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How can I bulk invite the team to a meeting?

Copper Contributor

Hey there, 

 

I created a channel and invited 10 people to join. How can I send a bulk invitation to a meeting without giving every single name? ideally the meeting would appear in each outlook kalender.

 

Any ideas? 

 

thanks,

Diddy

34 Replies

Hi @Diddy974  

See here

https://microsoft365pro.co.uk/2020/03/23/teams-fightcorona-how-can-i-schedule-a-meeting/

See section schedule a channel meeting. You don't need to specify people just the channel in the invitation. This will automatically invite all members of the team. It should appear in their Outlook

Hope that answers your question!

Best, Chris

@Christopher Hoard  I think that if the O365 group is not visible in Outlook (default for when you create the O365 group from Teams) the users won't get an invite and the meeting is not visible in their calendar. Actually the users get no notification at all except for the channel name being bold. If the O365 is visible in Outlook it works as you describe in your blog post. At least this is the experience I have based on my testing.

 

The workaround I suggest to notify users about the meeting is to add an @-mention of the channel (for example) as a reply to the meeting post in the cannel.

Then create the Office 365 Group in Outlook, build the team off an existing Office 365 group. This 100% appears in Outlook for all team members I tested it this morning.

Best, Chris

@Christopher Hoard Yes, as I mentioned, if the O365 group is in Outlook that works. The problem is that there are multiple ways to create a group and different functionality depending on how you do it and I don't think that most end users realize this, expecting the same functionality independent of how the group was created. And to be honest I think most users using Teams on a daily basis will create their group/team directly in Teams.

best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution
That's fair enough - and I 100% agree with you - but the initial question to this particularly thread was - How can I send a bulk invitation to a meeting without giving every single name? ideally the meeting would appear in each outlook kalender.

The answer is to create a Team built of an Office 365 group created in Outlook. If they havent done this, then one will need to be created, any content moved and the legacy Team deleted.

Apologies - not being short, just that there is a solution to what they want. I know that 99% of Teams are created through Teams. I may investigate to see if there is any setting that can just enable this for an Office 365 group created via Teams

Best, Chris

@Par Linderoth I tried the option Chris shared above through the link and it did not work. Users did not get an invite. 

@Christopher Hoard I guess this is for now the best option I have. Thanks for your help

@Par Linderoth thanks for your comment and help

@Diddy974 Just to Add : If the users are part for Distribution List then you can send the bulk invite by going to Outlook > Team Addins > Type your Distribution List Name and hit send.

No worries, the meeting should turn up in their calendar. Did you want them to each receive an invite too?

Best, Chris
ideally yes, in case they don't check the channel every day.

Hi @Diddy974 , a bit late to the show, but I have used this version: 
https://medium.com/@doolatunde/send-bulk-guest-teams-invite-with-powershell-7f094f00af2d

Especially if you have a large team and you want them to get a notification, and you don't have a O365 group in Outlook yet.

 

Powershell and csv :)

@Diddy974 I agree with the solution @Christopher Hoard proposed. I was taken aback a bit when it was stated that this does not work (no need to add attendees) since it has always been my experience that that is the way Teams work. So I tested it to make sure I did not imagine things and it works perfectly. If you do not specify any attendees when you schedule a meeting from Teams all the members of the team will get a meeting invite. Obviously it must be a Channel meeting i.e. there must be a valid entry in the Channel input.

@Illuminate @Christopher Hoard 

This doesn't seem to be working for me.

When I add a channel, it only sends formal invite to me.  It posts to the channel but does not formally invite (or appear in) outlook calendars for other members of the channel/team.

 

My steps:

Create meeting in teams, populate Channel and leave all other required/optional attendee fields blank.

The only team member that gets formally invited this way is me!?

 

@karim7x  That is weird. I also tested it with external members (guests) and even they get the invite without me having to specify them in the invite if they are team members. The only thing I can think of is that it is related to how your tenant is set up, maybe there is a configuration parameter that needs to be set but I know too little about that to really say.

@karim7x Did you created the Office 365 Group in Outlook first and after that made it a team? If not you won't get the emails.

I am also having an issue with the invites going out as email. How do I set my Team up in 365 first to insure this works as you mentioned? @Par Linderoth 

FRUSTRATING for me too. I want to schedule a meeting for the entire team, but it won't send an invite via outlook / calendar. It just puts it in the team general list, meaning very few people would see it.

When you schedule inside teams, it does see existing outlook distribution lists, but not "TEAMS" specific items. If you copy / paste an team name, for instance ER@valleyhospital.com into the dialog, and teams doesn't recognize it, even though it is the global distribution list, and you can send this list an Email w outlook, nobody will get an invite.

I think this must be a BUG that MS teams devs should fix.





I have been having to forward the invite from my Outlook once I create the meeting in Teams channel (since it sends the actual invite to me via email). However, this now makes my channel the actual organizer at that point and me simply the one forwarding the invite (see below). This cause issues if I need to update or monitor who is responding. I truly wish there was a way to add a channel when setting up the meeting through outlook. If ANYONE knows how to fix this PLEASE help :)  @Jason_IT 

April213_0-1596559465303.png

 

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution
That's fair enough - and I 100% agree with you - but the initial question to this particularly thread was - How can I send a bulk invitation to a meeting without giving every single name? ideally the meeting would appear in each outlook kalender.

The answer is to create a Team built of an Office 365 group created in Outlook. If they havent done this, then one will need to be created, any content moved and the legacy Team deleted.

Apologies - not being short, just that there is a solution to what they want. I know that 99% of Teams are created through Teams. I may investigate to see if there is any setting that can just enable this for an Office 365 group created via Teams

Best, Chris

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