Invite Others to Outlook Meetings

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About this lesson

Create appointments and use the Scheduling Assistant to invite others to meetings.

Quick reference

Invite Others to Outlook Meetings

Learn how to invite others to offline and online Teams meetings in Outlook.

When to use

We schedule meetings in our calendar when we want to meet with team members and colleagues either online or offline.

Instructions

In Outlook we can schedule appointments or meetings. The only differentiating factor is if the event has invitees or not. 

We can schedule an in-person meeting or we can schedule an online Microsoft Teams meeting. 

Schedule a Meeting

  • Click on New event
  • Ensure the correct calendar is selected
  • Add a title and description

We can use the formatting bar in the description field to format our text. We can also attach files and pictures, add emojis or clear formatting from here. 

  • Add a date and time
  • Add invitees

Notice that as soon as we add invitees, the Save button changes to a Send button. 

If we want this meeting to be an online Teams meeting, we can toggle the Teams meeting slider on. This will add the relevant links to Teams into the body of the calendar invite. 

  • Click Send

The Scheduling Assistant

When scheduling meetings with many people, it can be useful to use the scheduling assistant. The scheduling assistant helps us pick a time that everyone is free. 

  • Click the Scheduling Assistant tab

From here, we can see all invitees and the current meeting time. If there are any conflicts, we can drag the red bar to select an alternative time. 

Respond to a Meeting Invite

When we receive a meeting invite, it will remain tentatively on our calendar until we respond. 

Meeting invites will also be sent to our email. We can respond to invites directly from our email or from the calendar. 

Meeting owners can track and monitor responses by opening the invite and reviewing the Tracking pane on the right-hand side. 

Respond to a Meeting Invite (Outlook Desktop)

We respond to meeting invites in a slightly different way in Outlook Desktop. 

  • From the calendar, open the meeting
  • From the Meeting tab, in the Respond group choose Accept, Tentative, Decline, or Propose New Time

Hints & tips

  • When working with the scheduling assistant, we can see a key (legend) at the bottom that shows us the status of everyone's availability
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  • 00:04 Another important aspect of Outlook is the ability to schedule meetings.
  • 00:09 And really the only thing that differentiates an appointment from
  • 00:13 a meeting is the fact that meetings have invitees.
  • 00:16 And in Outlook Online, we can schedule just a regular meeting or
  • 00:20 we can schedule a Teams meeting.
  • 00:22 So let's take a look at it in both versions of Outlook.
  • 00:25 So we're going to start with the online version.
  • 00:28 We're going to click on the New event button and
  • 00:30 it's going to take us to the New event dialog box.
  • 00:33 Now, by default, if I was just to add a title and click on Save,
  • 00:36 this is going to effectively be an appointment.
  • 00:39 If you want to create a meeting,
  • 00:41 it becomes a meeting as soon as you add invitees into this field.
  • 00:46 So let's go through and add some details.
  • 00:48 The first thing we need to do is make sure we're scheduling in the correct calendar,
  • 00:52 I'm going to schedule this in Project Alpha.
  • 00:54 Let's add a title, and we're just going to say that this is a Lunch Meeting.
  • 00:59 Notice the clever little thing here that Outlook has done,
  • 01:01 it's recognized the word lunch and it's assigned the appropriate icon.
  • 01:05 Let's go through and schedule our time.
  • 01:08 So let's say that this is going to be on the 6th of June.
  • 01:12 And it's going to be a lunch meeting, so I want this to be let's say 12:30 to 01:30.
  • 01:19 And then I could go through and add a description.
  • 01:22 Remember, underneath here, you can add attachments, images, emojis,
  • 01:27 and you also have a full formatting toolbar.
  • 01:30 Now, currently, this is still an appointment notice the Save button.
  • 01:34 However, as soon as I invite attendees, and
  • 01:37 I'm going to invite everybody who's part of the Project Alpha group,
  • 01:42 that changes to a Send button because this is now a meeting.
  • 01:46 Also note here that if I wanted this to be an online meeting, a Teams meeting,
  • 01:51 I have a little toggle slider just here.
  • 01:53 And you can see that as soon as I selected invitees,
  • 01:56 it automatically toggled the Teams meeting slider on.
  • 02:00 Now, if you don't want that and this is going to be a regular meeting in a meeting
  • 02:03 room, it's not going to be online, you can simply toggle this off.
  • 02:07 Now, I'm going to leave this on so
  • 02:09 you can see what that looks like when you send the email.
  • 02:12 Now another useful thing that you can do here is you can jump across to
  • 02:16 the scheduling assistant.
  • 02:18 So this is going to show you if there are any conflicts between the time that
  • 02:22 you've chosen for this meeting and
  • 02:24 anybody else's calendar that you've invited to this meeting.
  • 02:28 So you can see here it has Project Alpha, if there were any conflicts with any
  • 02:32 member of Project Alpha I would see those listed here, but
  • 02:35 I can see that this looks pretty clear.
  • 02:37 Now maybe at this stage I decide I want to invite a few more people.
  • 02:41 I can go back to here, let's invite Megan, and
  • 02:46 let's also invite, Henrietta.
  • 02:51 Again if we go across to the Scheduling Assistant, you can see that those two
  • 02:56 have been added and I can see if they have a conflict or not.
  • 03:00 Now if there was a conflict, so let's say Megan had a meeting between 10:00 and
  • 03:04 01:00, I would see a bar showing just here.
  • 03:07 And you can see at the bottom we have a little key busy, tentative, away,
  • 03:11 working elsewhere, so on and so forth.
  • 03:13 So if I needed to move this meeting I can simply pick it up and
  • 03:17 I can drag it elsewhere like so.
  • 03:19 I can even drag the ends of it out, so
  • 03:21 it makes it really easy to adjust the timings of this meeting.
  • 03:26 So this is really helpful to make sure that you get a time that works for
  • 03:29 everybody.
  • 03:30 So definitely jump into here first before sending out to your recipients.
  • 03:35 I am happy with how this looks, let's click on Send.
  • 03:38 Now this meeting has been scheduled for the 6th of June, so
  • 03:41 I'm going to use my mini-calendar.
  • 03:43 Let's go across to June, and you can see there it is.
  • 03:47 Now I have it listed twice in my calendar because it's put it into the Project Alpha
  • 03:51 calendar, which I'm currently displaying, and it's put it into my personal calendar.
  • 03:56 Now, if I click on the one from my personal calendar, this is pretty much
  • 04:00 what all of the recipients of this meeting invite are going to see.
  • 04:04 So they can choose which response they want to send.
  • 04:07 So they can say yes they're attending, maybe, or no.
  • 04:11 So I'm going to say yes, I'll attend, and I could choose to add a note in there for
  • 04:16 the organizer if I wanted to.
  • 04:18 Let's click on Send just to confirm that I am coming to that meeting.
  • 04:22 Now, if I open open up this lunch meeting, again I'm going to open
  • 04:26 up the one that's in my personal calendar, notice what we have here.
  • 04:30 Because I selected Teams meeting,
  • 04:33 I now have all of the information required in order to join that meeting.
  • 04:37 So I have a link here that tells me click here to join the meeting,
  • 04:40 it's given me the Meeting ID, the Passcode if necessary.
  • 04:44 So when it comes around to the time to join that meeting, I can click on the link
  • 04:48 in the body just here, or I can click join Teams meeting just here.
  • 04:52 Or alternatively I have another Join at the top here, so
  • 04:56 a few different places where we can join that Teams meeting.
  • 05:00 Let's take a look at what this looks like in the desktop application.
  • 05:03 So you can see here I'm viewing my calendar June 4th to 10th, and
  • 05:07 on the 6th you can see that I have two entries there, one for my personal,
  • 05:12 one for Project Alpha.
  • 05:13 And similarly if I double-click to open up this particular meeting,
  • 05:18 you can see I have my Accept, Tentative,
  • 05:20 Decline buttons up here if I need to respond to the meeting.
  • 05:24 But also when I want to join the meeting, I have all of the information in the body
  • 05:29 and I also have the Join Teams Meeting link at the top there.
  • 05:33 So this is another way that Teams is integrated into your Outlook calendars.
  • 05:39 You'll also notice in the desktop application is that aside from creating
  • 05:43 a new appointment and a new meeting, these are split across two separate buttons in
  • 05:47 the desktop version, we also have a Teams meeting group just here as well.
  • 05:51 So if I wanted to specifically create a Teams meeting,
  • 05:55 I could click on that, add in the details and send that off.
  • 06:00 And that's going to show as a Teams meeting link in the Calendar.

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