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Integration hub: Outlook Calendar

Maria Ørgaard avatar
Written by Maria Ørgaard
Updated this week

In this article, you will learn how to set up on integration between learningbank and Outlook calendars.

First, let us tell you why you can benefit from setting this up: It can be used to automatically create events in the calendar in Outlook and add users to the events. Whenever a new event is created and users start accepting them, the event will automatically be added to their own calendars. Smart, right?


Setup of the Integration

To set up the integration, it is required to create an application on your Microsoft platform. It is important that this application is made with the following permissions:

  • Calendars.ReadWrite

  • User.Read.All

Calendars.ReadWrite is used to administrate the calendars, both to read events and update them and to write new ones.

User.Read.All is used to get the users' IDS, which are required to create the events and update them again.

It is also important that the application has access without a user, as this lets the application work as its own entity. This is also called “Delegate Access”.

When this is created, you will be provided with a client ID and a tenant ID for the application. You will then need to create a client secret, which can be used together with the tenant ID and client ID on the application. These three values are needed to set up the integration on the Learningbank platform.

Good to know💭 The Outlook integration is a one-way communication. This means that anything that happens to events in the Learningbank platform, creating, updating, or deleting, will also happen in Outlook. However, anything that happens in Outlook will NOT happen in Learningbank. Each of the events is featured with a small disclaimer at the bottom about this. This also means that if a user chooses to decline an event after accepting it in their calendar, this will not be reflected in Learningbank.


Organizer Email

When setting up the integration, it is fitted with an optional field called “Organizer Email”. This field can be filled with an email that exists in your Microsoft platform. If it is provided, then all events will be created with the provided email as the organizer, where all other users will be added to the same event. If the email is not provided, then each user who accepts the invite to an event on the platform will get an event just for them inside their platform.


How It Works

With Organizer Email

When an event is created, the event is automatically created in the organiser's calendar as the organiser of the event.

Users can then be invited on the Learningbank platform. Inviting users do not do anything in Outlook, it is first when the user accepts the event invitation.When a user accepts an event, the event is updated with the new user as an attendee. The event is automatically created in the user's calendar, where they automatically accept. Users who are part of an event do not have access to the attendee list; only the organiser has access to it.

Updating and deleting an event on the Learningbank platform will automatically update the calendars as well, whether by moving the date or changing the description. When events are updated, the attendee list is kept, so users do not have to accept it again.

Users can, after accepting the event, still update to not attending in the Learningbank platform. This will remove them from the attendee list and remove the event in their calendar.

You can use this option if you have / want to have a singular event planner, that will always have all the planned events, alongside the attendee lists.

Without Organizer Email

This is similar to with an organizer email, however, here each of the users has their own personal event. This means that whenever an event is first created, it is not created in a calendar. As users accept their invites, they get a personal event in their own calendar with themselves as organisers.

Updates and deletions are still happening in each of the user's personal events. They are updated or deleted individually, instead of just handling a singular event, if the organizer email is set.

Use this option if you do not have an event planner and would rather just use it as a general tool, to set the events in the users calendar, but without keeping track of it in Outlook and only on the Learningbank platform.


Which Fields Are Used?

When creating an event in Outlook, the filed marked in blue on the image below will be used to generate the event:

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