What do colleagues see of my calendar by default in Microsoft 365?

Within the organisation, everyone sees by default only whether you are free, busy, tentative or away. A colleague only sees the subject, location and details if you share the calendar with them at a higher permission level.

What is the difference between a delegate and full access?

A delegate can manage your calendar and send and respond to invitations on your behalf. Full access gives access to the entire mailbox, including all your email. For managing a calendar, a delegate is usually enough.

Can a delegate see my private appointments?

Not by default: private appointments are shown only as busy, unless you explicitly allow the delegate to see private items. Private is not real security, though, so do not put genuinely confidential information in an appointment.

How do I create a shared holiday calendar for the team?

Use the calendar of a Microsoft 365 group or a shared mailbox instead of sharing everyone’s personal calendar. The team then has one overview and personal calendars stay private.

Who can see what in your calendar? How an SME should handle calendar sharing and delegate access in Microsoft 365

Q: Can staff share their calendar with external people?

That depends on the sharing policy in Exchange Online. Review that policy deliberately; for most SMEs, sharing availability only with external people is enough.

An office manager schedules the director’s appointments. To make that possible, someone once gave ‘full access’ to the director’s mailbox, including all of the email. Meanwhile the rest of the team only sees ‘busy’ in each other’s calendars and asks in Teams when someone is free. And a colleague who left last year is still set as a delegate on two calendars. Sharing calendars in Microsoft 365 takes a few clicks. That is exactly why it often grows without anyone keeping track.

Why calendar permissions get out of hand

In Outlook, every member of staff can share their own calendar with a colleague. That is convenient, but nobody keeps track of who has which right. An assistant is given full access to a mailbox for convenience. A colleague who temporarily took over appointments keeps their edit rights. And people who leave or change roles often stay set up as delegates for months. The result: too many people can see too much, while the team sees too little for day-to-day planning.

What colleagues see of each other by default

Within a Microsoft 365 organisation, everyone sees only availability by default: free, busy, tentative or away. That is enough to find a time that suits everyone using the scheduling assistant in Outlook or Teams. The subject and location are not visible. For most staff, that is the right default. Share more deliberately, per person or per team.

The permission levels in Outlook

When you share a calendar in Outlook and Outlook on the web, you choose a level. The names differ slightly between versions of Outlook, but it comes down to this:

Can view when I’m busy. Only free or busy, just like the default.
Can view titles and locations. Useful for a team that wants to know who is with which customer.
Can view all details. Including the description and attendees of appointments.
Can edit. The other person can create, change and delete appointments in your calendar.
Delegate. Edit, plus sending and responding to invitations on your behalf.

Choose the lowest level that lets someone do their job. Someone who only wants to know whether you are in the office does not need all details.

An assistant as a delegate, not with full access

Make an office manager or assistant who manages a director’s calendar a delegate for that calendar. The delegate can schedule appointments, send invitations on the director’s behalf and accept or decline meeting requests. You choose whether meeting requests go to the delegate, to both, or only to the delegate with a copy for the director. Invitations sent by the delegate show that they were sent on behalf of the director.

Full access to the mailbox is something else: it lets someone read all the email, including messages from HR, the bank or the accountant. That is usually not needed for managing a calendar. If someone also needs to handle email for a department, use a shared mailbox instead of access to a personal mailbox.

Private appointments: useful, but not security

An appointment you mark as private is shown to others in Outlook and Teams only as busy, without subject or details. A delegate does not see private appointments either, unless you explicitly allow it when setting up the delegate. Microsoft itself advises against relying on this feature to truly shield information from people who already have rights to your calendar or mailbox. So do not put genuinely confidential information, such as details about a sick employee or an acquisition, in the description of an appointment.

Team planning: a shared calendar instead of each other’s calendars

If the team wants an overview of holidays, shifts or trade fairs, do not have everyone open up their personal calendars to each other. Use a shared calendar, for example the calendar of a Microsoft 365 group or of a shared mailbox. Everyone puts team appointments there, and personal calendars stay personal. For meeting rooms and shared equipment there are separate room and equipment mailboxes.

Sharing calendars with people outside your organisation

Staff can also share their calendar with people outside the organisation, and sometimes even publish it via a link that lets anyone who has the link view the calendar. What is possible is determined by the sharing policy in Exchange Online. Review that policy deliberately: for most SMEs, sharing availability only with external people is enough, and calendar links circulating on the internet are not wanted.

Cleaning up when people change roles or leave

Include calendar permissions in your joiner and leaver checklist. Anyone who changes role or leaves should be removed as a delegate and from shared calendars. An administrator can check in Exchange Online, per mailbox, who has which rights to the calendar. Do this once a year for the calendars of management and HR too.

How Floor ICT handles this

Floor ICT maps who currently has which rights to calendars and mailboxes, and discusses with you what is really needed. We replace unnecessary full access with delegate or calendar rights, set up a shared team calendar where useful and review the sharing policy for external people. Staff and assistants get a short explanation of delegates and private appointments. As part of our managed service, we adjust permissions when people join or leave and review them periodically.

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