Can UCWA retrieve the scheduled Microsoft Outlook meetings? - outlook

I am specifically interested in the OUTLOOK Meeting information and
NOT ONLINE MEETING.
Can I GET the outlook calendar meetings (along with its details: time, subject, location, attendees, etc) using UCWA.
I asked about the same on UCWA forum of MSDN, and came to know that it isn't possible via UCWA.
However, this raises another question:
As a Lync user, if I hover my mouse over a contact who's busy in a meeting, then it shows the time until when he/she is busy, for example "Busy until 2 p.m.".
How is Lync fetching this outlook meetings information and displaying the output as per the meeting time. How does this mechanism work?

Lync/Skype for Business clients are making requests via Outlook APIs to grab non-online-meeting events to display that data. You would need to design your application to sign-in to their Outlook account and make use the available Outlook APIs to get all the meetings/appointments that are not present in Lync/Skype.

Related

Subscribed calendars not visible in Microsoft Graph Explorer

I have subscribed calendars in my Outlook (subscribed to using feed links), and I want to get the id of these calendars. Following Microsoft's API, a GET Request on https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/calendars using Microsoft Graph Explorer only shows my Outlook calendar and not the calendars that I have subscribed to. How can I make them visible?
I have tried it from my end using Outlook on the Web, going to
Calendar--> Add Calendar--> Subscribe from Web--> Give the link and Save.
I used the same call and it worked for me.

Dynamics 2016 email tracking ignoring outgoing replies

We have server-side synchronisation set up for our Dynamics 2016 on-premise instance, and it is correctly sending emails from a Case, and tracking replies from the customer. However, when an internal user replies using Outlook (without the CRM add in), their responses aren't being tracked. This means that the email conversation consists of an initial "outgoing" email, followed by only incoming responses.
The full scenario is:
Internal user sends an email from a CRM Case. Email tracked in CRM
Customer replies to email. Reply tracked in CRM and goes to internal user's Outlook
Internal user sends a reply from their Outlook. Reply is not tracked in CRM
Customer replies to email. Reply tracked in CRM and goes to internal user's Outlook
Is it possible to allow the Internal user's replies (point 3) to be tracked in CRM without installing the Outlook add in (i.e. so it also works from the Web/mobile versions of Outlook)?
I believe you cannot do this without Outlook client as per Jukka.
Without the CRM Outlook client you can’t get the information into CRM without copy-pasting it from one window to another in the aforementioned scenarios. No synchronization technology will help you here, since CRM is unaware of the item until it has been brought into its world. The “Track” button is a client-side feature that you can’t utilize with any server-side solution, which means there’s no way for a user to select an email, appointment, task or contact from the Exchange server that he or she would like to promote into a record in CRM. Since the the record wasn’t “born in CRM”, it just can’t find its way there.
Last resort would be Smart matching with Tracking token, which may help you in this scenario.
Update:
Customer reply is going to reach CRM through a monitored queue. You can read a lot & get clarity from the above link.
Deploying a solution like the CRM 2013 the server-side synchronization will take care of moving items like calendar appointments and contacts back and forth between the end-user client device and the central CRM database, but it only applies to items that already exist in the realm of CRM. What I mean by this is that the item was either originally created directly in the CRM application or it was received via a monitored location like an email queue.
Your expectation is right, it should be tracked. I would open a ticket with MS & solve this.
Once the item is in CRM, server-side sync can take care of tracking the subsequent updates to it. A re-scheduled tracked appointment will get updated with the new date, regardless of whether you change the date via CRM or your mobile phone calendar that’s linked to Exchange. An email thread with a tracked message and a tracking token ID injected into the email subject line will have the next replies automatically synchronized into CRM
I have heard back from our Microsoft Partner, and they say that this scenario isn't possible. By design, it'll only track incoming emails to CRM, or outgoing if sent from within CRM itself.

How can we force a mailbox item to be persisted to EWS?

Note: This particular issue has significant impact on our customers, which translates to high business impact with direct consequences on revenue.
TL;DR.
How can our Office add-in for Outlook, when a user interacts with our add-in while composing an email draft, minimize the amount of time it takes before the EWS GetItem API will return an OK response for the itemId we receive from Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync()?
If it turns out that our add-in has no control over when the item will be persisted to EWS, then what could an end-user do to speed this up?
We are looking for either (a) a technical solution, or (b) messaging to instruct our customers on how to mitigate/fix/work around this issue.
End-User Impact
Some of our customers are unable to send emails using our Office add-in for Outlook, or have to wait an exceedingly long time (> 2 minutes) before their email will send.
Our Goal
We want all of our customers to be able to send emails using our add-in, without having to wait for an unreasonable amount of time.
Additional Context
Based on our logs and customer reports, this issue only exists in the Outlook 2016 for Windows desktop application. We have no evidence to suggest the issue is present in any other version of Outlook, including Outlook 2013 or Outlook for Mac, however it is possible that the issue may be present in those clients as well.
Overview of our add-in
Our add-in integrates with Compose mode to provide additional functionality while composing email messages, such as templates, follow-ups, open and click tracking, and scheduling.
Our add-in works in tandem with our SaaS product like this:
Our add-in sets EWS extended properties on the email message with metadata indicating which features are enabled on that message.
Our SaaS product, out of band, is configured to read from the customer's mailbox via the EWS API. When it encounters EWS extended properties our Office add-in has written, it triggers the code paths to satisfy the desired behavior.
Root Cause Analysis
The root cause of our problem is our interaction with EWS in Outlook 2016 for Windows. In order to successfully interact with EWS to read/write to a mailbox item, it must be aware of that item.
The documentation for Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync() says:
In Outlook Web App or Outlook in online mode, the item is saved to the server. In Outlook in cached mode, the item is saved to the local cache.
It goes on further to say:
Note: If your add-in calls saveAsync on an item in compose mode in order to get an itemId to use with EWS or the REST API, be aware that when Outlook is in cached mode, it may take some time before the item is actually synced to the server. Until the item is synced, using the itemId will return an error.
Thus, we have concluded that Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync(), although it does indeed return an eventually valid itemId, does not guarantee that any subsequent EWS interaction will succeed. So far, we have found no way to accelerate the process of the Outlook client actually making EWS aware of the mailbox item.
Mitigation
We have attempted to mitigate this problem by polling EWS GetItem to attempt to obtain a ChangeKey for the item with the itemId we receive from Office.context.mailbox.item.saveAsync(). While we have seen that this does eventually succeed, it may take a minute or longer before this occurs. That is simply far too much time for our customers to have to wait.
Understanding "online mode" vs "cached mode"
If the Outlook 2016 for Windows desktop client is in "cached mode", is there anything the user can do to:
…know whether the client is in "cached mode" or "online mode"?
…attempt to force the client into "online mode"?
There is no way to speed this up in cached mode. Unfortunately this is a limitation of saveAsync in compose mode. Some things of note:
1) The EWSId is only valid while the item is a draft. After it is sent, when the item is in sent items, it will have a new EWSId which is not obtainable from the Office.js
2) Could you save your information into the custom properties, instead of the EWS Extended Properties. (Office.context.mailbox.item.customProperties) https://dev.office.com/reference/add-ins/outlook/1.5/CustomProperties?product=outlook
These properties will be saved to the mail in the sent item, but will NOT be transmitted. Then could you find those properties
These are stored as a JSON dictionary on the item in Key/Value pairs. The name of the mapi property is "cecp-[extension id from manifest]" (in PS_PUBLIC_STRINGS)
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/cc842512.aspx
3) It does kind of sound like a better way to solve this would be an Office.js function that gives write access to this? (though we don't completely understand your scenario). Request for new features should go through UserVoice:
https://officespdev.uservoice.com/forums/224641-general/category/131778-outlook-add-ins.
4) Being in Online Mode would greatly mitigate the time. A User can know whether or not he or she is in online mode, but an Add-in cannot.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-on-Cached-Exchange-Mode-7885af08-9a60-4ec3-850a-e221c1ed0c1c
Additionally, the status bar will say "Connected to Microsoft Exchange" in cached mode, and "Online with Microsoft Exchange" in online mode.
Switching to Online mode, removes a lot of the benefits that cached mode has. Cached mode is default in Outlook 2016.

Outlook 365: Keeping specific events in sync with external system

I'm developing an integration with Outlook in Office 365 using the latest office.js api for add-ins.
What I have currently is an add-in, which displays a side pane on the appointment compose form. Inside that pane I have the functionality to create an object in our external based on the appointment, taking the start/end times, subject, location etc.
So I have appointment A in the calendar of an O365 account, and object A in an external system.
Is there a way to keep those in sync? I don't see it could be possible using the Outlook Add-In Javascript API, but maybe using ics files, or the Outlook REST API, or Exchange EWS? I see here plenty of issues with the credentials, as the user has separate credentials in our system.
Any tips? I tried to send from our system an ICS file with same iCal UID, but Outlook ignores it.
You would want to to use the Outlook Push Notifications REST API in your web service to get polled when users make changes to their Calendar. Then use the Outlook Calendar REST API to sync changes from your system to their Calendar.

How can I subscribe to a Team Calendar comprised of multiple Calendars?

Using Confluence version 4.1.9. The situation is that we have each individual employee with a Team Calendar in order to enter public events (vacation, jury duty, etc.) Further, each 'team' has created a wiki page that contains a calendar that shows all of the team member's calendars, thusly
We would now like to be able to sync that meta-calendar back to Microsoft Outlook, hopefully without having to force each Outlook user to manually add the entire set of calendars in the meta-calendar.
How can I set it up so that Microsoft Outlook users can subscribe to Confluence calendars of this sort?

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