What's new

The new version of Outlook Calendars for Confluence comes with a new UI and new features.

Why we’re relaunching Outlook Calendars for Confluence

For the past months, we realized that our current Outlook Calendars for Confluence app really isn’t an app that complies with our (development) standards. Although older versions of Outlook Calendars for Confluence do have valuable features, we strive to provide an app that makes calendaring more fun and particularly, more intuitive.

We attach great importance to our users' feedback. So, it was just time to start rethinking our app - to make it more user-friendly, provide more guidance within our product, make it more intuitive and especially even more applicable in our everyday working lives. Check out our use cases.

The new UI now enables you to easily navigate through our product, quickly take action and insert the right calendar with most suitable default settings. We want to avoid situations of inserting and deleting calendars again and again, because calendar templates have been misunderstood in the first place. Discover our features.

We further enhanced our existing features and developed new ones, too. Unfortunately, not all of the former features are available in the new version just yet - but they’re on our roadmap. Check our page out to learn more about the current status.

New features overview

New UI

We developed an UI that makes calendaring more intuitive again. Have all your relevant Jira and Outlook dates available right at a glance. Quickly add new calendars and choose from our calendar templates via the gearwheel next to “Calendars”.

Choose a calendar template

Based on our new UI standards, we now offer an edit screen which makes it easier for you to pick and choose the right calendar template. Decide if you want to insert Outlook calendars or Jira dates - or even both. Go ahead!

New view naming

While working on on the new release, we also decided to adapt our view naming to make it easier to decide on the right layout. Here is a table to let you know what changed:

Insert a current user’s Outlook calendar

Insert a “Current user’s calendar” and enable any team member to also see their own personal data alongside with any other project-related data already shared when accessing the Confluence page.

This makes it easier for your team to plan and manage their days, when having all information right in one place. Additionally, decide on dedicated calendar permissions when sharing a “Current user’s calendar”.

Insert current user’s Jira dates

So far, you can also insert all relevant Jira dates of any team member via our edit screen. This might be especially helpful for those Jira power users who are in charge to keep an eye on current milestones.

Insert a calendar name e.g. “Current user’s calendar”, set the respective JQL filter “assignee = currentuser()” and any team member accessing the Confluence page will also see their own personal Jira dates (e.g. issues with upcoming due date) together with project-related dates already shared.

Coming soon: There will be a separate button in our edit screen (see above) soon to take this action. There will be no need to insert complicated JQL filters which might especially helpful for our non-power users.

Even decide, if for example, the respective Jira tickets for that specific user should be displayed based on their due date. This will make it easier to get a good overview of the most relevant and urgent Jira tickets to be worked on.

Permission management: Outlook calendars

This is new! Whenever you insert a new Outlook calendar to your Confluence page or space, you can conveniently set respective calendar permissions.

Decide if everyone with access to the Confluence space or page can access the data shared.
Or if only those users with an access to Outlook (Microsoft 365 log-in) should access shared calendar dates.

This setting will simplify working with calendars in Confluence for your team. Team members - independently of their Microsoft 365 log-in, can still access and work with the calendar dates shared in Confluence.

Permission management: Jira dates

The same works with Jira dates! Whenever you insert a new Jira calendar to your Confluence page or space, you can conveniently set respective calendar permissions.

Decide if everyone with access to the Confluence space or page can access the data shared.
Or if only those users with an access to Jira (Jira Log-in) should access shared calendar dates.

When working with Jira dates in Confluence, even team members with no Jira log-in can easily access relevant dates and information.

Book resources in Confluence

Conveniently book resources in Confluence. Use our edit screen and pick the corresponding “Room or resource calendar”. Search for your available meeting rooms and choose the one you need. Even set calendar permissions for the rooms, as well!

Manage and adapt the calendar view in “General settings”. We recommend to now limit your view scope to today (if you want to book your meeting room at some point today) and turn on the “split resource” screen.

Here you go!

Features which are not yet available

We’re happy with our new release of Outlook Calendars for Confluence, though not all of our features made the cut just yet. Based on our own usage behavior, our user feedback and most of all, based on the fact to better focus on the above mentioned (more advanced) features, we needed to postpone some of our features for our next releases in Q2!

📢 For our existing Cloud customers:

• You can still use the existing macro with our Outlook Calendars for Confluence cloud app

• Soon, you’ll be able to additionally use the new cloud app version (new UI, new features)

• An upgrade guide will soon be available for you!

It’s our highest priority to ship everyone to the new version safely and conveniently. We’re here for you and happy to give you a helping hand whenever needed.

This is a brief overview about our features which are not yet available in the new cloud version:

Your feedback makes a difference!

As you might already know, our customers' feedback strongly influences our roadmap and decision-making process when it comes to the development of new features. This is why we’d love to hear your feedback on the following features.

How intensively are you:

• 📂 using our app translation?
  Our existing (old) app version is available for German and French, but translatable in any other language, if needed. The new app release will, for now, only be available in English, but still translatable in any other language (just like the previous one). Would that influence the way you work with our app?

• 📬 using shared mailboxes?
  Our existing (cloud) app version offers shared mailboxes in your Confluence calendars. Our new app release don’t (yet). How about your usage behavior concerning shared mailboxes? Are you already (mainly) working with the “new” group calendars function?