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Amazing game from Microsoft
Microsoft has released a plugin to allow Google Calendar users to create and use Microsoft Teams meetings on the Google Workspace Marketplace. From the age of the comments, it appears that the plugin has been available since the end of November. However, Microsoft doesn’t say much on the subject and the only trace of documentation I can find on their site covers setting up the plugin for use with Google Workspace. Separate versions of the plug-in are available for Google Workspace and Google Calendar (consumer). Not having access to Google Workspace, I took the consumer variant for a test drive.
After installing the marketplace code, the plugin allows users to schedule Teams meetings from their Google calendar. In concept, the Google Calendar add-in works much like the Teams meeting add-in for Outlook for desktop, OWA, and Outlook for mobile.
As part of the installation process, you must authenticate to your local Teams tenant with your Microsoft 365 account. If you don’t connect the add-in to a valid Microsoft 365 account licensed to use Teams, you can’t expect to create Teams meetings.
Create a team meeting with Google Calendar
Creating a Teams meeting with the Google calendar is easy. Create the meeting as usual, and then choose to have Teams create the necessary online workspace to host a meeting. This is done by selecting Teams as the host of an associated video conference, as shown in Figure 1. Choose Microsoft Teams meeting from the drop-down list of available video conferencing providers or click the Add Microsoft Teams meeting button. They both do the same thing and add a URL pointing to a Teams meeting to the calendar event.
The URL for the Teams meeting looks like this. The pointer to the online workspace that will host the Teams meeting is obvious:
https://www.google.com/url? -43a2-9a7a-d2e27f4f3478% 2522% 252c% 2522Oid% 2522% 253a% 2522eff4cd58-1bb8-4899-94de-795f656b4a18% 2522% 257d & saIP_w = AXVNKV = calendar
Add the invite list and fill in the rest of the meeting information (Figure 2). You can invite other Gmail and Google Workspace users, people with accounts in other email systems, and Office 365 users.
When you save the event, you are asked if you want to send invitations. Do so and Calendar will send email invitations to the guest list. The invitations include instructions to join in text form and the URL to attend the meeting online (Figure 3).
Responses to meeting invitations flow seamlessly between Google Calendar and Exchange.
No MAPI properties
Outlook users can accept the meeting and add it to their calendars. However, Outlook treats these events as standard meetings because the MAPI properties that flag Teams (and Skype for Business) meetings online are not present. Losing a Join Online in an Outlook reminder that a meeting is about to start is a minor inconvenience.
Gmail team meetings
A nice touch is that Teams meetings scheduled through the plugin are accessible through the Calendar view in Gmail (Figure 4). To join a meeting from Gmail, open the event and click the Join the Microsoft Teams meeting link.
Similarly, when working within Calendar, the plugin lists Teams meetings for the selected day (Figure 5).
Meeting organizers
The Gmail account that owns the calendar appears as the organizer of the Teams meeting. Events created by the plug-in are not automatically added to the calendar of the linked Microsoft 365 account. If you want that account to attend meetings organized through Google Calendar, you must add the account as an attendee. This creates an interesting problem. Everything works fine if the Gmail account starts a meeting from Gmail or Calendar. If not, and the Teams meeting policy assigned to the linked Microsoft 365 account doesn’t allow anyone other than the organizer to jump the lobby, even the linked Microsoft 365 account cannot join.
Interesting initiative
The delivery of a Teams meeting plugin for Google Calendar is an interesting initiative by Microsoft. On the one hand, Microsoft would prefer that users have an Exchange Online mailbox, as they have always said that this combination offers the best and most seamless functionality. That’s certainly true, but now Microsoft is opening up Teams meetings to Google email users as a direct replacement for Google Meet. It seems that Teams’ ambition to spread everywhere has no limits.
