Calendar Event Update - no Email Notifications

Question

Hello Microsoft!

My service is using the Create Cal Event Resource here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/user-post-events?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=http

and then subsequent updates are made using the Update Cal Event Resource here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/event-update?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=http

With our Calendar Events, attendees are regularly added to the event. So we hit the Update Resource and update the Attendees. This works, but on every update Organizers & Attendees are receiving email notifications for each Update.

Is there a way to have turn off these email notifications for Updating an Event?

Answer 1

Hey @Diana Wanjuhi ,

I came across this thread while looking for the answer to the same question @Dan Kaplan` had. In fact, it seems that this comes up a lot. Here are just some of the examples:

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-developer-platform/ability-to-update-or-create-an-event-without-sending-a/idi-p/2335070
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57548606/how-do-we-suppress-notification-emails-for-events-created-through-ms-outlook-cal
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58094438/update-and-delete-calendar-event-without-sending-notification-to-attendees
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45671589/outlook-365-api-disable-automatic-email-send-when-creating-calendar-event
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60846937/restore-calendar-event-without-sending-notification-to-attendees-using-ms-graph

In our case, we have a Learning Platform that allows employees within an organization to enroll into events, which we then wish to sync with their Outlook calendar using the provided Graph API. Unfortunately, whenever we update an Outlook event to add a new attendee, the system sends email notifications to all of the existing attendees, which is interpreted as spam. As a result, we have had to use ICS-over-email form of calendar integration for all Outlook customers, which is not an optimal experience either. Note that Google Calendar API (with which we integrate as well) does not force these redundant email notifications, since it correctly assumes that these will be managed separately.

Note, our events are not part of a recurring series, so the note you referred to in the answer above does not apply to us.

So, is there a simple way to suppress all email notifications coming from the Outlook Graph API for calendar create/update/delete operations? If not, has this feature been requested/tracked somewhere (so that I can learn more about its status)? The feature request link you provided above returns a 404.

Thank you!
Saša

Answer 2

Hello @Dan Kaplan` from the update documentation If the event you're updating is the master event of a recurring series, contains multiple attendees, and has instances that have been updated separately, multiple notification emails will be sent out: one for the master series and one per instance that has been updated. This is currently not available in graph, but you can file a feature request here requesting this functionality.

I hope this helps,

Diana.