvements are enabled in your Outlook for Windows.

 

It’s important to note that opting into this preview does not impact your experience with your core calendar and you can opt out of the preview at any time.

 

How do I send feedback?

We would like to hear your feedback about your experience using the updated shared calendar. Please send us your feedback through the in app help>feedback option if you need customer support or to report issues.  Please send questions or high-level feedback to olk-calendar-preview@microsoft.com.

 

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By trying it out and sharing your feedback, you’re helping us learn more about how these updates can improve Outlook – thank you! In a few months, based on your feedback, we plan to roll out these updates to shared calendar and make it the default experience.  If you'd like more technical details about the changes, you can learn more here: aka.ms/calendarsharing.

 

 

16 Comments
Silver Contributor

Like it was told hundreds of times. Internal player here is bad and broken (like many things on this site). Use Youtube..

Bronze Contributor

It does play in Firefox. You can enable the preview via the advanced properties of the Exchange account.

Silver Contributor

Firefox also. It sometimes starts playing, then stops and buffers, then doesn't play. Most of the time it doesn't work.

Steel Contributor

Very cool features.

 

I have a suggestion. In the video drafts look like calendar events. If you don't know that a draft is still a draft, it might be mistaken as planned/sent event.

Copper Contributor
My first suggestion would be put the video on Youtube, just admit you lost and let Google have that one.
Copper Contributor

Hello,

it's not very clear to me why removing the attachment part in a forwarded invitation….

Would you like to explain it better, please? 

thank you very much. 

Bronze Contributor

GCC going to receive this too? Yes or no?

Copper Contributor

The video player here doesn't work; plays for a second then buffers for a minute. Use YouTube if you can't figure this out.

Copper Contributor
Works just fine with Edge Preview Build: Microsoft Edge version 77.0.211.3 (Official build) Dev (64-bit) Cheers!
Copper Contributor

Working fine with Google Chrome. You can download it to you computer from the three dots right lower corner, and play it any time.

 

Community Manager

Sorry for the hassle, everyone. We've optimized the video further and it should work better. We'll keep this feedback for the future in how we embed videos in the community. 

Brass Contributor

Most of these are great, but for Appointments that haven't been sent yet, is there any visual cue in your Calendar to show that it's a Draft and hasn't been sent?  Also, will Outlook remind you of Appointments you forgot to send?  Humans will inevitably forget if there's no reminder, and if there's no discernible way to tell which meetings in your Calendars are drafts, users will forget that they haven't sent it yet and will assume they have, as it's in their Calendars.

 

Brass Contributor

What are the requirements for the checkbox "Turn on shared calendar improvements (preview)" to appear? I'm running 1906 monthly channel Office and I don't see it.

Copper Contributor

I'm on the monthly channel and version 1907 and I don't see this setting. My mailbox is on Exchange Online.

Copper Contributor

@JustAnotherITGuy  We found in our environment via trial and error that the REST calendar sharing preview only applies to instances of Office on the 'Monthly Channel (Targeted)' subscription. That's how it is for now until they decide to release the feature to regular Monthly Channel subscription.

 

If you have Office 365 with Targeted Release, you're good to go. If not, here's what we did to set it up:

 

- Set AAD user accounts 'StagedRolloutOne' on the ReleaseTrack attribute (Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName [UPN] -ReleaseTrack "StagedRolloutOne")

- Uninstall Office 365 from workstations assigned to those AAD accounts set for Targeted Release ("StagedRolloutOne")

- Install Office 365

- Verify by opening Outlook > File tab > Office Account > About Outlook and it should read "Monthly Channel (Targeted)." You should also see Version 1907 (or 1908 at this point).

- Set REST calendar sharing by going to Account Settings > [Primary Exchange Account] > More Settings > Advanced > Office 365 Features - check "Turn on shared calendar improvements (preview)."

 

We are testing select accounts with high activity on calendar scheduling. Here's one of the Office Support articles with detail on setting this up:

 

Outlook calendar sharing updates

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/outlook-calendar-sharing-updates-c3aec5d3-55ce-4cea-84b0-80...

 

Hope this helps.

Copper Contributor

Hello,

 

I am testing the preview since several days now; it is a much better experience than before when managing shared calendars but there is something really annoying; once added, the calendar can take hours to fully load (despite displaying "all folder are up to date"); it would be good to improve that, or to see the overall progress somewhere.

Thanks

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‎Jul 16 2019 09:25 PM
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