Microsoft Outlook Calendar integration

Microsoft Outlook Calendar is included in the Growth plan. Open Rentshelf → Settings → Microsoft Outlook Calendar to connect the account used by your rental team.

Connect a Microsoft account

1. Select Connect Microsoft account and continue to Microsoft.
2. Sign in with an Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 account.
3. Approve calendar access. If your organization requires administrator approval, ask its Microsoft 365 administrator to approve the connection.
4. Choose your primary calendar or another shared calendar that the connected account can edit.
5. Review the event and privacy settings, then select Save and sync.

Existing upcoming bookings are synchronized after setup. Storefront and manual bookings use the same workflow.

One-way booking synchronization

Rentshelf is the source of truth for the rental booking:

• Confirmed and upcoming rentals create private Outlook events.
• Rescheduling a booking updates its event.
• Returning or cancelling a booking removes the event when it no longer belongs on the operational calendar.
• Outlook edits never change booking dates, price, stock or availability in Rentshelf.
• Use Sync now for an immediate refresh. Automatic synchronization continues in the background.

Make booking changes in Rentshelf first so the storefront, availability and operational calendar remain consistent.

Event titles and customer privacy

The event title supports the {product}, {booking}, {units} and {variant} tokens.

Customer name and email are excluded from private event descriptions unless you enable Include customer name and email in private event descriptions.

Customer invitations are off by default. When Invite the customer to Outlook events is enabled, Microsoft can send calendar invitations from the connected account for upcoming bookings that include a customer email. Review that option carefully before saving.

Availability rules

Outlook synchronization does not use Outlook events to block rental dates. Use Rentshelf blackouts or the product-specific busy-calendar rules in Google Calendar when an external calendar must close availability.

This separation prevents staff edits in Outlook from silently changing bookable capacity.

Reconnect or disconnect

Reconnect when Microsoft permissions expire or the connection shows Reconnect required. The connection card shows the latest successful synchronization and any reported error.

Disconnecting stops future synchronization. Existing Outlook events remain in the selected calendar and can be removed there if the team no longer needs them.

Troubleshooting checklist

• Confirm that the store still has an active Growth plan.
• Confirm that Microsoft integration credentials are available for the store environment.
• Check that the destination calendar still exists and the connected account can edit it.
• Use Sync now and review the reported booking count and last synchronization time.
• Reconnect the account after a password, permission or organization-policy change.