Use mail flow rules to automatically add meetings to calendars in Exchange Online
Article
Note
This article doesn't apply to standalone Exchange Online Protection (EOP) organizations.
With the Direct to Calendar feature in Exchange Online, administrators can configure mail flow rules (also known as transport rules) that allow designated users to add meetings to calendars. The benefits of Direct to Calendar are:
The event is automatically added to the recipient's calendar without any action from them. If the user received the meeting invitation, it's on their calendar.
The sender doesn't need to deal with Out of Office or other unwanted response messages that result from sending meeting invitations to a large number of recipients.
No meeting-related messages are seen by attendees.
Direct to Calendar requires two mail flow rules with specific conditions and actions. These rules are described in the following table:
Rule description
Condition
Action
Comments
This mail flow rule turns regular meeting invitations into Direct to Calendar meeting invitations.
The sender > is this person (the From parameter).
This condition identifies the users who are authorized to send Direct to Calendar meeting invitations. Although you can use other conditions, restricting the invitations by sender helps prevent unauthorized use of Direct to Calendar meeting invitations.
Modify the message properties > set a message header (the SetHeaderName and SetHeaderValue parameters).
This action sets the X-MS-Exchange-Organization-CalendarBooking-Response header to the value Accept. Other valid values are Tentative and Decline.
We recommend that you use dedicated mailboxes (shared mailboxes are OK) for sending Direct to Calendar meeting invitations, because any meeting invitations from these senders will be automatically added to recipient calendars.
The dedicated mailboxes require no special permissions to send Direct to Calendar meeting invitations.
This mail flow rule prevents Direct to Calendar meeting invitations from appearing in the Inbox of recipients.
The sender > is this person (the From parameter).
Modify the message properties > set a message header (the SetHeaderName and SetHeaderValue parameters).
This action sets the X-MS-Exchange-Organization-CalendarBooking-TriageAction header to the value MoveToDeletedItems. The other valid value is None.
Technically, this rule is optional (without it, meetings are still automatically added to recipient calendars).
This rule doesn't prevent meeting cancellation messages for Direct to Calendar meetings from appearing in the Inbox of recipients.
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure(s). To see what permissions you need, see the "Mail flow" entry in the Feature permissions in Exchange Online article.
The designated accounts for sending Direct to Calendar meeting invitations need to exist.
The following example configures the rule using the dedicated mailbox named Direct to Calendar invites.
New-TransportRule -Name "Direct to Calendar triage action" -From "Direct to Calendar invites" -SetHeaderName "X-MS-Exchange-Organization-CalendarBooking-TriageAction" -SetHeaderValue MoveToDeletedItems
For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-TransportRule.
How do you know this worked?
To verify that you've successfully configured Direct to Calendar meeting invitations, use the designated sender mailbox to send a test meeting invitation to a few recipients. Verify that the meeting automatically appears in the calendars of the recipients, and that there are no meeting-related messages in the Inbox (the second rule should automatically move these messages to the Deleted Items folder).
More information
The designated sender mailbox will receive meeting acceptance responses to Direct to Calendar meetings. Use the following strategies to help minimize the impact of these messages on the designated sender:
In Outlook, enable the Update tracking information, and then delete responses that don't contain comments and After updating tracking information, move receipt to <Deleted Items> settings in Mail > Tracking for the designated sender mailbox. For more information, see Change how meeting requests, polls, and read or delivery receipts are processed.
Clearing the Request Responses setting in Direct to Calendar meeting invitations doesn't prevent responses from being sent back to the designated sender mailbox.
If the designated mailbox sends a meeting cancellation for a Direct to Calendar meeting, the canceled meeting title is always changed to CANCELED: <previous meeting title>, and the canceled meeting remains in the calendars of attendees until they manually remove it.
Email continues to be the primary and preferred method of communication for many businesses. In some situations, emails are also received as official electronic forms of approval. This module will provide you with a list of best practices that you can follow by using Microsoft Power Automate for outgoing and incoming emails.