I have built a platform that in essence allows users:
to create a company profile and invite your colleagues,
create an office with a floor plan,
add tables and meeting rooms to the floor plan with each meeting room having a separate calendar,
book tables and meetings in meeting rooms.
The platform is built on Python/Django.
Now I am trying to implement a sync mechanism that would work with Office 365 and local Exchange distributions. The sync would be two way, that means an event created in Outlook would trigger an event to be created in our system and vice versa.
My first attempt was to use the EWS SOAP API (with exchangelib). But soon I've run into problems when figuring out how to create triggers for Outlook events. This ended in failure as synchronization would involve constant bombing of slow API-calls such as iterating through accounts and checking if anything changed in their calendars.
Second attempt involved using the Microsoft Graph API that has this neat push notification feature that would solve polling (or so I thought). But as I later found out, having the administrator link his privileged Exchange account and then being able to subscribe event changes for all associated accounts in one go was not possible (thanks to this article). So again this lead to the realization that polling (or making everyone link their personal accounts) was the only way to go.
What approach would you recommend to achieve two-way sync with Exchange that would involve only having the admin do the account linking with as little overhead and polling as possible?
Is there anyone who have developed large-scale applications that do something similar? If so, can you push me in the right direction?
A bit late to the game here, but maybe what you want is the EWS SubscribeToPushNotifications service. It's not implemented in exchangelib yet, but there's a ticket for it https://github.com/ecederstrand/exchangelib/issues/145
Implementing the basics should not be difficult.
Related
i'm quite new to Logic Apps. I got the task to make an auto reply function within Logic Apps that integrates with Exchange Online. Now I already performed this task using Outlook, but I have to be able to apply it to multiple mailboxes or even the entire company using Exchange. I'm about to get access to the Exchange Admin Center soon, but I don't really know how to start due to the fact that there is no simple way to make a connection to Exchange using Logic Apps. After some research, I think it's necessary for me to somehow make use of a REST API (I also read about the use of Exchange Web Services) to get the information I need, but my knowledge about this is quite small. I guess I'm gonna have to use a program like Postman to request information, so that I can start creating Custom Connectors to Exchange. If anybody has some understanding about this, feel free to reply and help me out! I will forever be gratefull!
There are several different approaches you could take to this if you (or probably they in your case) want your logic app to do all the work then you should use the Graph API rather then EWS (while its possible because its older API you'll loose marks on your assignment) have a look at http://martink.me/articles/using-microsoft-graph-in-logic-apps which covers the basics of what to do. To Get access to mailboxes tenant wide then you need to assigned Application Permission and get certificate (and store that in the KeyVault on Azure etc).
You can do this using Inbox Rules https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/mailfolder-post-messagerules?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=http and the Exchange Server will do all the work when it comes to doing the Auto-response (and has loop detection logic already) and your logic app then just need to do the Creation and management of the Rules.
But I would suggest you clarify with the person who assigned you the task whether they want the logic app to do the response (eg using the Graph API) or if its okay for the Exchange Server to do this for then (which should be more reliable).
You can also create Rules via the Exchange Admin Center and you could probably also through in Power Automate into the mix to do Autoresponse's so I'd clarify what they want so you don't waste time building something they don't want.
I am developing a customer service chatbot, using Azure's Bot Framework in .NET, using the the Messenger channel. I wanted to know if anyone knows what the best way to handle the handoff to a human on Zendesk (which my platform already uses as its CRM platform). I'm not looking for when to do the handoff, but how to manage what happens next.
What I would love to be able to do would be that so when handoff is needed, a ticket on Zendesk would be created, sending for example a file (the transcript of the conversation so far). Then the agent would be able to solve the customer's problem in that ticket, having a conversation with him, having the bot sending messages back and forth between zendesk and messenger.
I don't know if this has been done before, or if it's at all possible. And I'm free to other solutions to the problem of handling this kind of handoff, without having to create a separate "chat" for the customer service agents to use, like it's explained on the azure documentation.
Thank you for your patience while I researched this. I found this resource that I believe will meet your needs. This functionality is built off of the Bot Framework utilizing .NET (it's also available for Nodejs). There are two available methods to connect a client to an agent.
The first (which should apply to you) aggregates different channels into one allowing an agent to pickup in the same channel where the bot handed off. The second opens a new channel when an agent joins the conversation.
Intermediator Bot
I was able to spin up a bot using this and confirmed the bot was listening for outside traffic.
Hope this helps.
Steve.
One thing that I'm about to try is this:
Bot conversation ends.
Bot service calls an Azure Function, passing the conversation content.
The Azure Function integrates with Trello API, creating an entry on a Kanban board.
So, instead of Trello as I want to do, you can make a call to the Zendesk API.
I'm writing a few articles about developing Azure bots. The next two actually are dealing with these very things. You can find out more here. sign up if you'd like to get notified over the next week or so when the new tutorials are online.
Hope that helps!
Tim
Is there a way to avoid race conditions when inserting events into Google Calendar using the API? I have an experimental app that needs to insert events into user's calendar. However, the user should not be double booked at a particular time.
The only true way of guaranteeing something like this is if Google provides a way. Other solutions are prone to race conditions (example, some other app that the user has updating it while my app is ignorant). The options as far as I can tell:
E-Tags with If-Match option - But this option is not valid for inserts according to the docs (https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/version-resources).
Important: There is no support for conditional modifications for
insert operations. Instead, it is guaranteed that if you are allowed
to provide a resource ID, then the operation will only succeed if no
existing entry has that ID.
So if I provide an if-match with the calendar etag and try to insert, it always fails regardless of the fact that the etag is correct.
Using "watch" for a brief period while the event is about to be inserted (https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/v3/reference/events/watch). However, this solution is prone to race conditions due to the time take to get notified. One user inserting while my app gets notified of the update is problematic.
Sync the whole calendar with server periodically and consider the source of truth as the synced version and avoid double booking. Less optimal because new events added won't get synced fast enough, but the most likely will work.
What other solutions come to mind? I think #3 is the most suitable to guarantee consistency and integrity of data to avoid double booking.
I found a solution to this on this blog which states that you'll be using Calendar Resource API instead of the Google Calendar. I think this guide is what you're looking for.
Unlike a regular calendar, resources:
-Do not allow conflicts
-Can be shared across everyone on your Google Apps domain
-Can be invited (multiple at a time) to events, just like a person
-Their ability to share availability with everyone makes resources great for managing rooms schedules. Especially in a shared work
environment like your office.
FYI: This guide assumes you already have Google Apps. Currently only
paid accounts have access to resource calendars. If you’re
grandfathered in or using a personal Gmail account, this process won’t
make much sense.
I'm using Basecamp as a trial and Highrise as a trial and both offer the ability to cc emails from clients into the system. I'm a web developer and usually my team is myself and one or two IC's, plus the client(s). All of my email is very highly organized into client specific folders --- so at this point I'm trying to figure out what the advantage would be to have many of these email conversations (Between me and the client/between me and the ICs) online? Whether it's a prospect in Highrise, or an ongoing project in Basecamp, what's the advantage of having the email in two places -- HR/BR and filed in my email folders?
Thank you for any insight!
At OpenCRM we encourage the forwarding of all mail in and outbound to be polled by the CRM. Essentially this allows quick access to the complete history from the lead, contact, company, or other associated record such as a sales order, or helpdesk ticket, related to the originator or recipient of the message.
It's a good idea to work with CRM Software that allows this level of integration, affording you to pick up and respond to messages while you're actively working on that particular record in your data. We feel this saves time and duplication of effort.
I can't find much about this online so I was wondering if someone knew here.
Is SSRS 2005 if a user creates a subscription, will other users be able to view and edit those subsciptions? If not, is it possible to make subsciriptions visible to everyone?
Thanks
Quick answer is no.
Long answer is:
AFAIK, there is no site-wide subscription management functionality. The best you can do within Report Manager is site-wide schedule management, which allows admins to set up schedules at preferred times and let users choose those schedules when creating their subscriptions.
Our solution for controlling/centralising subscriptions was to set up a generic Windows user, log in to Report Manager and use that user to create all subscriptions. This means that all requests for subscriptions go through the IT department (+ or - depends on your situation. We didn't want users creating subscriptions themselves). All users who know the generic username/password can manage subscriptions in one place. Not ideal but it works for us.
Another option is that all the data for subscriptions is held on the Server, either in the Reporting Services database or in the Jobs themselves. If you are brave you can delve in and set up some sort of interface to access this.
This is definitely an area in which I find SSRS lacking.
Update:
You live and learn. I've just found that (provided you have sufficient privileges) if you open a report, then go to the subscriptions tab, you can view and edit any subscriptions that are set up on this report by any user. Still not ideal as you don't get an overview of the subscriptions across the system but better than the bleak picture I painted previously!