How to create a shared company calendar for time off and holidays?

Iron Contributor

I'M LOST 

 

I have spent DAYS trying to figure out some way to provide a shared company calendar with Holidays, PTO Schedules, On-Call Schedules, etc. We just want one place to see what's going on this week, who's available, and do we have a day off this week. BASIC information. After spending more than 3 days on this, I feel more lost than I did when I started. 

 

I could create a SharePoint Calendar. This calendar doesn't sync with Outlook for Mac or Apple Calendars and, most importantly, reoccurring events don't show up on a SharePoint Events web part. I could manually create reoccurring events but I rather not. Regardless, the functionality is incredibly limited.  

I could create a new M365 user. This would let me see these calendar in Apple Calendars and give myself or another admin access to update events. But this calendar can't be integrated in SharePoint or Teams so it's basically invisible.   

I could create a Channel Calendar in Teams but that's certainly not appropriate. 

I could create a new Group with a Calendar. Although, we already have a org-Wide Team and it doesn't actually do anything - can't email orgteam@company.com and it doesn't come with an Outlook calendar. I don't think I should have to add someone to a group for them to see a calendar I want public to the entire company. This might be the best compromise but that's besides the point.   

 

The POINT is, WHY in the world isn't this a built-in feature that's turned on the moment a company creates a M365 tenant? WHY do I need to spend days figuring out that all the archaic tutorials from 2017 don't even work in 2021? WHY can't MICROSOFT make calendars easy? I mean, I'd settle for difficult - it's better than impossible. 

And, not for nothing, I look like a complete idiot (I very well may be!) when my boss asks me to do something that should take 2 minutes and I have absolutely nothing to show 3 days later. 

 

Q: What is your business doing to let you know you have Memorial day off? How are you able to see if someone has the week off for vacation? Are you using a M365 product or something else? 

 

14 Replies
Those links are all guides on creating a org-wide team, which I already have. I'm looking for help about making a shared calendar.
Did you ever figure this out? Looking for the same thing - create a view only (but can copy to own calendar) company calendar solution.

@careyjm @Anthony-123 Did either of you figure this out? I am looking to do the same thing. What I really would like to do is create a calendar for each Department (that way each manager can just see their department) and then have those roll up into a Company-wide Calendar that could be displayed on our SharePoint Intranet site so anyone in the company can see who is in or out of the office and our Company Holidays.

 

@Dana_Miller nope 😞 such a bummer that this isn't a basic function

@jmcarey I need this function as well. I hope a solution is found. 

I can offer an update but I'm not 100% confident about it.

It seems like I can create and manage calendar events for Groups and SharePoint sites but not for a Team. All of our Groups are in Teams so I *think* the calendar only works if you create a Group then migrate it to a Team.

So, if I'm Outlook online and I go to People/Groups that I own or manage, this is the list of 'things' I can use for Calendars. I don't see any Teams here so I can't use them for Calendars (not cool).

I have a Company Calendar from a Sharepoint site (domain.sharepoint.com/sites/CompanyCalendar). I can put Thanksgiving on the calendar and this shows up in Calendar under Groups > Company Calendar. I can also drop this calendar into any(?) SharePoint site/page using the Calendar widget. I have this widget on our main Sharepoint site for everyone to see upcoming paid holidays.

In your case, provided each of your departments has their own Group or Sharepoint site, you should be able to do the same. So maybe on your Sales Department site you'd have the Sales Department Calendar and also the main Company Calendar.

I'm not seeing a good way to combine or collate calendars. Ideally, there would be one calendar showing holidays, closures, corporate events, PTO requests, etc. I haven't looked into it but I'm wondering if a unique Group (All Calendars) can subscribe to all these calendars so it could be displayed in a comprehensive SPO site widget.

Would love to get some feedback from anyone who could investigate these findings on their end.

 

Oh - I'm just re-reading my original post. I've completely given up on integrating with Apple products LOL. From my perspective, the calendar is available only in Outlook and a SharePoint widget. 

I am trying to figure out something like this as well.  Ideally, I would like a calendar that pulls from individual calendars and only shows items where people are out all day. That way, staff can use their calendars as they typically would, and when they are out for the day, the group calendar shows only those days. This could also pull from a generic holiday and office event calendar to display standard days off. We currently use different software for this, but it seems like it would be an essential addition to Outlook. Most businesses would want an easy way to see which staff are out of the office for the day. 

 

@Anthony-123 

 

I am leveraging the shared calendar through Teams channel which SharePoint Online supported from the back, may I know this is what you want as well?

Any updates to this thread- I am also being asked as users are manualy entering holidays and vacations and sending invites to each other to block calendars etc...Has any new way to do this been developed by Microsoft

@peiyezhu 

I am trying to figure out how to use power automate to have all OOO events pull to a vacation calendar in outlook that would also update if someone changed their OOO event later.  Theoretically, I am sure it is possible, but I'm at a beginner skill level with these tools.  Has anyone tried this?

I am trying to figure out how to use power automate to have all OOO events pull to a vacation calendar in outlook that would also update if someone changed their OOO event later. Theoretically, I am sure it is possible, but I'm at a beginner skill level with these tools. Has anyone tried this?