Connect Microsoft Calendar for your church team

Will this work for my church's Microsoft account?

It depends on the kind of Microsoft account you sign in with. A personal Microsoft account, the sort that ends in outlook.com or hotmail.com, can approve FlockConnect today. A Microsoft 365 work or school account, which is what most churches use, may be stopped at the approval screen.

The likeliest reason is a Microsoft review process rather than anything about your church. Microsoft lets app makers verify who they are, and FlockConnect has not finished that review yet, so the approval screen still shows FlockConnect as an unverified publisher. Many Microsoft 365 organizations are set up to let their people approve only publishers Microsoft has already verified. We are working through the verification, and this section comes off the page when it is done.

That is the common case, not the only one. A Microsoft 365 organization can require an administrator's approval for its own reasons too, such as a policy that no one may approve new apps on their own. Microsoft's message does not tell us which rule applied, so the honest summary is that your organization wants an administrator to decide, and the step below is the same either way.

If you are stopped, you have two good options. Ask whoever administers Microsoft for your church to approve FlockConnect for your organization, which they can do even while the verification is outstanding. Or use Google Calendar instead: it works, it does the same job with no such limit, and you can switch to Microsoft later without redoing your reminders.

• Churches on Microsoft 365 work or school accounts may be stopped at the approval screen until FlockConnect finishes Microsoft's publisher verification. A Microsoft administrator can approve it in the meantime, and Google Calendar works with no such limit.
• The account owner, or an admin with the calendar connections permission, connects Microsoft Calendar from Settings, under Integrations, with multi-factor authentication completed.
• FlockConnect asks for access as you: basic profile information plus create, update, and delete on calendars you can edit, including shared ones. It does not request organization-wide calendar access, though your organization may still require an administrator to approve the narrow request.
• Destinations are picked from a list of your Microsoft calendars. Only calendars your account can edit appear, and your default calendar is marked Default. There is no manual calendar ID entry for Microsoft.
• Every destination is verified with a tiny test event that is created and immediately deleted before the destination is used.
• FlockConnect writes only reminders a person has approved, with generic text and a secure link back to FlockConnect. Pastoral details never appear in the calendar copy, and your existing events are never read or imported.
• Disconnecting stops FlockConnect from using the connection. Removing the grant on the Microsoft side is a separate step you take from your Microsoft account's app permissions.

Who can connect Microsoft Calendar?

Connecting a calendar is a guarded action. The account owner can do it, and so can an admin who has been granted the permission to manage calendar connections. Whoever connects must also have completed multi-factor authentication. No other role can start the connection, and the same gate applies again when Microsoft sends you back, so a connection cannot be finished by someone who should not have started it.

The connection lives in Settings, under Integrations. If the Microsoft Calendar card there says it is not configured for this deployment, the connection is not available in your environment yet; contact support and we will help you sort it out.

What happens when I connect?

Connecting runs through Microsoft's own sign-in. You sign in on Microsoft's site, Microsoft shows you what FlockConnect is asking for, and you approve or decline. Either way you land back on the Integrations page with a plain banner telling you what happened: connected successfully, not connected because the request was declined or your organization does not allow it yet, blocked by your organization's Microsoft settings, or something went wrong and you can try again. The blocked banner is the one described in the first section, and it means the answer has to come from a Microsoft administrator rather than from trying again.

FlockConnect asks for access as you, not as your whole organization. The request covers basic sign-in and profile information, ongoing access so the connection keeps working between visits, and permission to create, update, and delete events on your calendars, including shared calendars you can edit. FlockConnect never asks for organization-wide calendar access that would reach every calendar in your church. That is about how much access is requested, not about who is allowed to approve it: as the section above explains, a Microsoft 365 organization may still require an administrator to approve FlockConnect, even for this narrow request, until the publisher verification is finished.

FlockConnect uses that access for two things only: writing, updating, and clearing its own reminder events, and listing your calendars so you can pick destinations. It does not read, import, or copy the events already on your calendar. The credential FlockConnect keeps so the connection stays alive is protected before it is stored, and how integration credentials are protected at rest is covered on our Trust and Security page.

How do I pick which calendars FlockConnect writes to?

Connecting on its own does not write anything anywhere. After the connection is made, you add one or more destinations: the specific calendars FlockConnect is allowed to write to. Add destination opens a picker that lists the calendars from your Microsoft account. Only calendars your account can edit appear in the list, and your default calendar is marked Default.

For each destination you pick a calendar, give it a display name your team will recognize, and choose how it is used: as one person's personal calendar, as a shared church calendar, or as a shared team calendar. The calendar writeback guide linked below explains what each type means for who sees the reminders and what the events actually say.

How does FlockConnect verify write access?

When you save a destination, FlockConnect proves it can actually write there before keeping it. It creates a tiny test event on the calendar and immediately deletes it. The test event is marked private and as free time, is dated back in the year 2000 so it never appears in anyone's upcoming week, and its subject says plainly that it is verifying write access and can be ignored.

If the test fails, the destination is rolled back rather than kept. A permission failure on a shared destination is also surfaced in Integration Health, so an owner or admin can see that something needs attention. A destination is only saved once its write test passes, so FlockConnect never holds on to a calendar it cannot actually write to.

How is Microsoft different from Google?

Inside FlockConnect the two providers work the same way: the same people can connect them, destinations are added and verified the same way, and the events carry the same generic text with a secure link back to FlockConnect. The visible differences are small. The Google card offers a manual fallback where you can type a calendar ID by hand if your list of calendars cannot be loaded; the Microsoft card has no manual entry, so a calendar must show up in the picker, which means your Microsoft account must be able to edit it. And where Google calls your main calendar Primary, Microsoft calls it Default.

The bigger difference shows up when access is removed. Google gives apps a way to cancel their own grant, and FlockConnect uses it when a church's account is deleted. Microsoft offers no equivalent for this kind of connection. So once FlockConnect clears the stored credential it can no longer use the connection, but FlockConnect may still appear in your Microsoft account's list of apps with access until you remove it yourself, from Microsoft's My Apps page or with the help of your organization's Microsoft admin.

How do I disconnect or reconnect?

Disconnecting sits behind the same gate as connecting: the owner, or an admin with the calendar connections permission, with multi-factor authentication completed. Disconnecting clears the stored credential, so FlockConnect stops writing, and the card says so and offers Reconnect whenever you are ready to start again. Your destinations are kept but paused, so reconnecting restores them without rebuilding. Reminder events already on the calendar stay where they are; remove any leftovers by hand if you want them gone.

Disconnecting in FlockConnect and removing the grant in Microsoft are two separate steps. Disconnecting stops FlockConnect from using the connection. If you also want FlockConnect gone from your Microsoft account's list of apps with access, remove it there as well, as described above.