Freesbe meetings in Outlook

With the Freesbe add-in for Outlook, Freesbe meeting sits where Teams usually does when you create an event. Turn it on and Outlook puts a Freesbe link in the invitation. Guests open it in any browser, with nothing to install, and the meeting shows up in Freesbe as well, under Meetings.

It works in Outlook on the web, the new and classic Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook on iPhone and Android, with a Microsoft 365 work or school account.

Add a Freesbe meeting to an event

1. In Outlook, create an event as usual: a title, a time and the people to invite.
2. Turn on Freesbe meeting where the Teams meeting switch usually is. In classic Outlook for Windows it’s a Freesbe meeting button on the event’s ribbon.
3. The first time, a Freesbe window asks you to sign in and pick the workspace your meetings go in. Click Connect Outlook. Outlook remembers it on all your devices.
4. The invitation now ends with Join the Freesbe meeting, the link and the meeting code. Send the invitation as usual.

You’re the meeting’s organizer in Freesbe, everyone you invited is on its list, and members of your workspace can join from Freesbe too. Outlook sends the invitation and the reminders, so Freesbe doesn’t email anyone about it.

Turning Freesbe meeting on again in the same event keeps its link: the meeting just takes the event’s new title, time and people. If you move the event in Outlook later without opening the add-in, the link keeps working anyway: a meeting made from Outlook opens whenever someone comes, until 30 days after its scheduled end. Guests wait in the lobby until someone from your workspace lets them in.

Make Freesbe your default

To get a Freesbe meeting in every event you create, without turning it on each time:

1. In Outlook, open Settings, then Calendar, then Events and invitations.
2. Turn on Add online meeting to all meetings.
3. Choose Freesbe as the meeting provider.

You pick it once; Outlook uses it on all your devices. Preferences → Calendar in Freesbe shows the same steps.

See and disconnect the add-in

Preferences → Calendar → Freesbe meetings in Outlook lists the workspace Outlook is connected to, how many meetings it made and when it was last used. Disconnect stops it at once; meetings it already made keep working. The next time you turn on Freesbe meeting in Outlook, it asks you to sign in again.

To schedule in another workspace, disconnect and connect again from Outlook, picking the other workspace.

Add Freesbe to Outlook for everyone

Outlook only shows meeting add-ins that a Microsoft 365 admin added for the organization, so an admin does this once. Freesbe’s own admins find the steps and the link in the Admin Center under Integrations → Calendar → Outlook add-in.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, open Settings, then Integrated apps, and choose Upload custom apps.
2. Choose Office Add-in, then Provide link to the manifest file, and paste the Manifest link from Freesbe’s Outlook add-in page.
3. Assign it to everyone or to some groups, and deploy. It can take up to a day to show in Outlook.

Freesbe asks each person to sign in the first time they use it, so nobody gets access to a workspace they aren’t in. Guests can’t connect it.

Where Teams isn’t set up, Outlook uses Freesbe on its own. Where it is, each person picks Freesbe once, as in Make Freesbe your default.

Turn it off

Turn off Let people add Freesbe meetings from Outlook and Google Calendar to stop it in your workspace straight away: Outlook then tells people the add-in is off. Meetings already made keep working. The page also shows how many people connected Outlook.

What the add-in can see

The add-in reads the event you turned it on in (its title, time and the people invited) and writes the Freesbe link into that invitation. It doesn’t read your mail or other events, and its sign-in can only schedule your own meetings in the workspace you picked. It can’t read or send messages in Freesbe.

Google Calendar

Freesbe works the same way in Google Calendar, where it sits next to Google Meet. See Freesbe meetings in Google Calendar.