Microsoft 365 Connector
Field workers require information about the planning to perform their work. Apart from using a mobile application to distribute the planning, OMD can publish the appointments to Microsoft 365, providing the field worker with up-to-date information about the task schedule, the customer's location and other important information.
Synchronization with a corporate calendar has several advantages. The calendar is part of the daily life of a field worker and can be viewed easily from the web or from mobile devices. Colleagues can look into the calendar of their group members. If not using OMD Mobile, viewing the calendar on a smartphone allows field workers to start navigation by clicking on the address or call the customer by clicking on the customer's telephone number.
Updates of the corporate calendar are required whenever
- A new task has been planned for a resource
- A planned task is moved to another date or time but for the same resource
- A planned task is moved to another date or time and resource
- A planned task has been un-planned
- An unavailability has been added to the calendar of a resource
- An unavailability has been updated
- An unavailability has been deleted
- A new exceptional working day has been assigned to a resource
- An exceptional working day has been removed
Requirements
- Microsoft 365 Online
Configuring the application on Microsoft 365
In order to use this application, it first needs to be registered.
- Sign in to the https://portal.azure.com as an administrator.
- If you have access to multiple tenants, use the Directories + subscriptions filter in the top menu to switch to the tenant in which you want to register the application.
- Search for and select Azure Active Directory.
- Under Manage, select App registrations > New registration.
- Enter a Name for your application, for example Daemon-console. Users of your app might see this name, and you can change it later.
- Select Register.
- Under Manage, select Certificates & secrets.
- Under Client secrets, select New client secret, enter a name, and then select Add. Record the secret value in a safe location for use in a later step.
- Under Manage, select API Permissions > Add a permission. Select Microsoft Graph.
- Select Application permissions.
- Under User node, select User.Read.All, then select Add permissions.
- Under Calendars node, select Calendars.ReadWrite.
- In the permissions overview, click on the 'admin consent' links to activate the permissions.
Note that by default, the application will have access to all users in this tenant. Restricting access to a subset of users is possible by applying an application access policy. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/auth-limit-mailbox-access.
Configuring the service in OMD
| Preference Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| calendar.msgraph.synchronize | false | Used to turn synchronization with MS Graph calendars on or off. |
| calendar.msgraph.tenantGuid | The GUID of the tenant in which this application is configured. | |
| calendar.msgraph.clientId | The ID this client app has been assigned in the AD. | |
| calendar.msgraph.clientSecret | The client secret this app uses to authenticate, configured in the AD. | |
| calendar.msgraph.graphEndPoint | https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0 | The endpoint this app will use to call methods of the Graph API. |
| calendar.msgraph.authEndPoint | The endpoint this app will use to authenticate and obtain an access token. | |
| calendar.msgraph.scopes | https://graph.microsoft.com/.default | The client access scopes this app will request when authenticating. |
| calendar.msgraph.lookupPrincipleName | false | If false, the user principal is equal to its email address. Otherwise, before each call the user principal will be looked up based on the email address. |
| calendar.msgraph.timeZone | Europe/Berlin | The time zone to use when creating calendar entries. |
| calendar.msgraph.daysBack | 365 | Max number of days in the past to look in the users calendar. Any events older that that will not be queried. |
Ignore Resource during Communication
To avoid a resource's visits to be considered for synchronization, set the resource's process flow preference calendar.msgraph.active to false.
One-Way Communication
Note that the connector works only in one direction, from OMD to Microsoft 365. Changes to the Outlook agenda in Microsoft 365 are not communicated back to OMD. This is to avoid conflicts, i.e. OMD controls the workflow of a task.