Microsoft Teams – Calendar
The Calendar feature lets you view your personal Outlook calendar and schedule voice/video meetings on Teams. Teams syncs with your Outlook calendar instantly, meaning any changes you make to your diary on Teams will be updated in your Outlook calendar.
Clicking the calendar tile on the left-hand menu will bring up a view of your personal calendar. You can use the controls at the top of the calendar in order to scroll through the weeks or months:
Starting a meeting
To start an ad-hoc meeting you can click Meet now in the top right-hand corner of the calendar interface:
Next you’ll see a screen asking you to choose your audio and video settings, and a name for the meeting. Once your settings are correct, click Join now:
Once your meeting has started, use the People sidebar that appears to invite more participants – start typing a name and suggestions will appear. Click on the name(s) of those you wish to invite and they will receive a call to join. Please note that they must be logged into Teams to receive the call.
Scheduling a meeting
Please note: the person who initially schedules the meeting and invites other participants will need to join the meeting when it begins and admit other participants, who will be held in a “lobby” until they are let into the meeting by the organiser.
You can either double-click the time slot in which you want to schedule your meeting, or click the New Meeting button in the top right-hand corner of the screen:
The next screen allows you to enter the details of your meeting. At a minimum, you need to give the meeting a title and then type the names of any attendees into the add required attendees field. As you type names you will see suggested contacts pop up – click the ones you want to add to the meeting and continue until you have added everyone.
Its important when inviting participants, you search using their SSO or personal email and not generic email
Check the start/end date and time carefully before sending the request. You can also set this to be a recurring meeting if necessary – simply change the default recurrence option of does not repeat as appropriate.
Ignore Add channel and Add location as these are not necessary in this case.
There is a large text box at the bottom of the screen that allows you to enter any extra information – this will be included in the email that is sent out to the attendees you’ve specified.
When you have entered all the required information, click Send in the top right-hand corner of the screen and a meeting invitation will be sent out to all attendees. The meeting will also be added to your calendar.
Invited participants will receive a calendar invitation for the meeting. Once accepted it will be added to their calendar, and they can open the meeting in their calendar to view a link that will allow them to join the meeting when it begins, via the Teams client if it’s installed on their device or via the browser-based web app (they will need to download the Teams mobile app if using their smartphone to connect to the meeting):
Scheduling Assistant
You may wish to use the Scheduling Assistant to help with finding a slot for a meeting that suits everyone. Click Scheduling Assistant at the top of the new meeting screen to get started:
The Scheduling Assistant will show a view of all invited participants (make sure when inviting participants, you search using their SSO or personal email and not generic email) of the meeting next to a view of their calendar on the selected day, including any appointments they have booked in. This allows you to suggest a time for a meeting that is unlikely to clash with anyone’s plans.
You can use the date and time controls on this page to move through possible dates and see the most suitable date to invite people.
If you need to add more people to the meeting to check their availability, you can do this from the above screen. There is the option to Add required attendees below the list of existing participants. Simply search for your colleague’s name and click on them when they appear and their calendar will be added to this list.
We strongly suggest that you make use of your calendars and block out any busy time, making it easier for colleagues to arrange meetings with you. This will cut down massively on the amount of emails/chat messages sent around trying to pick a date that suits everyone.
Joining your remote meeting
When the time comes to join your meeting, simply log into Teams, find the scheduled tutorial in your calendar and click the Join button.
On the next screen, ensure your microphone and camera are set to the on position and then click Join Now to start the meeting.
External participants you have invited to the meeting (via a Gmail or Hotmail address, for example) will be held in a “lobby” until an internal participant (i.e. somebody signed in with an Oxford SSO) admits them into the main meeting.
Note that the organiser of the meeting does not need to join the meeting in order for the meeting to begin.
You will receive a notification as below to let you know there are people waiting to be let in.
Click on View Lobby to see the full list of people waiting to be admitted. Click on the tick icon next to their name to admit them to the meeting:
At the end of the meeting, click the hang up icon to end the session:
