SOLVED

Add an EVENT to Channel Calendar

Brass Contributor

Hi,

Can someone tell me how to add an Event to the CHANNEL calendar?

I have easily added the Channel Calendar app as a tab to the Channel.

This opens my week view, with the option to + Add new event.

If I select this, it immediately opens New meeting.

I do not want to invite people,  I want an event that everyone can see in the calendar.  I also want to be able to categorise different events with colour, being a basic EVENT function.

Surely MS have not implemented a calendar in which you can only have meetings?  Am I missing something basic?

 

Many thanks

 

25 Replies

Hi Community,

 

I am struggling to accept that MS have implemented a 'so called calendar', which can only add meetings. The whole concept of a calendar is event based (only an electronic calendar can have the addition of meetings).

 

Being the fundamental use of a calendar, I would appreciate a Teams Guru answering, even if it is just to categorically say, "Nope, it only allows meetings".

 

It appears that the O365 Group Calendar (aka, Team) appears to be used by all the channels.  I am wondering if MS has implemented a poorly constructed solution, by perhaps (re)using the Group Calendar Events as Channel Meetings (could explain 'Add new event'), resulting in actual Events being blocked (used for another purpose) ... which makes no sense to me ...

 

@ChrizK 

 

Step by step video on Event Calendar Within a Channel.

https://youtu.be/9HTyUhf05-4

Step by Step video on how to Add a Calendar to Microsoft Teams Channel | How to create Shared Calendar in Microsoft Teams. If you like the video, then please like and share the video. Do subscribe and support the channel. It motivates me to create more content Thank you...!! This video is for ...

@PositiveEnergy 

Sorry but the answer proposed does not respond to the request. The request is to schedule "events" not just meetings on the calendar. For example, I know that there is a webinar of interest for the team (on another platform) and I want to place on the team calendar the "event" possibly with a link to the external platform where the event takes place. That would make the calendar much more useful. Any idea? Thanks

 

Vittorio Scarano

Apologies, I completely missed the initial response.
I very much appreciate anyone taking the time to help, but the video clearly shows someone selecting ‘add EVENT’, adding a MEETING, and then proceeding to join that meeting. This clearly illustrates my whole point ... it is nit an event, it is a meeting.

A simple example of a calendar event ‘Leave now to go to dentist’ ... it isn’t a meeting in which I am inviting the dentist, it is an event in my calendar telling me to leave.
I am a little unsure why the basic concept of an event is proving difficult to understand.
Did you ever find a solution to this? I've just added a Teams Channel Calendar and have run into exactly the same problem. I want it to be a Calendar for the Team, not just for Teams Meetings.

Sorry, either people don’t seem to comprehend the difference, or Microsoft are just choosing to ignore it. My guess is that MS have not implemented Channel Calendars properly, as it appears to be integrated with the Team Calendar. I suspect they have inadvertently ended up with a limitation due to poor design, but just choose to ignore it ...just noticed an MSFT has marked 'Best Response Confirmed' above ...kinda illustrates that some people don’t get the basic concept of an event based calendar. IMO the best response appears to simply be, ‘no, you can’t add an event’ ....go figure!  It is disheartening that someone from MS Engineering doesn't acknowledge the problem.

 

Sorry Vittorio, that should have been a reply to @PositiveEnergy, as I appreciate you were only reiterating/confirming my question.
best response confirmed by ChrizK (Brass Contributor)
Solution

@ChrizK Hello, just to put it out there it's a highly requested feature being worked on Include Office 365 group calendar in teams – Microsoft Teams UserVoice

 

As for the channel calendar it's only a calendar for channel meetings that have been scheduled in that team in that channel. 

 

You would have to use the Outlook client to create an appointment and not a meeting, but unfortunately not possible to schedule in channels from Outlook today.

Thank you for your reply. Can you direct me to where MS have stated the limitation/intended use of Channel Calendars? It is disappointing that they have not considered that users would like to have full calendar functions per channel.
From my point of view, I do not want integration with the Team/Group Calendar, I need an independent Calendar per Channel (as mentioned originally, I would like to add events with colour coding).
I am not sure that the feature you mention fulfils this requirement, as it appears to simply ask to see the Team/Group calendar within Teams (isn't the 'accepted' workaround to use the URL to O365?).

@ChristianBergstrom Thank you :smile:

 

*EDITED* due to a misunderstanding

Hey, you asked for the official info and I provided it. I do not work at Microsoft so add your opinion as feedback from within Teams (bottom left corner). You should use Outlook and not Teams for a mature scheduling experience where you simply have more scheduling options (not when it comes to channel meetings of course).

And why don't you just read some of the MVP's articles on the topic if you find the official info insufficient. Or do your own research.

https://office365itpros.com/2021/01/11/teams-channel-calendar-app/
https://myteamsday.com/2021/01/11/channel-calendar/
https://petri.com/getting-started-with-shared-calendars-in-microsoft-teams

I am unsure why you have taken my comments in regard to the article personally.  I presume it is because I replied to you directly, giving my thanks for supplying the URL, but also including my comments.  I have corrected this, and apologies for upsetting you.  Forums generally only give the option for Reply, which I chose for continuity.  However, I will 'reply to myself' so there is no misunderstanding (as the posts are chronological, I believe this item will still make sense).

@ChrizK 

In my opinion, the support page provided is very unclear and confused document.

Add a shared calendar to a channel 

Now that you have a shared calendar, you can add meetings that all members can join.

>>>>Personally, in the context of the document, I do not consider this explicit, but it is understandable why some may deduce that it is the only capability, despite the Button saying "Add Event".

 

To elaborate on the context...

 

Things to know about channel calendars

To add a channel event to your personal calendar, open the event and select Add to calendar.

>>>>The heading is in regard to  Things to know about channel calendars, so why does it switch to personal?

 

Channel events can only be scheduled and viewed from the Teams app.

>>>>so, are there Channel Events or not???????

Thanks to the contributions, I believe we have decided there is no such thing as a Channel Event, despite the terrible implementation indicating that there is.

 

A channel calendar is a filtered view of the Microsoft 365 group calendar that is associated with the team. It only shows the events for a specific channel and not the entire team. You can read up on how Teams and Microsoft 365 groups work together at How M365 groups work with teams.

>>>>I had done my research before posting this question.  As stated in the update to my initial post, I had come to the conclusion that this implementation was a merely a view of the Team calendar.  It is good to see that the article confirms my analysis was correct.

However, I am unsure why you can add a Meeting but not an Event.  It indicates that there is insufficient meta data in an Event to separate it into a Channel View, whereas the a meeting has the ability. 

 

If it is simply meta data, surely MS could investigate and propose a product change?  It could possibly be a fairly simple enhancement, if someone considers it.

However, I believe being a view of the Team/Group calendar is short sighted.  I am unsure why any Team would want a global picture of all meetings across all channels.  To my mind, this would simply make the Team/Group calendar unmanageable.

 

I believe it is unhelpful for an MSFT to mark an incorrect response as the best answer, as it just shows a lack of understanding, and more importantly, causes more confusion with the people that understand/have the same question, and have ended up here.

(it looks like that has now been removed, but without any acknowledgement or answer)

Anyway, without any input from Microsoft, I believe the question has been answered.  Hopefully those with the same question will find this useful.

Hi Matt, just re-read your response. Do you only need a Calendar for the Team?

My question was specifically in regard to the Channel capability, ie I would like to have a FULL calendar capability for a channel. This would allow me to have events specific to each channel activity.

Teams is effectively a front end to several MS products. I guess you could think of a Team being a Group with added capability providing collaborative working (see the link within the support URL provided by @ChristianBergstrom).

Being a Group, it 'automatically' has a Group Calendar, which your Team can access. This is discussed as the Highly Requested Feature that Christian refers to. As mentioned, there is a workaround in place. You will need to open the Group Calendar in O365, copy the URL, and add it as a web page to Teams.
Hope that helps.

If you want some answers I believe you have to be more precise and not elaborate too much. Simply short questions.

But to answer the initial very first post. No, you can't add an appointment as when scheduling with Outlook. And with Outlook you can't schedule in channels right now, so you can't add an appointment in a channel from Outlook.

When scheduling in Teams there are only meetings. Consequently an event is a meeting, and not an appointment, but perhaps an appointment option will be available later on.

Sometimes the official docs can be confusing because of the technical writers not being technical engineers. But in general the docs and support pages are really good.

Having recently been involved in trying to resolve a departmental issue around scheduling events/meetings, I immediately saw this as the fix. Unfortunately this isn't the case as the Channel Calendar does not function as per the instructions and help guides suggest.

 

The issue: - A department wants a location/shared calendar that the entire team can access and use to schedule meetings and events that they can all see, but not necessarily all be notified/invited (unless explicitly targeted). They can then put holidays in and events that the team need to be aware of but that aren't meetings, as well as some meetings that need to be viewable and/or modified by multiple members of the team.

 

The Channel Calendar guide specifically says that when a meeting is scheduled in the channel calendar, it doesn't automatically invite all users of the channel but they can all see it from within Teams. It would however add it to users calendars and notify them if they are specifically invited to the meeting.

 

On testing this, when you create a meeting from within the channel it does send an invite to every member of the channel and notifies them (as required attendees). Was this implemented incorrectly or am I missing something here?

@PCHUser This thread is a bit dated, but just came across it looking for the same solution. Our environment is hybrid outlook/teams. That being said, it would be beneficial for us to have a calendar in which Events and Meetings can co-exist.In other words, it's not always a dial in situation. It is possible to remove the dial in information, however the Join button remains. It's not a JOIN opportunity. its simply a reminder. To reiterate a point made earlier, I want to set a reminder to everyone that an Exec will be on prem, I don't need a conference call to spread the word.

Agreed that the function of an "event" without it being a meeting is not available. The best I could come up with was not add anyone to attend and to delete the meeting information in the body. It didn't show up as a post in the channel either. 

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by ChrizK (Brass Contributor)
Solution

@ChrizK Hello, just to put it out there it's a highly requested feature being worked on Include Office 365 group calendar in teams – Microsoft Teams UserVoice

 

As for the channel calendar it's only a calendar for channel meetings that have been scheduled in that team in that channel. 

 

You would have to use the Outlook client to create an appointment and not a meeting, but unfortunately not possible to schedule in channels from Outlook today.

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