Outlook Integration - get calendar availability from Outlook - looking for some advice / suggestions please

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi SNow experts,

I am trying to figure out any way how SN could pull the availability information from calendars stored in clients' Outlook or Lotus Notes.

Basically it would be great to get e.g. all the dates and times a user is 'busy' for the given month. I tried looking it up online but I cannot find anything really useful.

So perhaps anyone here has dealt with a similar issue (not necessarily calendars, just getting any data out of Outlook)?

I know that there is REST API which can be used but it seems like it involves a lot of work on the customer's side:

Get Started with the Outlook REST APIs - Outlook Dev Center

as you need to register for a token - do you think SN could be registered to consume this token for a specific customer's Exchange account?

Furthermore, this only seems to work for Office365? What about customers who use 'standard' Outlook?

Is there any other way to be able to access outlook's files without registering with MS? Would I need to have the credentials for every Outlook user or is there any possibility to have a 'technical user' credentials, which can then get information about all users in the domain?

Also, does anyone know how Outlook stores user's calendar events? Ideally, I would like to be able to access one file/endpoint where all of the company users' events are stored and import it into SN, rather than having to access different endpoints for every user. I have to admit I am a noob when it comes to Outlook so any help from more experienced users would be great!

Many thanks,

Tomasz

[larstange]

Hi Tomasz

To get calendar information from outlook I would say that you need an integration to the Exchange server and not Outlook which is just a client.

I have googled around to see if there are any Exchange API, and there is but it looks like its not very easy to deal with.

Then I stumpled upon a site called cronofy - https://www.cronofy.com/exchange-calendar-api/ - where they offer a single API for a range of calendard services and there you can get single call to get calendar entries https://www.cronofy.com/developers/tutorials/getting-started/#reading-calendar-events

It sounds like it could be a way to go

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Thanks Lars, it looks like an interesting option, I will try to get some more details regarding this solution.

Regarding Exchange API, I understand you mean the EWS?:

Exchange Web Services (EWS) in Exchange 2010

I am wondering if we would be able to work with this API directly, our client might not be too keen on using third-party software (all the security concerns etc).

Thanks!

[vidit1]

Hello Tomasz,

Have you done with integrating servicenow with outlook calender. The Same I want to fetch all the calender meetings, invitation and availability from the user outlook in service now and show user availability in service now.

Is there any way...?

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi Vidit,

no we have not done the integration yet and actually are now thinking about other ways to gather availability.

But take a look at REST API in case of Outlook 365:

https://community.servicenow.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A//dev.outlook.com/restapi/getstarted

Or at the Exchange Web Service in case of standard Exchange server:

https://community.servicenow.com/external-link.jspa?url=https%3A//msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/o...

There is also one product I found that provides calendar integration with Outlook:

http://www.nashcosolutions.com/custom-apps/

From what they told me it only currently works with on-premise Exchange 2013 and uses SOAP and EWS. Also, MID server needs to be installed to run Powershell.