Outlook Calendar is getting major improvements on Android and iOS

It’s been more than two years since Microsoft acquired Sunrise Calendar. Sunrise was the best calendar app back then, it had all the necessary features and it had a stunning design. Microsoft being Microsoft, decided to sunset the app and started integrating its features into Outlook. Redmond has been rolling out significant changes to Outlook Calendar over the past few months, and it’s rolling out another set of new features for the app to bridge the gap between Outlook Calendar and Sunrise Calendar.

First up, Microsoft is bringing shared calendars to Outlook on the phone. The feature has been available on the web for a few months now, and it’s coming to the Outlook Calendar app on Android and iOS starting today — allowing you to view shared calendars, accept invitations for shared calendars, and share one of your calendars. The app will also you set some events as “private” on your calendar in the future, which will automatically hide the private events when you share a calendar with a friend or colleague.

And for those who rely on an assistant to manage your work calendar, your assistant will now be able to manage your calendar using the Outlook Calendar app on Android and iOS. There’s also now support for Meetup, which is apparently a “new Calendar app in Outlook” according to Microsoft. The app is basically like Facebook Events but integrated into Outlook Calendar — which means it’ll show up on your calendar, and you can set it to remind you about the event later.

But more importantly, Microsoft is adding some much smaller features to Outlook Calendar that you will actually find useful. The app now lets you create events with daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly recurrences. Outlook will also be able to automatically check your coworkers’ availability when you are trying to schedule a meeting with them, essentially removing the need for you to manually ask your coworkers about their availability.

Most of these features have already started rolling out on iOS today. Only some of the features are rolling out to Outlook users on Android today, with more set to arrive later.