Best option for shared calendar only in Microsoft 365?

Question

We have someone who created and then shared a calendar from her account with some other members of the company (for purposes of scheduling truck pickups & deliveries). As she will be retiring soon, she has requested that I "change the ownership of" the calendar to someone else (basically migrate the calendar), but I'd like to make this independent of anyone's account so I won't have to do this again in the future.

I've been looking into various options and I'm not sure which one would be best to create to take the place of this calendar and am looking for input.

• Public Folder - From what I remember doing this before 4 years ago for another company, instructing someone on how to add these wasn't always straight forward/easy for the end user to understand, and it seems like these are typically setup for company-wide access vs specific groups of people (which is what I need in this case). Also, what information I can find suggests public folder calendars cannot be viewed from OWA or mobile devices (may not be a big deal, but I'd rather that this calendar could).
• Room Resource - Has the issue that it will show amongst the other room resources when attempting to schedule a meeting, so if we end up with a bunch of these, it'll make scheduling rooms a pain. Also I've read that marking it to hide from the GAL will make it unfindable for an end user to be able to add it to their own list of calendars.
• Equipment Resource - I haven't really found a drawback to this one, yet, but am unsure if hiding it from the GAL will have the same consequence as the room resource.
• Shared Mailbox - Adding a person to this then gives them the entire mailbox that shows in Outlook and clutters things there. Update: It was pointed out that one can give permissions to just the calendar portion, but in trying this out, it seems that it does not work with security groups, that I must manage the permissions through Outlook, and that I must add myself to the permissions for it (basically meaning I need to have these calendars, too).
• Office 365 Group (Teams/SharePoint) - My limited understanding of this is that it'll create a new SharePoint page, which will then have all the normal SharePoint related crud, like document sharing, etc, that can't all be disabled and permissions cannot be easily fine tuned (without at least breaking out powershell).

Any input from anyone? Are there other options out there (not looking for 3rd party solutions) that I've missed that may be better?

Answer 1

Access to Shared mailboxes can be delegated on a per-folder basis too, no need to always use Full Access and thus have the entire mailbox appear in Outlook. Simply adjust the Calendar folder permissions. And with the latest Outlook mobile versions, you can also access it across devices, which was a pain point previously.

Answer 2

Sure, if you're looking for the best option for a shared calendar within Microsoft 365, you have several choices depending on your needs:

1. Outlook Calendar: This is the default CMS calendar application within Microsoft 365. It allows you to create multiple calendars, share them with specific people or groups, and set permissions for viewing and editing events. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft 365 applications and is widely used for its simplicity and familiarity.

Microsoft Teams: Teams includes a built-in calendar feature that integrates with Outlook Calendar. You can schedule meetings, create events, and share them with team members directly within the Teams interface. This is especially useful for teams that collaborate closely and frequently communicate through Teams.

SharePoint Calendar: SharePoint allows you to create calendars that can be shared with others in your organization. You can customize permissions, add events, and integrate the calendar with other SharePoint features such as document libraries and task lists. SharePoint calendars are great for organizations that rely heavily on SharePoint for collaboration and document management.