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Scheduling Team Meetings Using Microsoft Groups

Overview

Scheduling meetings within a Microsoft group offers numerous benefits. It's important to understand how Microsoft groups work to ensure your meetings are setup correctly.

A Microsoft group is created for every Microsoft Team or SharePoint site.  For example, a Microsoft Team for the KY ARP project has a Microsoft Team, a SharePoint site, and a group email account of KYARP@l.uky.edu.  An email sent to this group email address will send an email to all KY ARP team members who have been added to the Microsoft Team or SharePoint. Subsequently, a calendar meeting invite sent to this group email will send to all team members and automatically show on their individual calendars.

All team members can access and manage groups in Outlook. In both the Mail and Calendar views, there is a 'Groups' section that, when expanded, shows all groups a team member has access to.  

View Outlook Group Examples
Groups in mail and calendar views, showing email counts in the mailbox and an option to turn off and on the group calendar.

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Meeting Scheduling & Management Methods

There are two ways to schedule and manage a group meeting, along with pros and cons of each.

Pros & Cons of Microsoft Teams
1. Microsoft Teams

Scheduling a meeting in Microsoft Teams will automatically send to all team members. 

Pros

  • All team meetings are viewable in one location - the group calendar. 
  • When new team members are added to the team, the meeting will automatically display on their calendar. No need to forward meetings.

Cons

  • All team members receive a notification and will have it displayed on their calendar.
    • If there are team members who have been added to collaborate with the team that don't need to be included on All-Team meetings, they will receive all meeting invites as well as changes and cancellations.
  • The group meeting on a personal calendar can only be modified by the owner of the meeting, regardless of if you are a group member or not.

All team members have the ability to modify any group meeting, but changes must be done in the Outlook group. 

Pros & Cons of Outlook
2. Outlook (Desktop or Web client)

Pros

  • All team meetings are viewable in one location - the group calendar. 
  • Only invited participants receive notification and see the meeting on their calendar.

Cons

  • You need to invite yourself to the meeting if you wish to be included at the meeting. The group, in this case, is the organizer so include yourself in the attendee list.

Process

Scheduling and Modifying Meetings

Microsoft Teams
  1. Navigate to your Team Channel
  2. Click on the ellipses at the top right of Teams and select 'Schedule a Meeting'

     

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Meetings may only be modified in your Teams Calendar by the individual who created the group meeting.

Scheduling and Modifying Meetings

Outlook
  1. Navigate to your Group Calendar
  2. Create and or modify a meeting invite as you normally would.

Add yourself as a meeting attendee if you wish to be included in the meeting.

If a team member has been invited to a group meeting but they do not see it on their calendar, they should right click on the meeting in the Outlook group and select 'Add to My Calendar'.

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