Teams Calendar Now Looks and Works Like the Outlook Calendar

Some online commentators got very excited when Microsoft published MC908116 (10 October 2024, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 415415) to announce that a new calendar app will be available in Teams desktop and browser clients in mid-November 2024. I don’t know why such excitement is justified because the new Teams calendar app is essentially the calendar app used in OWA and the new Outlook for Windows.

Microsoft even makes the point, saying that the new calendar provides “a single, modern, intelligent, and coherent calendar for both Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook users.” Or, as the annoying prompt (Figure 1) says, the “Unified M365 Calendar” (why not the “Unified Microsoft 365 Calendar”?)

Reusing Code

When Microsoft launched their One Outlook initiative and started to develop the Monarch client, they discussed “Outlook Powered Experiences” (OPX), or a way to bring code developed for OWA to the Outlook classic client. The idea was to accelerate the availability of new functionality in the classic client, and the Room Finder was the first example of OPX in action. If you look at the Room Finder in Outlook classic, OWA, and the new Outlook, the same interface is visible.

It now looks like Microsoft is applying the OPX concept to Teams and it makes perfect sense. OPX didn’t exist during the development of the original version of Teams and that’s why Teams has a separate calendar app (and another for channel calendars). It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to create a single calendar app given that:

The Teams 2.1 desktop and browser clients use the Edge WebView2 component (also used by OWA, Outlook classic, and the new Outlook).

OPX depends on Edge WebView2.

The Outlook and Teams calendars operate off the same data stored in the Calendar folder in user mailboxes.

Teams Variations on the Calendar App

Viewing and creating meetings in the new calendar app happen like similar actions in the OWA calendar, and Teams picks up Outlook features like the month view and weather information. Teams is obviously different to Outlook, so its version of the calendar app includes some Teams-specific items, including a new command bar including options like Meet Now and a drop down events menu to allow users to create meetings and other events supported by Teams like virtual appointments. You can also pop-out the calendar app to a separate window, which is a nice feature to have.

MC908116 says that deployment is automatic, and no administrative action is needed. It’s a user choice whether to use the old calendar or the new calendar and there’s no policy setting available to force users to use either. How long Microsoft will keep the old calendar app in Teams isn’t stated, but the usual practice is to depreciate and remove old user interface components after several months to save on engineering and support costs. I expect the same will happen here and the old calendar app will disappear sometime in 2025.

Teams is Only Taking the Outlook Calendar UI (for now)

Teams has always been an example of an application that borrows heavily from other Microsoft 365 services. Dropping its version of a calendar to adopt a common version makes a ton of sense. Taking some UI elements from Outlook provokes the question whether Teams will ever include an email app based on the components used to manage email in OWA and the new Outlook. So far there’s no sign that Microsoft plans to do such a thing, possibly because there’s no obvious benefit. Teams is cluttered enough with apps already without forcing email into the mix.

So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.