Microsoft Outlook and Office 365 Now Support Shared Inboxes/Calendars

Shared Outlook calendars make it much easier to onboard entire teams, so kudos all the way!

One example that I’ve been involved with as a product owner is connecting Out of Office blockers in Outlook with other apps like Jira. Thanks to the Out of Office Assistant for Jira  that we have just published, you can stop work assignments during your time off and instead shift those tasks to a different colleague who will be on duty during your absence.

Without the ability to pick shared calendars, everyone had to work off their own, and then create an additional filter, remembering to tag it with something like “ooo”. With the support for shared calendars, you can have everybody’s absences on just one place and trigger as many automations as team members there are. It’s very neat!

I can’t seem to get the shared inbox to connect, it keeps looking for emails in my own inbox

How can I access a contact folder of my shared mailboxes?

I’m trying to figure this out as well, each time I try to get to a shared inbox Zapier just creates a new connection to my existing inbox/calendar. Need a bit more direction in using shared inboxes.

Hi,

Thanks for this, I’m able to see the shared calendars, but not all of them, I only can see the first 3, and if click in the Load More option, none other calendar appear.

Also, if I try to create an appointment to any of their calendars I receive a message that says that I don’t have the credentials for this (I have full access to their account).

Any suggestions?

Thanks!!!

Hi - I am having a similar problem with this. The “From” field does not appear as an option so I dont have an option to use shared inboxes/groups. Any ideas about how to make this appear very gratefully received! Thanks Tim

Hi folks, I’m so sorry we missed everyones replies here previously! 
 

@IELS: I can’t seem to get the shared inbox to connect, it keeps looking for emails in my own inbox  

Not sure if you’ve since resolved this but wanted to suggest adding the shared inbox connection using a private browsing window/tab or a different browser. See Connect multiple accounts of the same app to Zapier for details.
 

@SBB: How can I access a contact folder of my shared mailboxes?

The update applied to support for shared inboxes and calendars, not contacts. There’s a feature request for the ability to add support for shared contact folders so I’ve added your vote to that. We can’t make any promises around when it may be added but we’ll be sure to email you when/if it is!
 

@SST028: I’m trying to figure this out as well, each time I try to get to a shared inbox Zapier just creates a new connection to my existing inbox/calendar. Need a bit more direction in using shared inboxes.

It sounds like you’re running into the same trouble as @IELS was. So I’d recommend using a private browsing window/tab or a different browser to add the connection to add the shared inbox account connection.

@Lozano: Thanks for this, I’m able to see the shared calendars, but not all of them, I only can see the first 3, and if click in the Load More option, none other calendar appear.

Also, if I try to create an appointment to any of their calendars I receive a message that says that I don’t have the credentials for this (I have full access to their account).

Hmm, it’s odd that it’s only showing some of the shared calendars. Is there any difference in the permissions granted to your account between the ones that are appearing and those that aren’t? If not, then I’d recommend reaching out to our Support team to investigate further. It could be that there’s a bug that’s preventing more than three calendars from being loaded. You can get in touch with them here: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

In the meantime, if you happen to know the ID number for the missing calendar you might be able to select it manually by selecting the Custom value option from the Calendar field’s dropdown menu, then typing in the calendar’s ID into the Calendar field. You can learn more about using custom values here: Add custom values to dropdown menu fields in Zaps. 

@TimDavidson: Hi - I am having a similar problem with this. The “From” field does not appear as an option so I dont have an option to use shared inboxes/groups. Any ideas about how to make this appear very gratefully received! Thanks Tim

If the shared inbox isn’t appearing in the From field’s dropdown menu, it could be that the permissions for the connected account aren’t correct - “write” access is required. Or perhaps the account was granted the necessary permissions after it was connected to the Zap, in which case you’ll need to reconnect the account to ensure it’s connecting with the updated set of permissions.

Hope that helps! 🙂

I just connected my Microsoft Outlook account to Zapier and I would like to “Update Calendar Event in Microsoft Office” in a shared calendar which I have write/admin privileges over based on a trigger action. However, I cannot find the field where I select a different calendar. There is no “Calendar” or “From” dropdown field in “App & event”, “Account”, “Action”, or “Test”. I event tried to open a new browser application and use Incognito. No dice. What am I doing wrong?

Hi @njudd, welcome to the Community! 👋

You’re not doing anything wrong here, I had a look at the fields available for that Update Calendar Event (Microsoft Outlook) action and I’m not seeing a field where a calendar can be selected either! 

Usually with update actions you’d select a unique ID from a search action or trigger that will ensure that the correct item (in this case event) is updated. Even though there’s no field to select a specific calendar, I’d have thought that supplying the correct ID should allow the correct event to be updated. 

So, in the Event field try choosing the Custom value option and select the ID field that contains the ID of the event you wish to update. For example: 


Can you give that a try and confirm whether that updates the correct event on the shared calendar?

Hey, I’m trying to set up a trigger that runs off a shared inbox. i.e. when email from Hubspot received to shared inbox, do action XYZ. However it only seems to be picking up emails that come to my personal inbox, please can someone help?

Hey @elaut 👋 

Sorry to hear you’re running into some trouble with this. Which Microsoft Outlook trigger are you using?

If you can share a quick screenshot showing the fields and settings that have been selected for in trigger that would be much appreciated. We’re unable to access your Zaps so screenshots help to give us better context on the current setup. Make sure to blur or remove all personal information (names, emails, addresses etc.) from screenshots before sharing.

Looking forward to hearing from you on this!

Hey, here are the screenshots. I also tested it out with Stripe instead of Hubspot and had the same issue - the emails found in the ‘test’ are emails from my personal inbox rather than the shared inbox that I want to be searching

Thanks so much for sharing those helpful screenshots @elaut. 🙂

A parent folder hasn’t been selected which I think might be what’s causing it to only find emails in your own inbox. According to the help text for the Parent Folder field (click on the field name to reveal it) it says “If both Parent Folder and Child Folder are left blank, the trigger will fire for all new emails in the user's inbox.”:


Can you try selecting the folder on the shared inbox then test the trigger again to see if it’s then able to pull in a test record from the shared inbox?

Hey, thanks for your help with this. When I open up the parent folder dropdown, I only see options from my personal inbox, not from the shared inbox? Any ideas?

That’s very strange @elaut. If the connected account has the necessary “Read” access for the shared folder then it should be appearing. 🤔

From the dropdown menu in the Parent Folder field, if you start typing in the name of the shared folder and click the Load more button does it then appear? 

If not, then it might be best to reach out to our Support team to investigate further. They’ll be able to dig into the logs for your Zap and can open up a bug report where necessary. Please do keep us updated on how you get on with this, keen to ensure this gets sorted!

I’ve connect my 365 account that has full delegation privileges to shared inbox,  but when i try to send an email “from” the shared inbox, I get this message: 

Failed to create an email in Microsoft Outlook

Unable to send an email: The specified object was not found in the store., The process failed to get the correct properties.

When I change the “from” to my non-shared email address, it works. 

Any ideas?

Hi @April Hearne! 👋

Really sorry to hear you’re getting an “The specified object was not found in the store” error. It sounds like there could be an issue with the permissions for the shared email then if it’s working for your regular email address. The error seems to match the error that’s was discussed over here: 

I’d recommend checking out that other Community topic to see if the solution reported there works for you too.

And if it doesn’t please feel free to reach out directly on that other topic for further assistance on this! 🙂

Hi, ​@SamB - I’m having a related issue to the function; sending an email from a group email (which I definitely have permissions). I have successfully sent emails from the group email via Outlook webmail (twice). I am seeing this error message which I did not see covered in ANY related help center articles:

Is there a different function I should be using to send an email (as a Zap Action) using a group email? 

P.S. I also already tried reconnecting my current Outlook OAuth about an hour after I was given the permissions by our IT team to send emails from this address. (And again, did so successfully in Outlook). 

Hi ​@Attojj 👋

Hmm, that “Group Shard is used in non-Groups URI” error mentions groups, so it seems the issue is that you’re attempting to send from a group email address rather than a shared mailbox email address.

And looking at Microsoft’s documentation here group addresses can’t be used, but it should be possible to send from a shared mailbox address:

Can you try sending the email via a shared mailbox address, instead of a group address, and let us know whether that works?