Group Calendar in Outlook 2016

Iron Contributor

Is this how Group Calendar should work? I open Group Calendar from Outlook 2016 client (ver. 1803) with Open Calendar >> From Address Book. In Group Calendar I can see my own personal calendar meetings as busy/out of office. Why my own meetings/appointments are showing in the Group calendar?

 

Also some O365 Group Calendars are listed under My Calendars in Outlook 2016, but some I need to explicitly open and then they are added then under Shared Calendars. Where is this inconsistency coming from?

26 Replies

That's most likely because when you use the "add calendar" functionality, your own Calendar remains selected/visible. You might also want to check the Overlay option.

 

For the other question, perhaps you have added some of those Calendars as Favourites?

No, if I de-select my own calendar, then Group calendar still shows blocked times as busy.

Actually it takes all appointments/meetings from all Group members calendars and combines them into the Group Calendar view and shows them as busy. But is this how it should work?

No, unless those are all meeting that involve the actual Group mailbox (i.e. the Group is added as recipient). Or unless I'm missing the point entirely :)

It's easy to make the mistake of adding new appointments to the wrong calendar in the first place.  I've done that before.

No you are missing it, it is nothing that simple. I hope below screen shot from my Outlook 2016 explains it better. My own calendar on left, in middle my colleague's calendar and on right the Group calendar. We both are members of that Group.

 

For example on Thursday I'm busy 9-10 and my colleague is busy 10-11. In group calendar that is presented as busy 9-11.

 

On Tuesday I'm out-of-office the whole day, so that is shown in Group calendar (doesn't matter that I have meeting 11am-2pm, I'm still unavailable whole day).

 

Thursday I just have a private placeholder which I marked as "free", and as my colleague does not have anything scheduled that time, the Group calendar is showing that as free for both of us.

 

So Group calendar is taking appointments/meetings from our calendars and presenting them in aggregated view and showing when either one of us is not free... This is really confusing now when we are trying to market O365 Group calendar as the replacer of the traditional shared Outlook calendar.

 

Groups_Cal_Outlook.png

I'm having the same issue. Did you ever get this resolved?

 

I have same too

 

The question is in outlook 2016 how can you add office 365 group calendar in the normal view ???

I managed to resolve my problem by adding the Group calendar as a Favorite. 

In Outlook 2016, open calendar then click the 3 dots at the bottom and select 'Folders' view, now find the Group calendar you want to add, right click on it and select 'Add to Favorites'.

Open your Calendar in normal view and you should see the Group calendar listed under 'My Calendars'.

For some reason when it's added there it works. 

 

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. This was the key for my users. Microsoft, if you are listening, this needs to be addressed! 

Same problem here! I found that problem exists only when you "turn off cached exchange mode", enabling it resolve problem but other problems come across...

I have reproduced this exact same error in multiple different user accounts, in multiple different organizations. If you add a group calendar from the address book, in most cases (as far as I can tell, unless there are guest members of the group) it will display all of the *personal appointments* of every member of the group in the *group calendar*, shown as Busy with no other details. If you add it the other way, they don't show up.

 

This is a serious bug.

I absolutely agree. I just had to teach a set of end users how to use the calendar for their group that used a mixture of outlook on windows and mac and it was a nightmare. No consistency at all, have to look under folders and add the group as a favorite from there, then once that was done users could add/cancel appt. and could add meetings but could not cancel any meetings. Finally we found the little checkbox in advanced settings to not cache shared calendars and that fixed the issue, but its been a nightmare for this team to work in O365 Groups and they really want to just scrap it for a sharepoint shared calendar, but the mac users cant access those so they are stuck.... Friggin debacle all around. 

Hi folks,

 

Apologies for not seeing this thread earlier.

 

We certainly don't recommend users opening group calendars by going to Open calendar > From address book. As some of you pointed out, it's the union of events in group members' calendars, not what is on the group calendar itself.

 

At this point, all users on the Monthly Channel for Office 365 ProPlus should see all their groups in the left navigation pane in the calendar module by default--in fact, for almost a year now.

 

Users on Semi-Annual Channel and Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) should see all their groups in the left navigation pane in the calendar module in builds after (but not including) 1808.

 

Whichever version you’re on, you can always go to the group from the mail module, and then press “Calendar” from the ribbon. As well, as other folks have mentioned, you can also right click on the group in the left nav in the mail module, and favorite it; this will also make the group appear in the left nav in the calendar module.

What about the users who are not members of that group but still want to be able to view the calendar for group events?

@mikem420: For users that are not a part of the public group would like to see the calendar, they can go to the ribbon at the top and select "Browse groups", and then hit "View" on the group they'd like to view.

 

From there it will launch the group conversation space, and they can hit Calendar from the Group section of the ribbon.

 

That being said, it might just be easier to join the public group and not follow it in inbox. For private groups, the calendar isn't visible to folks outside the group.

@Ethan Li Why not fix it to where it just adds properly from the address book? Why should we have to remember all of these magical workarounds? Just make it work like the other calendars. Sheesh. I dont understand why you guys hate usability. 

@Ethan Li 

> I don't understand! In Outlook 2016. 

Whichever version you’re on, you can always go to the group from the mail module, and then press “Calendar” from the ribbon.
> Do you mean the calendar icon here?

calendar in Outlook 2016.PNG

>If so, I don't see the Groups I'm a member of.

 

As well, as other folks have mentioned, you can also right click on the group in the left nav in the mail module, and favorite it;

> How do you do this? I don't see a favourite option save mailbox options.png

this will also make the group appear in the left nav in the calendar module.

@Georgeina Baker 

 

Click the three dots at the bottom and select 'Folder' view.

Outlook.png

 

You should then be able to add a Calendar to your Favorites.

 

 

 

 

Thanks! @Stephen Harling 

I can click the folder view but don't see any sign of my group calendar (strategydigitalcommunications), nor options to favourite anything. 

lh nav outlook 2016.PNG