Add channel to a meeting series

[Talisa]

Hi folks,

maybe I’m just to stupid but maybe one of you came across the same issue:

I’ve created a meeting series (with Option to attend via Teams) via Outlook Plugin. In the meantime I’ve created a channel for the meeting subject. I would now like to assign this new channel to the existing meeting series without cancelling the meeting and setting up a new one. 

Any ideas?

Thx

Talisa

[#2]

Hi!
It doesnt work that way! There’s two types of meetings: a “normal” teams meeting which means it’s not connected to any team/channel which also makes it possible to invite any address! This is what happens when you use the outlook addin.

A channel meeting is connected to a channel and it’s only possible to have members of that team joining!

If all attendees are members of that team, setup a reoccurring channel meeting instead

[#3]

By the way, I would recommend you to use the Calendar App in Teams to schedule Teams meeetings

[#4 · Accepted solution]

@adam deltinger 

We'd prefer to have the meetings be part of a channel, so that the recordings and interaction are stored in the channel.  However, what is the best practice to make sure attendees are aware of the meeting?

Does it send an Outlook calendar invite?  If it is a recurring meeting, and the meeting time changes, can it update the Outlook calendar?  It isn't clear how to invite all channel members without individually selecting each person.

[#5]

The experience of notifications of channel meetings are not that great and also depends if people follow the Office 365 etc! I’d suggest copying the link to the meeting and create re-occurring appointments/ meetings with the link and send out via outlook! That way people have it in their calendar and can just click the link

[#6]

@dbetlow 

yep this is exactly the point:

When you setup a recurring meeting within the channel every channel member needs to actively monitor the channel and needs to push the meeting into the calendar.

So I‘m now proceeding the way to Adam provided:

Setting up the meeting completely in Outlook and copy the channel link into it. This works fine for me.

Maybe a feature request for an upcoming Outlook Plugin?

[#7]

@Talisa 

Looks like it depends on how/when the group was created.  I believe prior to Jan 2019, group members were subscribed automatically to groups (and therefore they would receive calendar invites in email).  Groups created after Jan 2019, group members were not automatically subscribed.  I found that I could Edit the Group and turn on the Subscribe members option, so that calendar invites are sent out.  However, there is nothing stopping them from turning it off.  I also found for existing groups, I could view the Office 365 calendar to edit single meetings or the series, but for some groups created in Teams, the calendar is hidden and you have to run a powershell command to unhide.  The issue with this is now it will show up in Outlook for members, which may not be ideal.  For instance, we have a moderated Teams group, that we don't want people sending email to, but we would like to manage the calendar from a central location (versus having a single owner be responsible for it).

[#8]

@Talisa Does anyone know if Microsoft have fixed this issue yet? I'm fairly new to Teams and have just hit the same problem.

[#9]

I'm having issues with my Outlook calendar and Teams in general (I can't see my calendar in Teams), but I do have the button to add a New Meeting.

When I click + New Meeting, I see the ability to add a Channel... however, only standar channels (accessible to everyone on the team) are listed, not private channels (accessible only to a specific group of people within the team). I wondered if this is what everyone else has as capabilities or if it's because of my Outlook issues?

Also - are we saying that a meeting that has already happened in Teams, with it's notes and such, cannot be moved to a channel? Right now, I have such a meeting that is in the Chat tab. I can't assign a Channel to that Chat/Meeting?

[#10]

@dbetlow 
So what you say is prior jan 2019 microsoft did set AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents:$True
And teams created after that AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents:$False.
DId Microsoft send any notice about this which I might have missed?

[#11]

@Markus_Johansson I know that in our company around that time they stopped automatically creating an O365 Group for every new Team, because there were 100's of them. Therefore those new teams had no Group e-mail and no group calendar.

We could request our admins to create/attach a new O365 Group to a Team if needed. Also we found a workaround where if we created a new Planner first, it did create the O365 Group, and then you could create a new Team from that O365 Group to get a Group e-mail and Calendar. Not sure if this would work for every company.

@dbetlow 

[#12]

@dbetlow 

I can't seem to find how to "Edit the Group and turn on the Subscribe members option, so that calendar invites are sent out. ".  Do you know if this feature has been disabled since your reply in November 2019?  Or does IT have to do this?

[#13]

@Markus_Johansson 

Are the "set AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents:$True (or false)" something IT has to enable/disable?

[#14]

@VictoriaJohnson31243 
AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents is a property on the M365 group that IT can manage. 

[#15]

Thanks, @Markus_Johansson !  I'll connect with our IT department again.

[#16]

@adam deltinger I understand that this is not how teams works, but it would be nice to have a solution to this problem, which is likely to be a common one, that doesn't involve time travel.

[#17]

@Talisa 

There is a link for the channel which can be copied to the meeting request. The meeting request with this additional participant can be updated. This meeting will now show up in the channel.