New Teams Channel Calendar App Makes Channel Meetings Easier to Access

[Tony Redmond]

The Teams channel calendar app highlights meetings scheduled for a calendar and makes it easier for team members to attend these events. Meetings for all channels in a team are stored in a single calendar, so the app applies a filter to display the meetings belonging to the channel it is installed into.

https://office365itpros.com/2021/01/11/teams-channel-calendar-app/

[#2]

Great piece Tony.

[#3]

@Tony Redmond Thank you for the information. Is there a way to send invite to tis channel calendar from your Outlook for example.

I am trying to create a activity calendar for my team and want to make sure that the invitation I create from my Outlook appears in the channel calendar. I tried sending the meeting invite to channel email but that did not work. 

[#4]

@Retina_Kumar No, you can only schedule channel meetings from the Teams calendar app. Outlook calendar supports the scheduling of Teams personal meetings (under the control of the person who creates the meeting rather than a channel).

[#5]

Hi @Tony Redmond 

Great new feature and I am testing it out for our company before releasing to our users.

I would like to create meetings within the channel but I do not want all of the members in the team to get a notification or invite to the meeting.

One thing that I don´t understand is that even if I specify a set of persons within the team under the required attendees in the meeting invite, it still gets sent too all of the members in the team.

Is there a way of making this work?

Thanks!

[#6]

@fransthomas Sounds like the Microsoft 365 group settings for subscribers is set to send information about new events to all group (team) members. See https://office365itpros.com/2020/03/31/invitations-teams-meetings/ and https://office365itpros.com/2020/10/21/update-teams-send-meeting-invitations-to-members/. If this is the case, you'd simply clear the subscriber list for the group and no one will receive invitations to channel meetings unless they are explicitly invited.

[#7]

Hi, @Tony Redmond 

I noticed today that Guests are getting the meeting invitation to their inbox. I have checked the Office 365 Group settings and the members are not subscribing to e-mail and events. However the internal (org tenant) are not getting any invitation - works as you describe.
Do you know if the feature has changed or if this is a setting in "Guests"

Thanks

Camilla  

[#8]

@CamillaAndersson I don't see that happening in my tenant. I created a new team, added some guest accounts, and scheduled a meeting with the channel calendar app. The only person who received anything was the meeting organizer, who had the meeting entered in their calendar. No guest received an invitation.

Is the group/team you are using an old one or recently created? If it's older than a couple of years, it might have different settings as Microsoft has changed things in this area in the past.

[#9]

Hello @Tony Redmond 

Thanks for a quick reply! Well I think it's a kinda new Microsoft Teams Team that I created hence not an uplifted from Office 365 group. Will do the same for a new new Team.

Regards

Camilla

[#10]

@Tony Redmond, thanks for sharing. Great stuff. Was there an official Microsoft announcement for this feature dropping? I haven't seen anything from the message center and can't find it anywhere so hoping I just missed something.

[#11]

@skaggejFMI I hate to ask, but did you read the article and note the MC number in the first line...

[#12]

Nope! Overlooked it. Thanks.

[#13]

@Tony Redmond 

So is my understanding correct that the calendar app wont be helpful to Guests? 

I have teams of mostly guest users with regularly scheduled meetings. I was hoping to have a calendar so they could see the upcoming meetings and attend. Thanks in advance!

[#14]

@BackswathSara Sorry. Guests don't have access to Exchange Online calendars, which are where Teams stores its events.

[#15]

@Tony Redmond I like the new Calendar app, but I want to be able to add an event and NOT have it send a meeting request via Outlook to everyone in the channel.  In my case, there a few people on the team who I would add to the meeting invite, but it would be optional for the rest of the team.  I would like them to know about it in Teams, so they can attend if interested - even add themselves to the meeting request if they desire - but I don't want a meeting request going to them in Outlook. 

Based on this comment - "you'd simply clear the subscriber list for the group and no one will receive invitations to channel meetings unless they are explicitly invited." - it sounds like this is possible, but I don't understand how to do it (I'm not an Admin).  If this is possible, can you provide information on how to enable it, which I can pass along to our Admins?

[#16]

@Tony Redmond 

How can I "repair" an old team, which has these settings, so that all team member gets invitations instead of only the ones that I have invited? Due to I cannot move a channel to an new team (which didn't habe this wrong behavior) I am forced to "repair" the old team. But how?

I read somewhere, there are special attributes of a team, that has changed tzhe last month/years.
How can I set all attributes of an "old" team to the values, that has a "new" team, that I currently created?

[#17]

@ReneJ_Hamburg Do you mean something like this? https://office365itpros.com/2020/10/21/update-teams-send-meeting-invitations-to-members/ 

[#18]

@Tony Redmond 

Hmm, just the otzher way around: I want to use channel calendar tomplan training events. I want only invite special persons, but everyone else could also want the meeting if he wants. But they should not get a Mail with an invitation, but only the one I really invited.

With a new team, it works like I want it to work. But with an old team (where most of our channels are in), it does not work like I want, everyone receives an email invitation to a meeting I create in the channel calendar, even if I did not invite them.
Should I set the attribute "AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents" of this "old" team to "false"?

[#19]

@ReneJ_Hamburg You should set AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents to False.

Should also say that it is a recognized problem that teams created from the Teams admin center do not have the same settings as those created from a Teams client. There's a change coming next month to make sure that consistent settings are used everywhere.

[#20]

@Tony Redmond 

Hi Tony,

I just checks the attributes in the "old" team and the "new" team. Both had "AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents"=$false. So this what not the reason.
But with the help of your script How to Update Microsoft Teams so that Meeting Invitations go to Team Members - Office 365 for IT Pro... I checked the list of suscribers and in the "old" team, there were 15 subscribers, so I deleted them all and now it seems to be ok.

My question: What is the process so that 15 persons get into the subscribers list? What must a user do, do get into that list? (so that I could tell them, not to do it). I cannot see a "subscribe" button for a team.