How to Create Calendar Events

Schedule meetings, appointments, and events directly from your AI assistant with attendees and descriptions.

Create a Simple Event#

“Add a meeting called Standup tomorrow at 9am for 30 minutes”

tool: create-event
params:
  subject: "Standup"
  start: "2026-03-02T09:00:00"
  end: "2026-03-02T09:30:00"

Times use ISO 8601 format. The server uses your configured timezone (default: Australia/Melbourne).

Add Attendees#

“Schedule a team review with Alice and Bob for next Monday at 2pm”

tool: create-event
params:
  subject: "Team Review"
  start: "2026-03-09T14:00:00"
  end: "2026-03-09T15:00:00"
  attendees: ["alice@company.com", "bob@company.com"]

Attendees receive a calendar invitation by email.

A plain email address adds a required attendee. To add an optional attendee or book a room, pass an object with a type of required, optional or resource:

tool: create-event
params:
  subject: "Team Review"
  start: "2026-03-09T14:00:00"
  end: "2026-03-09T15:00:00"
  attendees:
    - "alice@company.com"
    - { email: "bob@company.com", type: "optional" }
    - { email: "boardroom@company.com", type: "resource" }

Preview the invitations first#

Invitations go out as soon as the event is saved. Pass dryRun: true to see who would be invited without creating anything:

tool: create-event
params:
  subject: "Team Review"
  start: "2026-03-09T14:00:00"
  end: "2026-03-09T15:00:00"
  attendees: ["alice@company.com", "sam@partner.org"]
  dryRun: true

The preview starts with DRY RUN — nothing was changed. and lists each attendee, counting and marking the external ones: addresses whose domain differs from your own (read from your signed-in account). If your own address can’t be read, the external count is shown as unknown rather than guessed. Rooms and resources are listed separately.

Allowed attendees#

If the server has a recipient allowlist (OUTLOOK_ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS), every attendee, rooms included, must be on it. One address that isn’t allowed refuses the whole event: nothing is created and nobody is invited, and the error lists the blocked addresses. A dryRun reports the same refusal. Each attendee must be a single plain email address. The same check applies to the attendee list you set with manage-event action=update. See Send Email Safely for what the allowlist does and doesn’t cover.

create-event also counts towards the session rate limit when one is set (OUTLOOK_MAX_CREATE_EVENT_PER_SESSION, or OUTLOOK_MAX_EMAILS_PER_SESSION); previews don’t count. A limit of 0 blocks create-event entirely (unset means no limit).

Add a Description#

“Set up an offsite planning session with an agenda”

tool: create-event
params:
  subject: "Offsite Planning"
  start: "2026-03-10T10:00:00"
  end: "2026-03-10T12:00:00"
  body: "Agenda:\n1. Q2 goals review\n2. Resource planning\n3. Team feedback"

Set a Location#

create-event doesn’t take a location. Create the event, then set it with manage-event, using the ID from the response:

tool: manage-event
params:
  action: "update"
  eventId: "AAMkAGR..."
  location: "Level 3 Boardroom"

Parameter Reference#

Parameter	What it does	Required
subject	Event title	Yes
start	Start time (ISO 8601)	Yes
end	End time (ISO 8601)	Yes
attendees	Email addresses (required attendees) or {email, type} objects (type: required, optional or resource)	No
body	Event description or agenda	No
dryRun	Preview who would be invited (with an external count) without creating the event	No

Timezone Handling#

Times are interpreted using the server’s configured timezone (default: Australia/Melbourne). To ensure correct scheduling:

• Local time — omit the Z suffix: 2026-03-10T10:00:00 → interpreted as your configured timezone
• UTC time — include the Z suffix: 2026-03-10T10:00:00Z → always UTC, converted to your timezone

Common pitfall: If your times include the Z (Zulu/UTC) suffix but you intended local time, events will be created at the wrong time. For example, 2026-03-10T10:00:00Z in Melbourne (UTC+11) would create an event at 9pm, not 10am.

Tips#

• Use plain language — your AI assistant will convert your request into the right parameters and times
• The body field supports plain text — add agendas, links, or preparation notes
• Check your calendar first with list-events to avoid double-booking, or use its subject filter to find the last occurrence of a meeting you’re rescheduling
• Omit the Z suffix on times unless you specifically mean UTC
• create-event is marked destructive because attendees are sent invitations, so clients that honour MCP annotations ask before running it. Claude Code always asks before create-event, dry runs included, because the tool carries the anthropic/requiresUserInteraction flag. Use dryRun: true to check the guest list first
• Each create-event call sends Microsoft Graph a unique transactionId, so if a throttled request is retried, Graph recognises the repeat and doesn’t create (or send invitations for) a second copy. A separate, repeated create-event call is a new event, so check list-events before retrying one that seemed to fail
• For finding available rooms, see Find Meeting Rooms

Related#

• View and Search Calendar Events — check your calendar before scheduling
• Manage Event Responses — decline or cancel events
• Find Meeting Rooms — search for rooms by building or capacity
• Tools Reference — create-event