How To Create And Share A Microsoft Teams Calendar: Guide

We all know how important collaborative calendars are nowadays in the business world - and one of them is the Teams calendar. There are many ways to create and share a Microsoft Teams calendar with others, and in this guide, we’ll explain you all about it: how to share it directly through Outlook, through a Teams Channel and via SharePoint; how to share your Teams calendar with external users; and how to import external calendars into Microsoft Teams, among other important processes to optimize your calendar management. 

You’ll also learn about Zeeg's integration with Microsoft Teams can simplify your scheduling process thanks to its automated scheduling capabilities. Stay tuned.

Types of Microsoft Teams calendars

When you use Microsoft Teams, you have three calendar options that serve different purposes: personal calendars, channel calendars, and SharePoint calendars. Let's understand how each one works and when to use them.

Personal calendars

Your personal built-in Teams calendar connects directly with your Outlook calendar, keeping all your meetings and events in sync. It's ok for managing your daily schedule, seeing your upcoming meetings, and organizing one-on-one conversations. But while this calendar works well for day-to-day planning through daily and weekly views, you might prefer using Outlook when you need to plan further ahead.

Channel calendars

Channel calendars help teams coordinate their activities within specific Teams channels. When you create an event in a channel calendar, it automatically posts in the channel feed and adds it to your personal calendar. This makes them particularly useful for project teams or departments that need to track shared events, deadlines, and meetings.

Keep in mind that channel calendars work best for smaller teams or specific projects. If you're part of a large department with multiple channels, managing several channel calendars might become challenging.

SharePoint calendars

SharePoint calendars offer more advanced features for teams that need comprehensive planning tools. You can embed these calendars into Teams channels, making them great for tracking multiple projects or campaigns. They provide a monthly view and let you color-code events from different calendars, giving you a clearer picture of your team's schedule.

The main advantage of SharePoint calendars is their flexibility - you can create dedicated calendars for specific projects while keeping everything accessible on Teams. However, they require additional setup steps compared to the other calendar types.

How to create a Microsoft Teams calendar

After creating a Microsoft Teams account, your calendar will be set up by default - so you don’t really need to do anything to get your calendar. Open Microsoft Teams, and you just need to click on 'Calendar', in the left sidebar, to access it. 

To schedule a meeting or an event on your calendar follow these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Teams
2. Click on 'Calendar' in the left sidebar
3. Select 'New Meeting' or click on the pretended time slot
4. Fill in meeting details - including participants (including external emails), date, time, frequency, and location
5. Include meeting description or agenda
6. Click 'Send' to distribute the calendar invite

Bear in mind that the amount of time available for a video call through Microsoft Teams will depend on your software plan. 

How to share your Microsoft Teams calendar 

There are three main ways to share a Microsoft Teams calendar:

• By sharing your built-in Outlook calendar - assuming it’s synced with your Teams calendar
• By creating and sharing a Microsoft Teams Channel calendar
• By adding a SharePoint calendar to a Teams Channel

Let’s now understand in detail how each of these approaches works. And, after that, we’ll look at a few other ways to take the most of your shared Teams calendar.

You might want to check out this guide on how to use Outlook scheduling assistant for more tips.

1. Step by step to share a Teams calendar through Outlook

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook calendar
2. Click on 'Share' on the top bar

3. Enter the desired email address and select the access level - namely, the ability to see details of your meetings and edit your calendar
4. Sharing your Outlook calendar will automatically share your Teams calendar as well (assuming they are synced

‍Note: If you share your Teams calendar with someone who’s not using Outlook or Microsoft 365, they won’t be able to accept the invitation - but there are ways to overcome this limitation (more on this in the next sections). 

Your Outlook and Teams calendars should be synced by default if you chose one of the following Microsoft Teams plans: 

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic
• Microsoft365 Business Standard 
• Microsoft 365 Personal 
• Microsoft 365 Family 

However, if you’re using the free plans or Microsoft Teams Essentials it won’t be possible to sync both calendars.

2. How to create and share a Microsoft Teams Channel calendar

There are two types of groups within Microsoft Teams:

• Teams - can be public or private and support up to 10,000 members. They can reflect the structure of your organization or be dynamic and project-based
• Channels - dedicated sections within a Team for a specific topic or project. 

First, you should create a channel within a given Team

1. Open Microsoft Teams and navigate to the desired team
2. Click on ‘More options’ > ‘Manage channels’ > ‘Add channel (+)’
3. Decide if you want to create a Standard channel (anyone in the team will see it) or a Private one (only people you add will see it - but you won’t be able to create a channel calendar, so you should go with a Standard channel)
4. Click on ‘Done’

Then, you can create a dedicated calendar for your new Teams channel

1. Enter on your new channel and click on ‘Add a tab+’ at the top
2. Select ‘Channel calendar” from the available apps
3. Choose the name for the new calendar
4. Click on ‘Save’

Assuming you decide to create a Standard Channel, team members will be able to see it from the get-go - you won’t need to share it. However, you should keep in mind some particularities of the channel calendars: whenever you create an event on the channel calendar, it will create a post in the channel with a summary of the event details, but channel members won’t receive a direct invite unless you add their names individually. If channel members want to be notified right away of all events, they should turn on the notifications for that channel.

A channel calendar is like a filtered view of a team’s calendar. But it won’t add events to your personal calendar by default, when you were not directly invited to the event: you’ll have to open that event and click on ‘Add to calendar’.

3. How to share a SharePoint calendar in Microsoft Teams

If you want to add a SharePoint calendar to your Teams channel, just access your SharePoint site, locate the calendar you want to share in Teams, and:

1. In the left navigation menu, select 'Site Contents'
2. Find and click on the calendar you'd like to add to Teams
3. Get the calendar's URL from your browser's address bar
4. Go to your Teams channel and click the '+' (Add a tab) at the top
5. Choose 'Website' from the list of available options
6. Enter the SharePoint calendar URL and choose a name for the tab
7. Click 'Save' to finish adding the calendar

Once you complete these steps, your SharePoint calendar will appear as a new tab in your Teams channel, making it easily accessible to all channel members. Remember that users will need appropriate permissions to view the calendar in both SharePoint and Teams.

How to share a Teams calendar with Google Calendar

To share a Teams calendar with Google, you should open your Outlook and follow these steps:

1. Click on the settings gear
2. Go to the ‘Calendar’ tab and click on “Shared calendars’
3. Under ‘Publish a calendar’, select the calendar you want to share and the permissions level
4. Click on ‘Publish’
5. Copy the ICS link generated
6. Open your Google Calendar
7. Inside your Google Calendar, go to the ‘Other calendars’ section, on the sidebar near the bottom of the page
8. Click on the ‘+’ and then on ‘From url’
9. Past the ICS link copied on step 5
10. Click on ‘Add calendar’
11. After a few minutes, you should be able to see your Microsoft Teams calendar under ‘Other calendars’

This synchronization will only work one way (from Teams to Google) and won’t prevent scheduling conflicts. ICS links are read-only files, so you won’t be able to edit your Teams calendar through Google. 

👉Nonetheless, there’s a much easier way to do this. With Zeeg, you can have your calendars all synchronized in one centralized place, and manage your meetings from there.

How to share your Microsoft Teams calendar with external people or apps

To be able to share your Teams calendar with people outside your organization, you should make sure that authorization is enabled by an Admin of your Microsoft Teams company account. 

Admins can enable external calendar sharing for all users within an organization:

1. In the admin center, go to the Settings, and then to ‘Accounts and Orgs'
2. On the ‘Services’ tab, click on ‘Calendar’
3. On the ‘Calendar’ page, enable the permission to let users share their calendars with people outside of your organization. You can choose whether you want to allow anonymous users (users without sign-in credentials) to access calendars via an email invitation
4. Decide what type of calendar information you want to make available to users. You can allow all information, limit it to time only or limit it to time, subject, and location only

As long as the permission to share the Teams calendar with external users is enabled, you can follow the step-by-step instructions of the previous section to obtain the ICS link and share it with additional calendar or business applications: 

• Settings > Calendar > Shared calendars > Publish a calendar > Publish > Copy the ICS link > Paste it into an external app.

The synchronization may take some time, depending on the providers involved, so you may not be able to see real-time updates in the external app.

How to stop sharing a Teams calendar

If you shared your calendar but no longer wish to do it, you can stop it easily:

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook app
2. Click on the calendar icon
3. Navigate to your calendars, on the left panel, click on the calendar you want to stop sharing and then on ‘Sharing and permissions’
4. Select the person(s) you want to stop sharing your calendar with
5. Click on the trash bin icom

You can also stop publishing your calendar altogether, which will prevent every external user to see it:

1. Click on the settings gear, within Outlook
2. Select ‘Shared calendars’
3. Under the desired calendar, click on “Stop publishing”

Can I import external calendars into my Microsoft Teams account?

Yes, you can import external calendars through a URL - or .ics and .vcs files.

The best way to do this is through the calendar link you want to add to your Teams account:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook
2. On the ‘Home’ tab, click on ‘Add calendar > From Internet’
3. Paste the URL of the calendar you want to import into your Team account (the method to obtain this URL depends on the provider) and click on ‘Ok’
4. Outlook will ask you if you want to add this calendar and subscribe to updates - select ‘Yes’
5. Your Outlook calendar will now be updated to include the events from this external calendar

You will be able to turn the external calendar ‘on’ or ‘off’ at any time in the ‘Folder Pane’.

You can also add an external calendar by importing an .ic or .vcs file (but the new calendar won’t receive updates from the original provider if you use this method):

1. Open Microsoft Outlook, click on ‘File’ > ‘Open & Export’ > ‘Import/Export’
2. Click on ‘Import an iCalendar (.ics)’ or ‘Import a vCalendar (.vcs)’ and then ‘Next’;
3. Select the calendar file and click on ‘Ok’;
4. Click on the option ‘Open as New’ and the external calendar will be imported into your Outlook calendar.

Share your calendars with Zeeg and become more efficient

If you use Microsoft Teams for meetings but often schedule with people outside your organization, Zeeg can make your calendar management much simpler. By connecting your Teams calendar to Zeeg, you get a more flexible way to handle both internal and external scheduling.

Connect your calendar with Zeeg for seamless scheduling

Connecting your calendar to Zeeg ensures all your online scheduling stay in sync. After a quick setup through your Zeeg account, any meetings booked through your Zeeg scheduling page will automatically appear in your Teams calendar. And this works both ways - when you schedule meetings in Teams, those time slots will show as busy on your Zeeg booking page, preventing any scheduling conflicts. And if you have calendars from other platforms, that’ll be no problem. You can sync your Zeeg account to Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar

👉 Bottom line: Better calendar integration leads to fewer scheduling conflicts and seamless calendar management.

Add Teams meeting links automatically to your bookings

When someone books time with you through Zeeg, they don't need to worry about how to join the meeting. Zeeg automatically creates and adds Teams meeting links to every calendar invite. Your guests receive clear joining instructions in their confirmation email, and the meeting link appears in your Teams calendar without any extra steps from you. Easy.

👉Bottom line: Automated meeting links save time and reduce confusion for all participants.

Manage team availability efficiently

For teams using Microsoft Teams, Zeeg adds extra scheduling flexibility, helping teams find meeting times that work for everyone more efficiently. You can set up team-wide availability rules, create group booking pages, and use round-robin scheduling to distribute meetings fairly among team members. This makes it easier to coordinate internal Teams meetings while giving external contacts a simple way to book time with your team.

👉Bottom line: Smart team management ensures balanced workloads and efficient meeting distribution.

Create scheduling workflows that complement Teams

While Teams handles your internal communication, Zeeg can manage your external scheduling needs. Set up automated reminders for upcoming Teams meetings, let people reschedule without email chains, and collect important information before meetings through custom booking forms. You can even route different types of appointments to specific team members based on expertise or availability.

👉Bottom line: Automated workflows eliminate manual tasks and streamline meeting coordination.

Sharing Teams Calendars - FAQ

What are the benefits of using shared calendars in Teams?

Shared calendars help teams coordinate better by showing everyone's availability in one place. Teams can schedule meetings more efficiently, plan projects across time zones, and avoid scheduling conflicts. Plus, calendar updates appear instantly for all team members, eliminating confusion from scattered email threads.

Are shared calendars free in Microsoft Teams?

The basic Teams calendar that syncs with Outlook comes with both free and paid plans. However, creating channel and SharePoint calendars requires a paid Microsoft Teams subscription. When using Zeeg with Teams, you can create two scheduling pages on the free plan to share your availability.

What's the difference between Outlook and channel calendars?

Outlook calendars connect to your work email and sync with your personal Teams calendar. Channel calendars, however, are specific to Teams channels and visible to all channel members. While channel calendar events show up in your Outlook, you can't create Outlook events directly in a channel calendar.

How do you sync calendars across Microsoft apps?

Microsoft automatically syncs calendars between Outlook and Teams when you use the same email address. Just make sure you're signed in with your Microsoft work account across all apps. For external calendars, you'll need to use calendar sharing features or third-party tools like Zeeg, which integrates with Teams and Outlook seamlessly.

Can Teams have multiple calendars?

Yes, Teams supports multiple calendar types. Each team member has their personal calendar, and channels can have their own calendars. You can also add SharePoint calendars to Teams channels. This flexibility lets you manage different schedules for various projects or departments.

Is the Teams calendar different from Outlook?

The Teams calendar is essentially another view of your primary Outlook calendar. When you create events in either Teams or Outlook, they automatically appear in both places. This integration ensures you have consistent schedule information whether you're working in Teams or checking your email.