Create Channel Calendar In Teams

Hi folks! Have you ever been asked by your boss to create a shared /group calendar for the team? I have been asked almost every 4-5 months in a year to send a group calendar to the team. And obviously I followed a traditional way of creating a calendar in outlook, make it an attachment, and forward it to my team members. This blog describes how to create a Channel calendar for a specific team in Microsoft teams.

Let’s discuss what is channel calendar & why we should use it?

What is Channel Calendar?

Channel calendar, as Microsoft says it’s a shared or a group calendar in a channel that belongs to a team. This helps the team members to collaborate on the events and group meetings to avoid the use of the meeting organizer personal calendar. The Channel Calendar looks like a team calendar app where the Channel meeting organizer has all the rights to invite the attendees, modify/update information about meeting, Cancel/reschedule meetings. Unlike teams calendar we cannot categorize the calendar events for a specific team whereas in Channel Calendar we can organize meeting for a specific channel team.

Who can access this Channel Calendar app?

Channel calendar app can be used by the members of the team. However, this app is restricted for guests i.e. Any member of that specific team’s channel can organize a meeting which is only accessible by the specific members of that channel. Guest members neither see the Channel calendar tab nor access it.

How to create a Channel Calendar app?

Follow below steps to create channel calendar app -

Step 1

Go to the Microsoft teams and click on ellipses on the left side of the navigation. Refer screenshot below.

Step 2

Click on “Add to teams” as shown in the screenshot below.

Step 3

Search for the team or channel you want to set up Channel calendar as shown in below screenshot.

Step 4

Once you select the teams or channel it will give you an option to set up as a tab as shown in below screenshot.

Step 5

A pop-up message will appear to add the channel calendar as a tab for the specific channel selected. All events created and shared to the channel will be added to this calendar. This will get added to my general channel as I have chosen test team>General channel.

Step 6

A channel calendar gets added to test - General channel as shown in below screenshot.

Step 7

Add events to your Channel calendar as shown in the below screenshot.

The event added to the Channel calendar can be accessed by any member of the same team.

Channel calendar gives an option of categorizing events for the team belonging to a specific event. Also, channel team meetings can be scheduled from teams’ channel, one cannot schedule a channel meeting from outlook. Guest users are not allowed to access Exchange Online Calendars which are where teams store its events, so if you are thinking to share the channel calendar with guest users it does not allow access for the same guest user.