When enabling the meeting and calendar integration for Microsoft 365 (O365), employees can sync their work calendars with Mapiq. In doing so, Mapiq can also synchronize with the meeting rooms to create events through Mapiq. However, certain meeting rooms should not be bookable through Mapiq. In this article, we’ll go over the O365 configuration that you can set up to hide these non-bookable rooms.
Calendar Permissions & Security Groups
To hide rooms (that are not bookable) for some users from the Mapiq app, you can use a combination of calendar permissions and security groups. This works in Mapiq because the Mapiq App uses the current user’s permissions to get free-busy statuses of rooms. The app will not suggest rooms for which Mapiq cannot retrieve free-busy status (in this case, because the user does not have the proper permission level).
Adding a specific security group to the calendar permission allows a particular group of employees access to the meeting room. For the rest of your colleagues, the meeting room will be non-bookable.
💡 It is good to note that an organizer of an event can still add the room as an attendee by using the room’s email address. This solution is not a replacement for booking policies in O365.
Hiding Non-Bookable Meeting rooms
You can follow these steps to start hiding specific non-bookable meeting rooms (manually). You could automate the process through a PowerShell script if needed. Ensure you have a security group to assign to the meeting room!
Open up Outlook and go to the Calendar overview.
If you need to, add the room calendar to your calendar first. Right-click on My Calendars >> Add Calendars >> From Room List...
Right-click on the room calendar and go to the Permissions tab.
Select the Default group and set the Permission Level to None.
In the same tab, you can click on Add... and add the security group that you want to give access to this group and give the group the appropriate Permission Level.
⚠️ This solution can only be achieved by adding security groups. Adding a Distribution list or an O365 group will not work.