Teams Replaces Meetings App with New Calendar App
First announced in March 2019 in Office 365 Notification MC175133 and then highlighted later that month in Microsoft’s round-up of announcements at the Enterprise Connect conference, the long-awaited roll-out of the new Calendar app finally seems to be happening. Tenants are reporting that the new app has appeared in Teams clients following the last regular software refresh to replace the older Meetings app. The change from Meetings to Calendar is also documented in the Office 365 roadmap (Figure 1). Because the release dates slipped, the descriptive text says that the release is March 2019 while the release date is predicted in Q1 CY2020. The most positive way of reading this is to think that the app is now available before its scheduled release date. Scheduling software is difficult!
Original Minimalist App
The Meetings app is, how shall we say this, minimalist. It allows you to schedule Teams meetings and it synchronizes with user Outlook calendars, but that’s about it. The new Calendar app redresses the situation and delivers new views and actions. It also responds in some part to the many user voice requests for the Teams calendar.
Nice as it is to have new calendar features in Teams, the new calendar app is not as functional as the Outlook calendar and few users will be able to organize their professional and personal schedules inside Teams in the same way as they can in Outlook. For example, the Teams calendar has no concept of multiple time zones (useful when meeting with people in other countries or entering travel details), categories are unsupported, you can’t mark events as private, drag and drop between time slots can’t be done, and so on. These features might come in time, but they’re missing in the new Calendar app today.
New Teams Calendar Features
The features in the new calendar (Figure 2) include:
- Day, work week, and week views (but no month view).
- Calendar widget to navigate to chosen date.
- Ability to interact with selected calendar item (for instance, right click to accept, reject, or join a meeting). Meetings light up when they are active.
- Bi-directional synchronization with user’s Outlook calendar. For instance, you can edit items scheduled in the Outlook calendar and have those changes appear in Outlook.
- Synchronization with Exchange calendar settings, like working hours and days of the work week.
- Users can put a meeting into their calendar without adding anyone (but themselves) to the meeting (appointments in Outlook calendar terms).
Users are unlikely to need much if any coaching to use the new app. It’s all very straightforward and easy to use. Best of all, despite the wait, it’s a great improvement.
We don’t really cover details like the features of an app in the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook, but if you need information about how to manage Office 365 in general and Teams in particular, the eBook is full of great content.
The meeting option doesn’t appear in my Microsoft teams
Are you using the free version of Teams? You need to have a mailbox to schedule meetings.
The meeting option doesn’t appear in my Microsoft teams
I m using my company account
Talk to your admin. There might be a policy setting in place or or some other reason why.
So I wanted to add a “shared” calendar to our MS TEAM, and was able to following these instructions https://medium.com/@saranyansenthivel/creating-a-shared-calendar-in-microsoft-teams-400ab556bfa3 , but I don’t see how my team members can quickly access it from the TEAMs app interface? does it automatically get inserted into their outlook calendars? Can they turn it on / off? I would have thought it would appear at the top of the team beside posts, files, wiki. Of course I can select “home” and then look for the activity where it was added…but that’s also buried amongs all the activities (pictures of people’s dogs etc)….so I don’t think it’s very user intuitive at all…and among other things it’s very basic…you can’t copy events, when you select “all day” it doesn’t automatically select the proper end date…very buggy indeed
Hi, is there a way to set up a group chat with all attendees in a particular meeting event?
If you mean “is it possible to create a meeting for a group of selected people,” then yes. Create a meeting in the calendar and add the people you want to attend to the attendee list. Each user will receive an invitation to attend the meeting.
I don’t have a calendar icon on my Teams, how do I get it?
Do you have an Exchange Online mailbox?
How do I Select/Change the Outlook account I want synced with the Teams Calendar?
It’s the same Office 365 account that you use to access Teams.
can I be a delegate on my Boss’s Teams calendar as I am on outlook? I have been booking her meetings in outlook and linking teams to it. However, on some meetings there is no join button showing up on her Teams calendar for people to join. How do I correct this as I cannot go into her calendar to check?
I really don’t know. It’s impossible to say without seeing exactly what you’re doing.
There is no delegate access facility to a user calendar in Teams. If you want to manage someone’s calendar, do it in Outlook and let the background process synchronize between the two apps. Also, make sure that people who need to attend a meeting are invited (see https://office365itpros.com/2020/03/31/invitations-teams-meetings/).
Is the calendar app available in the free version of Teams?
No. You need to have an Exchange mailbox to use the calendar app.
Hi, Can I schedule a meeting within Teams? I don’t use outlook, but I do have a office365 account. I don’t have a calendar tab on my Teams app and not being able to deploy one. I have tried by following steps by opening a chat, but I only have the option to chat or meet now, I don’t get the schedule meeting option.
You need an Exchange Online mailbox to schedule meetings within Teams.
I don’t have a calendar icon on my Teams, i’m using my company account and i have exchange account. but still dont have caledar function.
Ask your Teams admin to help.
I’ve added a shared calendar for one of our groups (all internal corporate accounts so on Exchange etc) which we can all see but am unable to add any members or set any permissions for each member. Have had a look at multiple Teams sites which explain how to add the calendar (via OWA etc) but none explaining how member permissions would be found (or adding members once the calendar is up and running). Any tips on how to do this please?
can ignore – added user as member via OWA (and not within Teams only) which meant they inherited required permissions.
I would expect that if I have Office 365 and Teams, that my calendar in O365 would reflect that of teams. Is that not the case? Is there a way to integrate?
Teams synchronizes your personal calendar from your Exchange Online mailbox. The two should be the same.
Its not. How do I get it to do so?
That isn’t happening. Please advise as to how to make it happen.
I’m not Microsoft support so I can’t see details of your tenant. File a support incident and have Microsoft take a look. To be clear, when you view your calendar in Teams, you should see items from your Outlook calendar. When you schedule a meeting in Teams, it should appear in your Outlook calendar.