Calendar invitations to sessions

Amanda.D.374

Hello! We are a very very small organization using Brightspace. The entire administration team is only me right now, and I am mostly self taught. So I am in over my head. :D We have a very basic version of brightspace- not a lot of budget for the add ins.

For synchronous course events (we put them on Discover) I was creating intelligent agents and attaching .ics calendar invitations with the teams or zoom link to invite people to the sessions and have them add them to their outlook. Now with the Microsoft365 upgrade, my learners can no longer open .ics files.

Does anyone have any work arounds on how I can send enrolled learners calendar invitations?

Jenn.H.328

Hi Amanda!

.ics files are definitely the best practice as they are the most universal file type for calendar invitations. I have noticed for myself that when I open an .ics file, MS opens New Outlook (I primarily still use old Outlook), and I have to click on the Calendar tool for the invite to actually open/save. I would recommend finding the best practice for how your systems are set up and providing that information to your audience, rather than using a different file format. As an alternative, you could look at setting up a community calendar that you can import into whatever calendar client your users use (users would subscribe to the calendar). Sometimes this is a really good alternative to ensure that users can still access the information, but removes the hassles of MS quirks.