Calendar Booking Methods
- Lisa Clancy
We have a number of ways bookings in epaPRO can be entered into an EPAs (Assessors) calendar, the ones that you will be use is dependent on how your system is configured and whether or not the Microsoft 365 integrations have been set up.
Setup info can be found here -
ICS Attachments
As you know we attach an ICS attachment to booking emails. These will always be sent out with epaPRO communication, even if one of the below 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.
Microsoft 365 Integration
We have a Microsoft 365 integration, which can be configured on 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 element bookings and planning meeting bookings.
Points to Note
If set up at the calendar level it will be added to the users calendar automatically via the integration. Meetings/bookings will be inserted into what Outlook deems to be the default calendar.
If the user has linked Microsoft365 at a personal level, means that it will be prioritised over the organisational level. If the Toggle for Calendars is OFF then that user will not receive the invites.
Microsoft Teams
When booking a planning meeting or an element, we also have a Microsoft Teams integration. This will automatically book an online meeting for that booking and in this instance, the service handles the calendar invites, it will generally send an email, and 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 and will be synced up to bookings in epaPRO, this is like 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.