Sharing Your Calendar

Office 365 is an excellent service to help you communicate and collaborate with any number or clients, colleagues or stakeholders.

In this guide, I show how to share your availability schedule without leaking any confidential information contained within your appointments.

Internal sharing

Outlook Web App

1. Log into https://outlook.office.com/mail/
2. Choose the calendar view option on the left sidebar
3. Locate the calendar you’d like to share
4. Select the three dots “…” next to it, followed by “Sharing and Permissions”
5. Enter an email address of another internal account followed by “Share”. Alternatively you can set a permission level for your whole company
6. Choose an appropriate permissions level e.g.:
   • “can view when I’m busy”: appointments will just show their duration and “Busy” instead of any appointment details
   • “can edit”: useful for an assistant who may make adjustments or add appointments for you

Outlook Desktop App

1. Open the Outlook Desktop App
2. Choose the calendar view option on the left sidebar
3. Locate the calendar you’d like to share
4. Right click on the calendar name, choose “Sharing Permissions”
5. Choose “Add..” and search or locate a user in your address book
6. Choose an appropriate permissions level (see step 6 above for examples)
7. Choose “Apply”

External sharing

You may want to contact your IT or ourselves for help with this part. You will need the following:

• Local administrative rights to your computer
• Global administrative rights to Office 365
• The ExchangeOnline Powershell module installed

Installing EO Powershell module:

1. Open an elevated Powershell window
2. Run the following command: Get-Command -Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
3. Press A and Enter to accept the installation
4. Reboot your PC

Setting up External Access

1. Open an elevated Powershell window
2. Connect to Exchange by running: Connect-ExchangeOnline
3. Allow external users to book by running this: Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity [desired email address] -ProcessExternalMeetingMessages $true
4. Allow external users to view your calendar by running this: Set-MailboxCalendarFolder [desired email address]:\calendar -PublishEnabled $true
5. Obtain links to access calendar by running the following: Get-MailboxCalendarFolder [desired email address]:\calendar

Check the output for “PublishedCalendarURL:” this link ending in .html can be used to view the calendar through a web browser. Also check the output for “PublishedICalURL:” this link ending in .ics allows you to add the calendar to the Outlook app as follows:

How to add the calendar to Outlook

1. Open the Outlook Calendar View
2. Choose “Add Calendar” then “From Internet” from the top ribbon
3. Enter the .ics link you obtained previously “PublishedICalURL”

It should look like this:

How to book an appointment as an External User

1. Create a new Appointment on your own calendar
2. Add their email address as a participant in the meeting

Please reach out if you need any assistance with the above instructions