How to Open a Shared Calendar in Outlook

You will need a few Outlook shared calendars in addition to your own calendar. This article describes each calendar and how to add them.

These are the general facility calendars used at MSLCC. You position may require more specialized calendars to be utilized. Please inquire with your supervisor if any additional calendars are needed. You can then follow the procedure in this guide to add them to Outlook.

1. Open Outlook, go to the Calendar 

2. Click the Open Calendar Button on the Top Ribbon

3.Select Open Shared Calendar 

4. Click the Name… Button

5. From the Address Book drop down select Global Address List

6. Select the name of the calendar you need to add. Press OK. Each calendar is explained in detail at the end of this article.
7. Select ok on the box where you previously selected the Name… button
8. You can now view and toggle the shared calendar on or off from the calendar list on the left

How to Open a Shared Calendar in OWA (mail.mslcc.com)

Please note the following was recorded on the PC interface of webmail. Mobile views might differ slightly from what is shown. 

1. Login to mail.mslcc.com

2. From the menu go to the calendar

3. Select Add Calendar -> From Directory

4. Type the name of the calendar, search directory if need be. 

5. Once the calendar name entry is made, select open

6. The calendar will be visible. 

Shared Calendar Explained

Away/Out
Purpose: This calendar is used to show your time off or time away from the facility. With this calendar you can view who is out of the office during a particular time, day, or timespan.
How to add away/out time: This calendar is read only, however you can add your time out by following the steps documented here: https://help.mslcc.com/kb/faq.php?id=5

Meetings

Feature Discontinuation Announcement - Meetings Calendar - 2/5/2024

As of 2/5/2024 we will be discontinuing the “Meetings” shared calendar in outlook. For years now we have been able to maintain this calendar via a 3^rd party plugin to exchange. With the latest version of exchange, this plugin is no longer supported and we have been encountering many issues with the calendar’s reliability. Along with this we have found decreased awareness of, need for, and use of this calendar. Missouri Slope has come a long way with the adoption of personal calendar use, reserving rooms, and inviting all the attendees to each event. These actions alone contribute significantly to the decline in need for the meetings calendar.

In August of 2013 the meetings calendar was created to be a digital representation of weekly half sheet print out called the “Happenings”. Initially we would book rooms by including this calendar as an invitee. Later on we made each room its own room resource in exchange, allowing each room to be included as a location on an invite and thus reserving the room. Since that point the meetings calendar has simply been an aggregation calendar. It grabs all the appointments from all the individual rooms and displays them in a single calendar. Unfortunately this not a direct feature of exchange otherwise it would be much more feasible to continue to provide.

If you are still an avid user of the meetings calendar then I have some suggestions on how you can continue to get the most of your calendars now and after 2/5/2024.

1. Get invited. If you are attending meetings based off of their appearance on the meetings calendar and not your own calendar, reach out to the organizer and have them include you on the invite for the meeting. This will work best for reoccurring meetings but works the same for one time meetings as well. Exchange mailboxes are designed to handle your appointments in this way. This will always be the best option for meeting scheduling and notifications.
2. Review the Rooms. Each room can be viewed individually in outlook. If you aren’t an attendee (or looking up a meeting on someone’s behalf) and want to confirm a when or where for a gathering open the most likely rooms first. For example most WA campus meetings happen in the Board Room. Opening that calendar first would be the best starting point. If not found, perhaps check the Classroom next. If its floor specific, check the conference room on the relevant floor. So on and so on until found. One by one will actually be the quickest way to view these rooms in most cases.
3. Recreate the meetings calendar. This can be done. Unfortunately exchange does not let us deploy this to users, so you will need to create a calendar group, add all (or some) of the rooms to the group, and then overlay them onto each other. The end result will be the exact same data you would be displayed via the meetings calendar. This does have some additional performance overhead because:
1. You will be opening a lot of calendars each time you view this. There is a delay to load all that data at once.
2. When you hide it, you will be closing a lot of calendars at once. There will be a delay when unloading this.
3. You only need to complete this process once. You can toggle the group on an off each time you want to view it. The overlay settings will remain making it quick to view, however the delay to actually load all the rooms’ data will still be present.

For these reasons this method is recommend only to the few that still use the meetings calendar regularly. If you simply don’t or haven’t ever found a need to, then you do not need to follow this procedure.

If you do wish to recreate the meetings calendar we have all the steps documented in this article on the Missouri Slope IT Knowledgebase.

I am sure a few questions will come about because of this. I will try to address what I can think will be the common ones below.

1. Is the way I book a room changing? – No. You will continue to reserve the room by including it in the location and/or using the room finder. This process will not change.
2. If my meeting isn’t on the meetings calendar then the room is not reserved right? – Incorrect. The meetings calendar simply collects all the meetings into a single calendar. The reservation is actually placed on the individual room’s calendar when you schedule it. The appointment being on the room’s calendar is what dictates if you have properly reserved the room or not.
3. I recreated the meetings calendar and it takes a long time to display or close. Can we speed that up? – Due to the amount of data being loaded or unloaded each time this will take some time to complete the action. There is nothing that can be done to speed this up. Keeping the overlaid calendar open will help avoid this somewhat. Switching to your calendar from your mailbox may be prone to this same delay however. Another suggestion would be to not include very infrequently used rooms in your calendar group. The less calendars you open when toggling on and off the group, the better the performance outcome you will see.
4. I am trying to invite the meetings calendar and I am getting a rejection notice that I do not have permissions to do so. – This is normal. The meetings calendar is and has been read only. You cannot place an appointment on that calendar nor can you invite it.
5. I type “mee” into the list of recipients on a message or invite and it suggests “meetings” as a recipient. If so, can I still use the meetings calendar? – No. These suggestions are part of your mailbox. Once we remove meetings from the address list this can still happen. It is suggested that you click the X next to the suggestion if it appears. This will keep it from being suggested in the future.
6. I have upcoming meetings that are on the meetings calendar. Do I need to do anything to move them? – No. If you have booked meetings that currently display on the meetings calendar then it would also be booked on the room’s calendar which you selected when you created the appointment. The calendars of the rooms will not be changed in this process. You will not need to rebook a room or change your invite.
7. I reference the meeting calendar from time to time for historical purposes. Will I still be able to see appointments in the past after 2/5/2024? – No. The calendar object that is the meetings calendar will be removed on 2/5/2024. It will not be accessible to view after that date. Historical appointments can still be viewed on your calendar or the calendar of the room that was booked for the event.
8. Do I need to wait for 2/5/2024 to start using the suggested replacements? – No, you do not need to wait. All these methods can be utilized now. We wanted to give everyone a chance to plan and adopt a new strategy before the meeting calendar is retired.
9. What if I need the recreating the meetings calendar instructions in the future but can’t find this email? – The “Outlook - Add Rooms Calendars to Groups and Overlay (Recreate Meetings Calendar)” article is available in the Missouri Slope IT Knowledgebase along with all our other publicly published help articles. You can find this anytime by going to help.mslcc.com and selecting Knowledgebase.