Free/Busy Attendee Availability shows you, right on the room reservation form, whether the people you are inviting are free, tentative, or busy according to their Microsoft 365 calendar. A small colored badge appears next to each attendee as soon as they are added, so you can catch a scheduling conflict before you ever hit save.

Overview

When Free/Busy Attendee Availability is turned on, Maptician checks Microsoft 365 for each attendee's calendar status during the reservation's date and time, then shows the result as a badge next to their name on the Attendees tab of a room reservation. This includes the reservation owner, so you will see your own availability alongside everyone else's.

Badges use four statuses:

• Free: Nothing on the attendee's calendar conflicts with the reservation.
• Tentative: The attendee has an event during this time set to Tentative.
• Busy: The attendee has an event during this time set to Busy or Out of Office.
• Unknown Status: Maptician could not determine the attendee's availability. Hovering over the badge shows a short explanation.

Badges refresh automatically whenever you add or remove an attendee, or change the reservation's date or time. If a reservation has 20 or more Maptician-user attendees, badges are hidden entirely for that reservation (email-only attendees do not count toward this, since they are never checked in the first place). This matches a limit Microsoft places on how many calendars can be checked at once.

Configuring Free/Busy Attendee Availability

Free/Busy Attendee Availability is configured once for your whole organization by an organization admin. Once it is turned on, every user sees badges automatically, and there is nothing for individual users to set up.

Before You Start

Free/Busy Attendee Availability uses your organization's existing Microsoft Office 365 / Azure connection, the same connection used for calendar syncing and profile image syncing. If your organization has not connected to Microsoft yet, refer to the Microsoft Graph API Configuration Guide before continuing below.

Turning On Free/Busy Attendee Availability

1. Click the Settings (gear) icon.
2. In the Settings window, select Environment from the left-hand menu. This section is only visible to organization admins.
3. On the left side of the Environment page, click Free/Busy Availability (it sits just below Office 365 Integration).

4. Toggle Enable Free/Busy Attendee Availability on.
5. Under Connection Priority Order, click Add and select a Microsoft connection to include. Repeat for any additional connections.
6. Click Save Changes.

Adding or removing a connection saves immediately, so you do not need to click Save Changes for that part. Only the enable toggle itself needs a save. To reorder the list, remove an entry and add it back in the position you want. If you ever delete a Microsoft connection entirely, it is automatically removed from this list as well.

Using Free/Busy Attendee Availability

Once your admin has turned this on, badges show up automatically. There is nothing to enable on your end.

Viewing Attendee Availability

1. Open a new or existing room reservation and go to the Attendees tab.
2. Add attendees as you normally would.
3. A status badge appears next to each attendee a moment later, once Maptician has checked their calendar.

Badges reflect availability for the reservation's currently selected date and time. If you change the date, time, or attendee list, badges clear and refresh automatically.

Recurring Reservations

When you create or edit an entire recurring series, availability is checked against the first occurrence only, so badges will not reflect every date in the series. A banner appears above the attendee list as a reminder. If you edit a single occurrence of a series instead of the whole series, badges reflect that specific date and time, and the banner does not appear.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does an attendee show Unknown Status?

A few things can cause this: the attendee does not have a Microsoft 365 mailbox, none of your organization's configured connections could resolve them, you do not have directory permission to view that occupant, or Maptician was temporarily unable to reach Microsoft's calendar service. Hovering over the badge does not change based on the cause. It always reads "Availability could not be determined."

Why do some attendees not have a badge at all?

Only attendees who are Maptician users get checked. Attendees added by email address or pulled in from your contacts are not Maptician users, so there is no Microsoft account for Maptician to look up, and they never receive a badge.

Can I see what's on someone's calendar?

No. The badge only shows a status: Free, Tentative, Busy, or Unknown Status. It never shows meeting titles, other attendees, or any other calendar details.

Why are no badges showing up?

Confirm you are reserving a room resource (only room reservations include an Attendees tab), that your admin has turned the feature on, that you are using the desktop app (badges do not appear in the mobile app or Outlook add-in), that the reservation has fewer than 20 Maptician-user attendees, and that you have added at least one Maptician-user attendee.

Why doesn't a badge match the attendee's status in Outlook?

Attendee Availability statuses are cached briefly, up to about 30 minutes, to keep the reservation form fast and avoid overloading Microsoft's calendar API with repeated checks. If someone's calendar just changed, their badge may not reflect it yet, and there's no way to force an early refresh. Check back in a bit, the badge updates itself once the 30-minute cache window has passed.