The iOFFICE Reservations Module now integrates with Microsoft Outlook/Exchange by leveraging Microsoft’s Graph API and OAuth 2.0. This major update gives existing iOFFICE Reservations customers using EWS a way to improve security and prepare for the deprecation of EWS Basic Auth in the future. New customers who qualify will use the Graph API to connect Exchange and Reservations from now on.

Integrating Exchange with Reservations makes it easy for employees to use their existing Outlook scheduling tool to reserve a space for meetings. When your workspaces’ calendars are in sync with everyone’s Outlook calendars, you can eliminate scheduling conflicts and optimize space utilization without the hassle of managing multiple, disparate calendar systems.

To use the Graph API for Exchange Calendar integration with the iOFFCE Reservations Module, you must be using either 100% Office 365 (all cloud-based), or a hybrid of O365/Exchange as your workplace calendaring solution.  

The iOFFICE Graph API connection has functional parity with the existing EWS Integration, but offers several key improvements and enhancements:

Improved Security

Our new service utilizes Microsoft's Modern Authentication (based on OAuth 2.0), which supersedes the currently used Basic Authentication.

Improved Stability

This service aims to address data sync problems on an architectural level; it also incorporates a robust monitoring and alerting system, allowing us to learn about sync issues and recover from them much faster. Additionally, our new service takes advantage of Microsoft's new connector feature, resulting in a more efficient way to keep track of calendar changes, and ensuring calendar events don't get dropped.

Improved Performance

Our service is built using Microsoft's robust new Graph API, rather than the soon to be deprecated EWS API, which allows for a more secure, efficient, and scalable way to deliver data. One of the benefits is the ability to set up web hooks, and having Microsoft push calendar events, eliminating the need for a continuous streaming connection. 

No immediate action is required for customers to continue using the Reservations Module; if you are using the EWS integration, it will continue to function as expected and there will be feature parity between EWS and Graph API at launch.

However, because Microsoft plans to deprecate EWS Basic Auth in the near future, we recommend contacting your account manager for more information. Over the next several months, we will be working with EWS customers to create a migration plan to ensure uninterrupted service. Any new upgrades to the Exchange integration will only be developed for the Graph API connection.

The new Graph API connection for Exchange and Reservations makes it easier to manage workplace calendars. If you are interested in finding out more about how to activate this feature contact your Account Manager. If you have any questions, please call 713-526-1029 or send an email to support@iofficecorp.com.