Outlook Calendar Sync - A "how-to" guide.

Prerequisites

Before you can sync a calendar to your Intranet you must have the following things in place:

1. An Azure Enterprise Application setup with permissions Calendar.Read and you have connected your Enterprise Application to your intranet as described in this article.
2. You have a "Calendar" app setup in one of the sites within your Intranet.
3. You have a "Dedicated User" created for each calendar you wish to have synced to your Intranet.

Explanation of #3

The Intranet can only sync the "Default" user calendar of a particular user. It can not sync "Group" calendars.  If you have events on your calendar you do not want made visible on your Intranet's calendar, then we recommend you create a special dedicated user to reflect the calendar. Then, during setup, you login to that user, and share the calendar of the user to all the people in your organization who will need to add events to the calendar. Paying attention to give "Edit" permission while sharing.

Example:

You want to create a calendar of all your "Marketing Events". You would create a user in Azure Entra ID called "MarketingEventsCalendar". This user calendar is the one that will be synced to the Intranet. So to set things up, you log into this user in "Outlook" and share the calendar to the "Marketing Managers".

Setting up Outlook

1. Using the Outlook Online website version, login to the user who's calendar you will be using to sync to your Intranet.
2. Click Calendar icon on the left to view the user's calendar.
3. Click the "..." button and choose "Sharing and Permissions".
   
   
   
   
4. In the "Sharing and Permissions" dialog box. Add the users you wish to give access to add events to the calendar. Select the "Can Edit" permission to allow them to create events. Then click the Share button and Outlook will send an e-mail inviting them to the Calendar.
   
   
   
   
5. Proceed to add events to your calendar in Outlook. So there is some content to sync over for your initial tests.
   
   
6. You can now close the browser tab and proceed to log into Outlook with your own login (or a login that was shared). Confirm you can create events on the shared calendar in the accounts the calendar was shared out to.

Setting Up Your Intranet Calendar App

1. Login to your Intranet and navigate to your "Admin Home" area. Then proceed to click on "Assets" and find the Site and App that you wish to house your Calendar that will be syncing with Outlook.
   
   
   
2. Click the option from the right side menu labelled "Sync Events From Office365 Calendar".
   
   
   
   
3. On the "Sync Events From Office365 Calendar" page, click the pulldown to select your Graph connection.
   
   
4. A list of users in your company will appear below. Find the user who's calendar you are using for syncing to your calendar.
   
   
5. Choose the "Category" for the calendar where you want the Outlook events to appear. If applicable, another picker with a "Sub Category" will appear for you to choose a sub category. After you make your choices click the "Sync User Calendar" button to add the user to the list that will appear on the right. 
   
   
   
   
6. You can click the "Sync Events Now" button to begin loading in the Outlook events into your Intranet.
   
   

Setting up the Advanced Calendar Widget

In version 16 of our Intranet product we introduced the Advanced Calendar widget. It looks like this:

To use this calendar view on your Intranet follow the these steps.

1. Go into "Edit" mode on the widget page you wish to use to insert your calendar.
2. Click "Add Widget" or edit an existing calendar widget.
3. Expand the "Calendar / Events Training" option from the "Applications List" inside the Widget "Build Tool".
   
   
   
   
4. Tick the checkbox next to the "Calendar(s)" you wish to have data loaded into this widget.
   
   
5. Choose the "Advanced Calendar" from the "View Type:" selector.
   
   
   
   
6. Choose the number of days of events to load into the calendar. We recommend 365 to get a year loaded in.
   
7. Click the "Save Widgets" button at the bottom to complete the setup.
   

Adding Events To Your Calendar From Outlook

With the above items setup, you are not ready to begin adding events. Using either Outlook Online or the Outlook Desktop application, add events to your calendar. Make sure to create "Meetings" (not appointments) and invite at least one user to the meeting for it to flow through to your Intranet.