How to share a team outlook calendar on Confluence?

[Miko Makela]

Is there a secure way to share a team outlook calendar on Confluence? We would like to embed our team calendar in outlook so we don’t have to update two different systems.

[John Paz · Accepted solution]

I've discovered a solution for this, although I cannot attest to how secure this solution is. Here is my solution:

To publish an Outlook calendar to a Confluence Team Calendar:

1. From within Outlook (2010), while viewing the calendar you wish to appear in Confluence Team Calendars, click Publish Online > Publish to Office.com.
2. In the Publish Calendar to Office.com dialog, you need to set the permissions to Anyone can subscribe to this calendar (I tried doing this with the alterantive and it was not allowed. Unfortunately this might be the big drawback from my solution).
3. Click OK. Then, when the dialog appears asking if you'd like to share your calendar, select Yes.
4. In the invitation that appears, copy the webcals url, the paste it in IE and hit Enter. You will be asked if you'd like to download the file. Hit Yes/Allow.
5. A dialog appears asking if you'd like to add the calendar to Outlook, and it will contain a url in it. Use the url in this dialog to paste into Confluence Add Calendar > Subscribe by URL dialog. Viola!

To update the Outlook calendar in Confluence:

Fast way: this way changes your update frequency so that you don't have to publish your calendar every time you make a change. This is so you don't have to publish your calendar again for each change to an event. I tested it and confirmed it worked after clicking Refresh from the drop-down menu on my test Team Calendar.

1. In the Publish Claendar to Office.com dialog, under Advaned, uncheck the option to use my server guidelines for updating the calendar.
2. Make a change to your calendar in Outlook that you've already subscribed to in Confluence.
3. In Team Calendars, click the drop-down menu on the desired Team Calendar then click Refresh.

Slower way: this way uses the update frequency set by your server settings, and sometimes requires you to publish the calendar again as explained above, but without having to subscribe again in Confluence. I tried it and it did not update automatically.

The workaround is to essentially publish the calendar again then refresh the Team Calendar.

[John Paz]

If it works, you can repay me in upvotes! (I need the karma apparently, as yesterday Atlassian Answers repremanded me for commenting without enough karma...)

[Katie Crick]

Thank you for providing these steps. A few of us tried to make it work, but have not had success.

I get the error "Specified calendar does not seem like iCalendar," even though it's an .ics URL. And my coworker gets "The datetime zone id is not recognised: Central Standard Time" -- I wonder what the solution to this one could be, since I can't imagine he's going to want to change the timezone of his calendar..

[Leo Leung]

Has anyone figured out a way to automatically refresh the subscribed calendar within Team Calendar?

[R Kouwen]

Publishing calendars to Office.comwont work after April 4, 2014.

[Deleted user]

Works with Office 2010 and Outlook Web App (MS Exchange Server) although steps are slightly different

[Anke Viehweger]

Hi everybody,

if you haven't already soved this problem, maybe our app Outlook Calendars for Confluence can help you. It's using Exchange or Office 365 to display all your calendars in Confluence. It's fast and secure and you don't need to maintain appoinments twice!

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1217554/outlook-calendars-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview 

Cheers,

Anke

[James Hernandez]

This makes it seem like we have to pay for a feature that should already be included and integrated.

[Anke Viehweger]

True, but even standard Team Calendars for Confluence are only available for Confluence Premium. So, you have to pay for a calendar anyway - might as well chose what functionality you need: calendars based on Microsoft 365 data or on Confluence.

But I get your point. Always would be great to have integrations like that already included. ;)

[Adam Shawley]

I believe the question here is the reverse of the reply. The question is, is it possible to display and outlook (or rather Exchange) calendar within Confluence.

Subscribing to a Confluence Calendar and displaying it in Outlook is easy, but what about the other way around?

Any thoughts on that??

[Greg Leonard]

I have the exact same need - to link my team's Outlook Calendar to the Confluence Team Calendar.

@Atlassian - is there any way to do this?

[Shane Duan]

Same here. I have been waiting for this since the day Calendar was introduced. People should come to Confluence to see an overview of all Calendars including the one in Exchange server, not the other way around.

[Shashi]

Just a follow-up to the original question.....I had the same requirement to share my outlook calendar to the confluence calendar & when i followed the Instructions in the link above .....I was able to see the calendar from Confluence on my Outlook(with updates) & not Vice-Versa .......Any thoughts ????

[John Paz]

Why is this marked as an answer?

[Adam Mattsson]

One way is to subscribe to the Outlook calendar in Confluence Team Calendars. To do this you must first publish the outlook calendar online through WebDAV to a page on the Confluence server, then subscribe to that .ics-file from Team Calendars. The .ics file is automatically updated to Confluence from Outlook, but Team calendars seems to have problems refreshing automatically.

Some downsides with this option

• A new version of ics file is saved in confluence every time it's updated from outlook. Could be a lot of versions per day.
  If this is an issue, it should be possible to delete the published .ics for example once a month, to delete all the versions saved and start fresh from there. However, this will require you to setup the publishing of the .ics from Outlook to Confluence again.
• Team calendars does not automatically refresh calendar when ics-file is updated, therefore manually clicking "refresh" on the calendar in team calendars is needed in order to keep it up to date.
  But at least this is easier than manually creating every event.

Setting up Team Calendars subscription to Outlook Calendar

1. First, try setting up WebDAV in Windows Explorer. Do this by adding a new network device, with URL: https://yourconfluenceinstance.com/plugins/servlet/confluence/default. You need to authenticate with your confluence credentials (admin permissions needed). Once done, you can see the space and page hierarchy through Explorer. Find a desired space and page where you have permission to save attachments.
   image2016-7-6 9:36:58.png
   The first step is not mandatory, but will help you by making sure WebDAV is working and for locating the page hierarchy.
2. Go to Outlook, choose "Publish Online -> Publish WebDAV..." 
3. Enter URL: https://yourconfluenceinstance.com/plugins/servlet/confluence/default/Global/TEST/testpage (where "TEST" is the space key and "testpage" is the page to save the attachments to. Use an existing page, you should see it by browsing folders in windows explorer). Set desired visibility options for the calendar. Press OK and authenticate with your confluence credentials
4. Now, browse to the page in windows Explorer and you should see the .ics-file
   image2016-7-6 9:42:19.png
5. Now go to the specific page in Confluence and to the attachments section. Copy the attachment URL (for example: https://yourconfluenceinstance.com/download/attachments/1234567Adam_Mattsson_Kalender.ics?api=v2)
6. Go to Team Calendars and select Add calendar -> Subscribe by URL
7. Paste the attachment URL
8. Done

[David Dietrich]

This did not work for me. I can browse to my Confluence test page in Explorer and save files there, but Outlook returns an error when I attempt to publish a calendar to this location.

The upload of "calendar name here" failed. Server returned an error.

I'm using a Windows Outlook client for Office 365 ProPlust (Version 1708).

[Jan Jasek]

+1 vote for such plugin into Outlook

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

You can use 'Team Calendars' to do this!

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/TEAMCAL/Subscribing+to+Team+Calendars+from+Microsoft+Outlook

[John Paz]

This does not answer the question as the instructions you provided are to subscribe/publish a Team Calendar (Confluence) to Outlook.

[Ryan Conway]

I found this thread whilst looking for a different answer, but in case it helps you folks, Atlassian recently shipped Team Calendars 6.0 which adds support for 2-way syncing via CalDAV

https://confluence.atlassian.com/teamcal/team-calendars-6-0-release-notes-947182030.html

[Alice]

Is there any updates news on this possibility? I wasn't able to follow the directions of John Paz that are above as my Outlook doesn't have options from some of the steps listed. This would be a game changer for us. 

[A. M. Alfaro]

So basically, there will be no support for this. That's very frustrating and disappointing. What's the point of an Atlassian Team Calendar if you still have to use Outlook calendars or some other client, which obviously has it's own calendar feature and will likely offer a broader range of sub-features? So what exactly is Atlassian offering besides a bloggin platform and document repository? In my company, my department uses the wiki the most and for all that we do with it, I'm finding open source solutions that seem to offer better products. I may not make the IT decisions but I'm definitely going to offer my opinion.

[sandeep4774]

I was able to do it by following steps below:
1. Login to Office 365 from browser.
2. Go to Outlook
3. Click Setting (Top Right Hand Side)
4. Click All Outlook Settings at the bottom
5. Go to Calendar tab -> Shared calendars
6. Select Calendar
7. Select Can view titles and locations
8. It will generate HTML link.
9. Copy that link
10. Now go to Wiki page where you want to import.
11. Edit Page and add Custom Content macro.
12. Set Width 100%
12. Paste above HTML link in URL field
13. Click Save

[Florian]

This only works for your own calenders, not for teamcalenders  :(

[Mathew Ray]

Just in case it's helpful, looks like teamcal is investigating CalDAV integration that would support 2-way integration:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/TEAMCAL-113

[Ryan Goodwin]

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/TEAMCAL-113

[John Paz]

Ditto!

[Fred Mastropasqua]

So am I

[Rupert Neethling]

I would like this functionality also.

[Michelle Spratt]

Me too ... !

[Dana Cleveland]

Bump!

Also looking for this two functionality

[aaron wideen]

would love to see this functionality. Looks like you can from an iCal but not from outlook...