How to Give Calendar Access in Office 365 Admin

Managing calendar access in Office 365 is a source of headache for many admins.

This is because Microsoft only offers some rather tricky PowerShell commands to manage this (we will cover this more in-depth further down this post).

There is no option to manage this from a GUI unless you run third-party software like Easy365Manager.

Manage Calendar Access From An Intuitive GUI

Easy365Manager is a snap-in to Active Directory Users & Computers that consolidates AD and Office 365 administration.

With Easy365Manager, you can perform all daily Office 365 management directly from user properties in AD. This includes calendar access management:

Easy365Manager is a small dll extension you can install on any system running AD Users & Computers.

It probably takes you less time to download, install and configure Easy365Manager than it takes to run the PowerShell scripts presented in the next section!

Manage Calendar Access from Office 365 PowerShell

Calendar access management with PowerShell requires you to download the Exchange Online Management PowerShell module.

You can install it using the following command:

Install-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement

The next step is to identify the path to the user’s calendar.

If your users are UK/US-based, it will simply be “/Calendar.”

Otherwise, you can check it using the following command:

(Get-MailboxFolderStatistics lene.hau -FolderScope calendar | ? {$_.FolderType -eq 'Calendar'}).FolderPath

(replace the user name with the user you’re trying to configure)

With the calendar folder path identified, you can now concentrate on four different PowerShell CmdLets:

Get-MailboxFolderPermission
Add-MailboxFolderPermission
Set-MailboxFolderPermission
Remove-MailboxFolderPermission

Use the Get-MailboxFolderPermission to view existing calendar permissions:

PS C:\> Get-MailboxFolderPermission lene.hau:\Calendar | ft -AutoSize

FolderName User                  AccessRights       SharingPermissionFlags
---------- ----                  ------------       ----------------------
Calendar   Default               {AvailabilityOnly}
Calendar   Anonymous             {None}
Calendar   Niels Bohr            {Owner}
Calendar   Hans Christian Orsted {Editor}

Use the Add-MailboxFolderPermission to add new permissions to the calendar:

PS C:\> Add-MailboxFolderPermission lene.hau:\Calendar -User ole.romer -AccessRights Owner

FolderName   User        AccessRightsSharingPermissionFlags
----------   ----        ----------------------------------
Calendar     Ole Romer   {Owner}

Use the Set-MailboxFolderPermission to modify existing permissions to the calendar:

PS C:\> Set-MailboxFolderPermission lene.hau:\Calendar -User niels.bohr -AccessRights Editor

After running the above commands, the calendar permissions now look like this:

 Get-MailboxFolderPermission lene.hau:\Calendar | ft -AutoSize

FolderName User                  AccessRights       SharingPermissionFlags
---------- ----                  ------------       ----------------------
Calendar   Default               {AvailabilityOnly}
Calendar   Anonymous             {None}
Calendar   Ole Romer             {Owner}
Calendar   Niels Bohr            {Editor}
Calendar   Hans Christian Orsted {Editor}

Finally, you can remove assigned access rights using the Remove-MailboxFolderPermission CmdLet:

PS C:\> Remove-MailboxFolderPermission lene.hau:\Calendar -User hans.c.orsted

Save Time Managing Calendar Access for Office 365 Mailboxes

The complexity of calendar access management with PowerShell makes it unsuited for first-level support teams – or even senior IT admins that have more important things to do…

You’ll often see calendar access tickets drip to your senior admins, affecting both the cost and time to resolution.

With Easy365Manager, any first-level supporter can handle calendar access with close to no training.

This makes Easy365Manager very popular among support teams and admins that need to cover many technologies on top of Office 365.

Watch this on-demand webinar to see answers to the most common questions regarding Easy365Manager: