How to implement Microsoft Office 365 with Graph
The Officebooking platform enables you to share your company resources and make them available for booking by your users or employees. We support a number of interaction or touch points for end users including web, mobile and interactive signage solutions. This way your users are supported throughout their complete journey.
This start-up guide will walk you through the process to set up synchronization with Microsoft Office 365 with Graph.
Step 1 Register Officebooking as an app in Azure
Follow the instructions via this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/auth-register-app-v2
- Sign in to the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com/
- In the left-hand navigation pane, select the Azure Active Directory service, and then select App registrations > New registration.
- Give the registration a meaningful name, for example ‘Officebooking graph’ and choose Accounts in this organizational directory only as the account type
- Enter https://app.officebooking.net/api/microsoft_graph/notifications/notification_url as redirect uri. The Selected URI type in the dropdown should be ‘Web’
- Click Register
Step 2 Saving the required API values
After registering the app, you will be redirected to a new page where you can find the following values. Save the Application (client) ID and the Directory (tenant) ID. We need these values later.
Step 3 Creating a client secret
Select Certificates & secrets in the Manage submenu.
Select the New client secret button. Enter a value in Description and select one of the options for Expires and select Add.
After clicking Add you will be redirected to a new page where you can find the client secret ‘Value’. Copy paste this value in the officeAdmin portal or store the value in your favorite password manager, it will be hidden afterwards. We will need it later when connecting Officebooking.
Step 4 Configure Permissions
Select API permissions -> Add a permission.
Select Microsoft Graph as API and click on Application permissions.
Select Calenders.ReadWrite and User.Read.All and click Add permissions.
You have to grant Admin permission to add the permissions to the App. Select the button Grant admin consent for YOUR COMPANY NAME and select ok.
Step 5 Add the API access token in the Officebooking environment OfficeAdmin
Your can activate the synchronization by signing to your Office Admin-account. Select the Company page. Select the Graph Connection tab at the top of the page and enter the Directory(Tenant ID), Application(Client)ID and Client key we saved earlier. Click Save.
Step 6 Connect an asset in Officebooking with the corresponding Outlook meeting room
Go to the Assets page in the OfficeAdmin. Search for the meeting room you want to add, in our example Meeting Room 1.
Select the asset and select Edit. Enter the Exchange email address and select Save. Please note: you will only be able to enter resource email addresses when the Exchange account is activated by Officebooking.
Step 7 Optionally add titles to the meetings in outlook calendar for synchronisation
By default, Exchange shows the name of the organizer as title of the meeting in the Resource calendar. If you want to display the original title of the meeting room in both the Resource calendar and Officebooking you can enable this setting via powershell.
Step 8 Testing the connection
- Single reservation from Outlook > Officebooking
You may test the integration by creating a meeting in Outlook calendar and invite the room as an attendant. Check the confirmation from Outlook. If the room was successfully added it will take approximately 1 minute before the meeting appears in the Officebooking app.
Select Reservations and select the tab List at the top of the page. Select the date you’ve created your test reservation and check if the data is correct.
- Single reservation from Officebooking > Outlook
The same test can be executed the opposite way. Log in to the Officebooking app. In our example we use the web app. Search for the asset that you want to make a test reservation for. In our example that’s Meeting Room 1. Create the reservation in the app. You can see that the reservation is added to your personal reservations list on the My Reservations page.
Now login to the calendar on Exchange as THE SAME USER. Check to see if the reservation for the meeting room (you just made in the app) was added. Remember that there is a synchronization time interval.
Important! If you run this test quickly, it is easy to forget that the user needs to exist in both your Exchange environment and the Officebooking app for the synchronization to work properly. So please make sure that the user exists in both environments and has the same email address.
Recurring meeting from Outlook > Officebooking
Create a recurring meeting in Outlook. By default, Exchange has set the limit on the allowed time to book in the future to be 180 days. Add the room to the attendants and check the confirmation of the room in Outlook. It will take about 1-2 minutes before the meetings appear in Officebooking. Please refresh the list view by selecting the ‘Refresh button’ at the right corner of the list view.
Recurring meeting from Officebooking
Officebooking currently doesn’t support recurring meetings. It’s possible to duplicate a reservation in the user web app.