Invite who you want in group calendars
Good news! We've heard your feedback here on Tech Community as well as UserVoice that you really just want to: Put something on a shared group calendar Pick whomever you want to invite, which may not be the group itself. Over the next few days, you will have more options when managing your group calendar: Just invite anyone you want. If you want to invite the entire group, simply add the group to the attendees list. This change gives a lot more flexibility to the group calendar surface: Invite no one: this is good for putting milestones on the calendar as a visual reminder that it's coming up. If you want to add a copy of it to your own personal calendar, you can "Add to my calendar". This is also great for a vacation calendar, where you can create a ? vacation ? event on the group calendar. "Brownbag-style events": A lunchtime learning session is typically not mandatory for attendees, but is required for the organizer and the presenter. Now, you can create an event on the group calendar and add specific individuals without adding the group itself to the attendees list. This way, those individuals will get an invite from the group, and group members can freely add the event to their calendars. This is also good if you want your vacation time on the group calendar, as well as your manager's calendar. Invite the group and anyone else: For group meetings where you'd like everyone in the group to attend and edit, this is best. This is particularly handy for recurring meetings that take place over the course of many months where the a single organizer may not be around for its entire desired lifetime (i.e., if someone goes on vacation or leaves the team). Across Outlook, not much is changing: In Outlook for Windows, removing the group from a group meeting will now, in fact, actually not sent the group an invitation. In the new Outlook on the web, we've updated the tooltips to match the functionality. In the classic Outlook on the web, we won't be supporting this update. In Outlook for iOS and Android, group calendaring is coming soon. 😉 Try it out, and let us know what you think! Cheers, EthanExperiences "migrating" to an O365 Group
So, I am starting to "migrate" the particular team that I work for over to Groups (that means from our existing SharePoint site, existing Yammer group, existing mailboxes, etc). Wanted to share the general experience and reception so far, with PLUS / MINUS perception notes: PLUS - We are looking to use Group Conversations and shut down use of Yammer for our team discussions. So far users seem more apt to use the conversations because it is more like email, so probably a ding for use of Yammer In general we are going to guide Groups users away from using Yammer PLUS - We are using an automatic group membership (everyone that reports to my Manager) - which works perfectly! We have a revolving door of interns/temps as part of the team, and access to resources is no-brainer. MINUS - This will be our first Modern SharePoint site, and big negative is critical links removed from the UI. Menu - using "/_layouts/15/AreaNavigationSettings.aspx" to recreate our horizontal navigation. This accomplishes what we need, but I fear that it may eventually go away... Permissions - I understand group permission limitations, but our connected SP sites have to have additional viewers and contributors. Right now from the UI, can only apply permissions to Group Owners and Group Members. Using "/_layouts/15/user.aspx" to get around this for now, but again will future updates restrict this? MINUS - Document Migration - we have our own PowerShell scripts that we use to migrate content between sites. The scripts appear to only work run by a Group owner if the person running the script is a Group owner. We typically use a service account and set it as Site Collection Admin, run the move, then remove the service account. Here the service account still doenst have rights even after being made the SCA for a Group. We will definitely be doing most of this for our users since we don't want to put the tedious actions on them MINUS - Calendar - we use a SharePoint Team Site calendar - was able to easily open the SP Calendar in Outlook "Agenda View", copy entries, and paste them into the Group Calendar (in Outlook Agenda View), but they never synced back up, never appeared in the Group calendar, though I see them in my physical Outlook calendar Dont seem to be able to create just an entry (without actually inviting all attendees) MINUS - Group Navigation - switching between the different Groups workloads is still pitiful I've manually entered direct links to the different workloads in the Groups SharePoint Site, but users continually get "lost". They'll end up on the calendar which has no links whatsover (sometimes), the options are in different places in each workload. I know this has been brought up over and over, but its been months and months, if not over a year at this point, and doesnt seem this is getting any better at all. MINUS - Groups files - this is maybe just our opinion, but do not like the Groups Files automatically including email attachments in the default view. Often confusing, especially if things have been moved to the SharePoint files, you see duplicates, etc. PLUS - Groups app - easy access to everything, general consensus is much easier to find stuff from the app then from the web itself MINUS - Groups app notifications - marking conversation messages as read seems to be wonky, users are complaining because they have to physically leave the group a couple times before it tells them they have read all the messages. MINUS - Planner - Though there is excitement about what Planner can be, some negatives emerging - no Planner app, unsure of a way right now to move items from a SharePoint Action Items list to Planner (other than just manually reentering stuff). PLUS - OneNote, this has always been my favorite thing Microsoft has built, so glad to see it easier integrated into our group activities. We are migrating our running Staff Meeting Agenda (from Yammer note) to OneNote MINUS - UI - we have always used a custom enterprise mega menu throughout our SharePoint environment, for easy navigation, with no customization options, we lose this and will have to start teach our users to keep going to our Intranet homepage, then navigate where you want to go with the menu NEUTRAL - Dont care for the single column of the websites, we have traditionally used a custom responsive layout that has at least 2 columns of content. Everything just feels to big / too much whitespace. MINUS - SharePoint App, we have multiple document libraries, the Groups/SharePoint apps really only focus on the primay Shared Documents one. Overall, it seems like it will be a positive adoption, but there are several things that just miss the mark, at least for how our organization works.
Bookings shows available time slots even though it is booked in my calendar
I created a personal booking page. But I do not see the time slots displayed in my calendar and when I go to the booking page, all time are available completely not taking into account the meetings that are already in my calendar. Why in the name of god would you ever design a self booking function that does not look at existing meetings in the target calendar. Worked with google self scheduler and calendly and this is absolutely a non existing problem for both of these platforms. Now transitioned to 365 and I can't seem to get a simple feature as a self scheduler set up :( Attached a screenshot of all the available configuration options. So 2 questions: - I want to see the blocks in my calendar (attached an example of google self scheduler how it shows up in your calendar - it completely ignores meetings in my calendar and lets people book those slots leading to double bookings. Please help me out.
How to set up a booking with multiple staff?
Our office just switched to Office 365. I'm used to using calendar/booking software like Calendly etc. I find it easier to send people a booking link than to try to coordinate between multiple people. I need to send a booking link to an external customer but I need the available times to book to be where there is overlap between multiple staff members, and for when the booking is made, it alerts these multiple staff. For instance, I am trying to set up a meeting with an external client, my boss, and myself. I want the external client to be able to only book times that my boss and I are both available, and when they book I want it to include both my boss and myself in the booking. I tried to set up a booking and turned off the "choose staff" option, but instead of booking both of us, it only booked one of us. Is it possible to do what I want to do in the MS booking app?
Can you require an attachment (document, file upload) for Bookings?
I'm not a pro at Bookings, but like using the tool to help navigate/create calendar appointments. Is there a workaround anyone has found, that requires or allows the uploading of a file or document with new bookings in O365? I'd like the respective file to populate as an attachment in my Outlook Calendar for each new Booking made. In transparency, I started a request for this feature (https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings/suggestions/39495616-add-the-option-of-requiring-an-attachment-or-uploa), but want to make sure I didn't naively overlook an existing way to do this. Is there a way anyone has found, preferably as a requirement, for a customer to attach or upload a file when scheduling a new calendar booking? Thanks in advance!
Stop emailing random people in my name!
I went into the "book with me" feature to attempt to fix its broken behavior (allowing meetings outside my normal work time -- another stupid bug that I'm not even talking about now). I updated my meeting profiles with explicit work hours and hit save. I have no idea what would cause this, but some step in this process caused TEN random people I correspond with to be sent a "Book time with me without back-and-forth discussions" email in my name. This is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE. No feature in any product should silently sent emails in my name to anyone, let alone ten randomly chosen people I work with! I am apopleptic right now! This insane piece of garbage "feature" emailed the head of my department as well as the facilities department service account, so now I have a facilities ticket and a stack of confused people asking why I want to meet. I had to find these in my sent folder and reply to each apologizing and asking them to disregard. I hope the product manager or developer of this feature reads this: Your idea is bad and a complete embarrassment. Stop work immediately and find someone who actually knows how professionals in a business environment operate. They will inform you that nothing and no-one should send a message in person's name without clear and explicit authorization, and even with that authorization, never to randomly chosen people. I've never posted here before, because none of the myriad Microsoft bugs I've dealt with have ever screwed me over so stupidly and so publically. I will certainly never trust a new Outlook feature again.
