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Help your audience discover and plan for your Engage event by sending calendar invitations directly from Viva Engage. Calendar invitations put the event on recipients’ calendars and help them keep track of event details.
If the event changes, Engage updates previously sent invitations automatically and sends cancellations when recipients are removed or the event is deleted.
Supported events and recipients
Invitation options depend on the event type.
| Event type | Invitation behavior |
|---|---|
| Public community event | The hosting community is added automatically. The organizer can remove it or add additional recipients. |
| Private community event | The hosting community is added automatically. The invitee field can't be edited, and additional recipients can't be added. |
| Public or private storyline event | The invitee field starts empty. The organizer can add needed recipients. |
| All Company event | Attendee calendar invitations aren't supported. |
| AMA | Attendee calendar invitations aren't supported. |
Where the event type permits additional recipients, organizers can add:
Individuals
Engage communities
Microsoft 365 groups
Distribution lists
Security Groups
Invitations can be delivered to subscribed internal and external community members, subject to their preferences and applicable organizational policies.
Before you begin
Before you begin, make sure you’re an event organizer and that the community is enabled for email and calendar subscriptions by a community admin. For existing communities, allow 24 hours after enablement before sending invites, and be aware that delivery depends on member preferences and applicable Microsoft 365, Exchange, and Microsoft Entra policies and restrictions.
You must be an event organizer to manage event invitations.
Existing communities need to be enabled for calendar delivery.
Only a community admin can enable email and calendar subscriptions for a community.
After enabling subscriptions for an existing community, wait 24 hours before sending calendar invitations.
The in-product enablement experience currently supports communities with up to 50,000 members.
Member preferences and applicable Microsoft 365 and Exchange delivery policies are honored.
For Microsoft 365 groups with more than 5,000 members, an administrator must update the group's delivery restrictions in Microsoft Entra to allow invitation delivery.
Organizers, co-organizers, and presenters receive their invitations separately. They will always receive these invitations even when attendee calendar invitations are turned off.
Send calendar invitations for an event
Create a new event or edit an existing event in Engage.
In the Calendar invitation section, review the recipients.
Turn on Send calendar invitations.
Save or publish the event.
Send calendar invitations is off by default. You can create the event without sending attendee invitations and turn the setting on later by editing the event.
After calendar invitations have been sent, the setting remains on and can't be turned off.
Enable calendar delivery for an existing community
Existing communities must be enabled before members can receive calendar invitations; you only have to do this once for each community.
Create or edit the event.
Add the community as an event recipient.
If Engage identifies a community that requires configuration, select Review settings.
Review the communities that need to be enabled.
If you're a community admin, select Enable.
Wait for the enablement operation to finish.
Create or save the event without attendee calendar invitations.
Wait 24 hours, then edit the event and turn on Send calendar invitations.
If you aren't a community admin, ask an admin of the affected community to enable the setting.
Wait 24 hours before sending an invitation
Important
Enabling a community can take up to 24 hours to update member subscriptions. Sending an invitation earlier might result in some members not receiving it.
The 24-hour warning might not remain visible if you leave and reopen the event. You should still wait the full 24 hours from the time the community was enabled.
Send calendar invitations to a new community
Members of newly created communities are subscribed by default to email and calendar delivery.
Community owners can manage the Microsoft 365 group subscription settings through the My Account portal.
This default doesn't automatically send invitations for community events. An event organizer must still turn on “Send calendar invitations” for the individual event. See Manual configuration scripts for the manual scripts and administrator procedures required for communities over 50,000 users.
Manual configuration scripts
Exchange administrators can use these alternate scripts when a group exceeds the current 50,000-member in-product enablement limit or another issue prevents in-product configuration.
Required role: Exchange administrator. Learn more about the Exchange Online administrator role.
These scripts enable subscriptions for future members and subscribe existing members. They do not directly send event invitations. The 50,000-member in-product enablement limit is separate from the delivery restrictions for groups with more than 5,000 members described elsewhere in this article.
Configure subscriptions for a single Microsoft 365 group
In the following script, replace mygroup@contoso.com with the target group's actual SMTP address or alias.
# Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -Device
# Group SMTP address or alias
$Group = "mygroup@contoso.com"
# Enable subscription for future members
Set-UnifiedGroup \`
-Identity \$Group \`
-AutoSubscribeNewMembers \`
-SubscriptionEnabled
# Subscribe all existing members
Get-UnifiedGroupLinks \`
-Identity \$Group \`
-LinkType Members \`
-ResultSize Unlimited \|
ForEach-Object {
Add-UnifiedGroupLinks \`
-Identity \$Group \`
-LinkType Subscribers \`
-Links \$\_.PrimarySmtpAddress \`
-Confirm:\$false
}
Write-Host "Completed subscription of all members."
Configure subscriptions for all Microsoft 365 groups
Warning: The following script enumerates all existing Microsoft 365 groups, not only Engage communities. It enables subscriptions for future members and subscribes existing members in every group it finds. Review this broad scope before using it.
# Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -Device
# Get all existing Microsoft 365 Groups
$Groups = Get-UnifiedGroup -ResultSize Unlimited
foreach (\$Group in \$Groups) {
$GroupIdentity = \$Group.PrimarySmtpAddress.ToString()
Write-Host "Processing \$GroupIdentity..."
Write-Host "Enabling automatic subscription..."
Set-UnifiedGroup \`
-Identity \$GroupIdentity \`
-AutoSubscribeNewMembers:\$true \`
-SubscriptionEnabled:\$true
Write-Host "Reading existing members..."
$Members = @(
Get-UnifiedGroupLinks \`
-Identity \$GroupIdentity \`
-LinkType Members \`
-ResultSize Unlimited
)
Write-Host "Members found: \$(\$Members.Count)"
$Processed = 0
foreach (\$Member in \$Members) {
$Processed++
Add-UnifiedGroupLinks \`
-Identity \$GroupIdentity \`
-LinkType Subscribers \`
-Links \$Member.PrimarySmtpAddress \`
-Confirm:\$false
if (\$Processed % 100 -eq 0) {
Write-Host "Processed \$Processed of \$(\$Members.Count)..."
}
}
Write-Host "Completed \$GroupIdentity."
}
Write-Host "Completed all existing Microsoft 365 Groups."
Disconnect-ExchangeOnline -Confirm:\$false
The waiting period after manual configuration and the procedure for verifying successful configuration are pending engineering confirmation.
Update an Engage event or its recipients
After attendee invitations have been sent, you can edit the event.
| Change | Result |
|---|---|
| Add recipients | Newly added recipients receive an invitation when the event is saved. |
| Remove recipients | Removed recipients receive a cancellation. |
| Change the event date, time, or other details | Previously invited recipients receive an update to the existing calendar item. |
| Delete the event | Previously invited recipients receive a cancellation. |
Updating an event should update the existing calendar entry rather than creating a duplicate.
If you add a community that isn't enabled to an event whose invitations have already been sent, remove that community, have an authorized admin enable it, wait 24 hours, and then add it again.
All Company events limitation
Attendee calendar invitations aren't supported for All Company events. All Company can't be selected as an attendee recipient, including through its underlying Microsoft 365 group.
Organizers, co-organizers, and presenters can still receive their normal organizing team invitations.
Troubleshooting
Some community members didn't receive the invitation
Possible causes include:
Invitations were sent before the 24-hour subscription update period finished.
Affected members opted out of community delivery.
A Microsoft 365 or Exchange policy prevented delivery.
The sender isn't permitted to send to the community's Microsoft 365 group.
Confirm when the community was enabled and when the invitation was sent. If the community was recently enabled, wait 24 hours before sending attendee invitations.
I can't enable the community
Only a community admin can enable subscriptions. Contact an admin of the affected community.
If you're an admin but the operation fails, retry the enablement action. Capture the displayed error and the affected community information if the failure continues.
The Send calendar invitations option is disabled
If the community was enabled during the current create or edit session, this is expected. Save the event without attendee invitations, wait 24 hours, and then edit the event again.
The 24-hour warning disappeared
The warning might disappear after you leave and reopen the event. This doesn't mean subscription processing has finished. Continue to wait 24 hours from the original enablement time.
The community can't be enabled in Engage
The in-product experience supports communities with up to 50,000 members. Larger communities require an administrator-managed enablement process. See manual configuration scripts on the exact script the admin needs to run.
The organizer received a non-delivery report
Invitations follow the sender restrictions configured for the community's Microsoft 365 group. Engage doesn't check these restrictions before the event is saved.
Review the Outlook non-delivery report and the group's sender configuration. Contact your Microsoft 365 administrator if the sender needs permission to deliver messages to the group.
If the group has more than 5,000 members, ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to update its delivery restrictions in Microsoft Entra to allow invitation delivery.
Organizers received invitations even though attendee invitations were off
This is expected. Organizing team invitations for organizers, co-organizers, and presenters are separate from attendee calendar invitations.