How to enable and set up the epaPRO Calendar integrations

Summary of epaPRO Calendar Integrations

Microsoft 365 Integration

Firstly, as you know we have a Microsoft 365 integration, which can be configured at the organisation level, so for your whole Microsoft Organisation, or on an individual user’s level via their epaPRO profile. If either of these is configured; epaPRO will attempt to automatically create, update, and delete events within the user’s linked Microsoft calendar. This works for both element bookings and planning meeting bookings.

At the individual level

If the user wishes, they can link their non-company email account e.g. Hotmail/Outlook etc with Microsoft and link to their own calendar, in order to achieve this they need to select Linked Accounts - link with Microsoft and then enable the Calendar toggle as epaPRO needs to know which calendar to read or post events to.

Open

Microsoft Teams / Zoom Integrations

When booking a planning meeting or an element, there is the Microsoft Teams integrations. These will automatically book an online meeting and under these circumstances the service handles the calendar invites. They will usually send an email, and in the case of Microsoft Teams, it will, if possible, automatically add an event to the user’s calendar, although this is Microsoft controlling this and not epaPRO.

Linked Calendar using Calendar Tokens

If neither of the above is suitable for a particular user, we also have a calendar that can be added to a calendar client. This will create a brand-new calendar within your email client e.g. Outlook and will be synced up with bookings in epaPRO, this appears as a shared calendar and the time between updates is dependent on the calendar client being used. This is configured via the “Calendar Token” on the user’s profile.

Open

Will be moving to Availability tab in 5.13.0

epaPRO can be integrated with Microsoft 365 and external Microsoft & Google calendars, so that a booking will appear in the users e.g. EPA’s calendar, after they have booked it in epaPRO as with - EPA Calendar integration.

ICS Attachments

We have also recently added as you know ICS attachments to various booking emails. These will always be sent out with epaPRO communication, even if one of the above integrations automatically creates an entry in the calendar. These ICS attachments will not tend to be automatically entered into the user’s calendar, however, this is dependent on the email/calendar software being used. In the case of Outlook the user will have to open the attachment (or in some cases, shortcut buttons will be shown when reading the email) to add, edit, or remove the event from their calendar.

Enabling the Microsoft 365 Integration

Step 1 - Request Integration is enabled

 

In order to set up the Microsoft 365 integration the first step is to log a support request to ask that we enable this for you.

We suggest you enable on your UAT site first so that you can fully test it and then can enable it on Production when you are ready.

Step 2 - Linking epaPRO with Microsoft Azure Directory

 

Once this is enabled on your account by Skilltech, the Owner User will be able to see this under;

System Management → Configuration → under the Integrations tab.

Open

When linking up your companies Microsoft 365 with epaPRO, someone who has the correct permissions for your companies Azure Directory will need to action this.

They will need to have the Global Admin or Privileged Admin roles to be able to grant access.

Permissions that epaPRO requests when linking up with your Azure directory
Open	Open

Once the 2 steps are completed, we suggest you close and re-open Outlook/Google.

epaPRO will then be able to book meetings on behalf of the users inside your organisation, as well as provide busy/free data when booking an element if the EPA is within your organisation.

Any user account under your Microsoft 365 organisation will automatically have their calendar events pulled into epaPRO for the purposes of showing availability (for planning meetings and for elements).

If a planning meeting or element is booked for them, epaPRO will add that event to their calendar.

Changes to Functionality

We have added the component name or the label “planning meeting" to bookings that are internal to epaPro.

Open

Open

Impacted Areas

 EPA availability calendar, EPA side drawer

Permissions

No new permissions

Calendar Event Handling

The calendar events will be handled in the following ways:

Planning Meeting

• When a planning meeting is booked and it is not a Zoom or Teams meeting all attendees with a linked calendar will be given a new calendar event, if the meeting was booked via our planning meeting booking screen then it’ll be prefixed with [PENDING].

• When a pending planning meeting is approved, the [PENDING] text will be removed

• When a planning meeting is cancelled, the event will be deleted

• When a planning meeting is rescheduled or edited, the event will be moved to the new date/time

• When a pending planning meeting is rejected, the event will be deleted

• When a planning meeting is updated to be a Teams/Zoom meeting, the event will be deleted and our integration will take over

Assessment Elements

• When a new element is booked it’ll be added to the apprentice and/or EPA’s linked calendar, if they have one. If the element is pending approval, it’ll be prefixed with [PENDING]

• When an element is edited or rescheduled, the event will be moved

• When the element is rebooked via a resit or retake, the old event will remain on the calendar, as this would now be in the past, with a new event created for the new booking

• When a pending element is rejected, the event will be removed

• When an element is updated to become Teams, the event will be removed and our Teams integration will take over

To demonstrate an example of an EPAs availability (in this case on the Assessment Profile Element side drawer) you will note it shows the pre-existing events as “Private events” and then the bookings.

Open

These bookings will also appear in the Outlook calendar:

Integration with Microsoft Teams

If you have linked epaPRO to your Microsoft organisation, the EPA Availability area will also make use of the EPA's Outlook calendar to provide a more reliable view of the EPAs day.

epaPRO will show limited details about the events in the EPA’s calendar, and show events representing the blocks of time the event covers.

If using Teams meetings, there is the option under System Management → Configuration → Microsoft Teams to show some more info. This is off by default.

Open

Open

Toggle Off

Open

Toggle On

As with the epaPRO based events, if these overlap with the current booking you’re trying to make, then the booking will be highlighted in a red striped background.

Much like the other Microsoft integrations, the EPA’s email address must be a valid email address managed by the linked organisation, otherwise we’ll be unable to fetch this additional data.

So when you come to schedule a planning meeting or booking an assessment you are offered the choice of:

• Remote - You can enter a remote URL

• Face to Face - no email field is visible

• Teams - Organiser Email Address field is visible

Open

Open

Assessment Component option

By entering the email address for the Online meeting - the meeting will be placed in the linked calendar e.g. MS Outlook.

Users not using Teams

For those users that don't use Teams, we extended our Microsoft and Google calendar integrations to support planning meetings and assessment elements, that do not have an online meeting.

Capacity

As part of the planning meeting booking system, we integrated a capacity calculation engine that takes data we know about users who would be involved in the meeting and builds a list of known slots the user can then select. If the user is not part of the Awarding Organisation’s Microsoft organisation. This will provide additional data for the availability calculations within epaPRO.

Planning Meeting Booking

The slots generated for the planning meeting booking screen will now use the user’s linked Microsoft account if they have one. This will take priority over checking the linked organisation account. The functionality of this screen remains the same and it just now takes into account additional data if it’s available.

EPA Availability

The EPA Availability calendar, shown when booking an element, will now include the new events the user has in the calendars they select when linking the Microsoft account. As with the existing organisation link, this will show as “Busy” blocks if the user is not available.

As mentioned earlier, epaPRO has a setting that can be enabled called “Show Events Details” under the Microsoft Teams tab. This setting for organisation accounts, will show the title of the event within EPAPro, this is not the case for a Microsoft account that a user has linked. Even if this setting is enabled, epaPRO will replace the event’s title with “Private Event”. This is because the user may be linking their personal Microsoft account that isn’t linked to the AO’s Microsoft account.

Use of Calendar Tokens for “non-linked” non-domain users

Users who do not have a company email address, and therefore not in the Microsoft Azure directory for your company, or users using a different calendar, or those that do not wish to link it, do have another option:-

Under the EPA Details tab, there is a copy of the Calendar token id, you can copy this and then using this in Outlook, it will allow you to add in an Internet Calendar → from Internet and enter this token to create the link.

Open

Option to Copy calendar Token

Open

MS Outlook screen you see when adding in a new internet

In release 5.0.0 addition of .ICS Attachments

We have added .ICS attachments to emails sent from epaPRO for scheduled planning meetings and assessment components that have not been defined as a Teams meeting event. These will be available with:-

These attachments will allow the intended recipients to schedule the event in their calendar, by double clicking on the attachment and agreeing to add to their calendar. They will be added automatically to meeting invitations, such as the provisional planning meeting.

• Where the event is a provisional booking, i.e. provisional planning meeting bookings, events will show as a tentative in the users calendar until it is confirmed.

Open

Confirmed planning meeting .ics

• Where event details are changed (i.e. the date and time) they will be updated in the calendar, so the original event is removed and just the new one will be visible in the users calendar.

• Where meetings/assessments are cancelled, users will see the below when they click on a .ics attachment for a Cancelled Assessment, they can use the remove from Calendar to remove the meeting.

Open

Cancelled assessment

Regarding Resits

Note - The new attachment may update the existing calendar event when loaded, or it may add a new one - this is dependent on the calendar software, version and if it supports it. Some software will require an action by the user when the communication is received, others may do it automatically.