How to Create & Manage a Shared Calendar with O365
Shared calendars are commonly used by businesses and groups because they have many uses. Some of these uses include:
Keeping others in your office, department or group aware of your schedule.
Delegating scheduling to free up time.
Providing a way for different departments to collaborate and better manage events, social media blasts, and marketing.
Helping groups coordinate events and more.
Shared calendars save time by consolidating information, as well as communicating schedule and event details with your business, specific departments or individuals more efficiently. Lastly, creating and using shared calendars in Microsoft Office 365 can be done in a few minutes and they are easy to maintain.
How to Create & Manage a Shared Calendar with O365
Anyone in an organization can create a shared group calendar. The creator of the calendar is also the owner, which is the person who manages access, but this can be delegated to someone else in the organization at any time. Shared calendars can be created using Outlook or via the web interface. The process is similar though it varies slightly between the two. The steps below show this process using Outlook.
Creating a shared calendar group
Open Outlook.
From the Mail tab, click on the “Groups” section below the “Inbox” section. NOTE: You may need to scroll down to see the Groups section depending upon how many sub-folders are in the Inbox.
The Groups section in the left panel of Outlook beneath the Inbox section.
Click the “New Group” button in the ribbon menu. NOTE: In the web interface, look for a “+ Create” link listed under the Groups heading to create a new group.
Where to find the New Group button in Outlook when creating a new group.
In the Create Group popup box, type a name for the shared group. NOTE: Even though you are creating a calendar, an email account is created. This means the name cannot already be in use so be sure to pick something unique.
Choose if the calendar will be private or public. Private calendars are accessible to only those members you approve. Public calendars are available to everyone in the organization.
In the create group popup, create a name and decide if the group should be public or private.
Click “OK” to create the group.
In the next popup menu you can give the group a description and add members to the group. The group can also be edited at any time to add or remove members.
To add members, start typing their email address in the Search box under “Add members”. Click the correct member to add them to the “Members” box below the search field.
By default when new members are added, they appear as “Members”, while you are listed as the owner of the group.
To add a user as an owner, click the dropdown menu and select “Owner”.
The group creation box with additional members added.
Once all members have been added, click the “Add” button. NOTE: Sometimes this process does not add the members to the group. Adding them later by editing the group proved to be more reliable in our experience.
You may need to restart Outlook for the changes to take effect, once it reopens the new group is listed under “Groups”.
The new group calendar listed under Groups after Outlook restarted.
To access the new group calendar, click on the calendar tab at the bottom of the left panel. NOTE: Initially, shared group calendars are not selected to display.
Check the box next to the new group calendar to view the calendar.
Create events in the new group calendar like you would any other calendar.
As members are added to the shared calendar, they will receive an email notification. As a member, they can add and view events in the shared group calendar. To view the shared group calendar, members will need to select the group calendar in the Calendar tab.
Managing a shared calendar group
After the shared group calendar has been created, you can edit the group at any time. Edit the group to:
Add and remove users
Change ownership
Change the description of the group
Toggle the shared group between public and private
To manage the shared group calendar, open the Mail tab in Outlook.
Click on the name of the group under the Groups section.
Click on the “Group Settings” drop down menu in the Home tab of the ribbon bar and select “Edit Group”.
Menu selection to edit a group you own.
In the Edit group box, click “Members” to display all of the members in the group.
To make a member the owner of the group, click on the dropdown list next to their name and select “Owner”.
You can also remove members by clicking on the X next to their name.
How to edit the membership of a group.
If you encounter any problems or need further assistance in any way please contact our helpdesk by emailing support@keepingitsimple.it or calling on 02895 622 244 (Opt 2)
