How to Solve the Exchange Calendar Integration Issue

Integrating applications with Google Calendar is important, but that doesn’t cater to everyone. Many businesses still use Microsoft products, but they’re often unsure as to whether they use Office 365, Outlook, or Exchange.

Most people say they get their emails from Outlook, but this can mean several things: they use Outlook.com, they use Exchange with Outlook as their email client, or they use Exchange on Office 365 with Outlook as their email client.

In the last decade alone, Microsoft released over 127 versions of Exchange. That’s 127 versions of hosted and on-premises versions of Exchange that developers must spend time connecting to, instead of working on building new features and adding extra value to your customers.

In many cases, users don’t know who hosts their Exchange server, which can create further problems for developers.

When applications only connect to the latest or most recent versions of Exchange, clients using older versions won’t be able to benefit from the same features. This leads to communication breakdowns and a loss in productivity because employees can’t do their tasks as quickly as they could with better integration.

There’s the option of ICS feeds, but these can take up to 24 hours to update. This means that if an employee can’t make a meeting because they’re ill, attendees may not find out until after the meeting is over.

The solution

Cronofy can solve all of these issues.

It integrates with all versions of all calendar services.

We have numerous ways to find out where the Exchange server is hosted, including Microsoft-recommended ways and investigating last-known servers.

Our Calendar API means that developers no longer need to allocate valuable time to integrating with each version of Exchange – once Cronofy is integrated into your solution, we handle all the connections and maintenance.

This means that developers don’t need to spend time maintaining the connections to Microsoft’s Calendar API and can focus on building smart scheduling features into your software instead.

Integrating Cronofy into your application also means that there’s no delay between a user updating a calendar event and it updating in your application. Everything updates in real-time, meaning that if a staff member isn’t well, they can update the HR system and their line manager will be automatically notified.

How to protect users’ privacy

Building calendar sync that works for everyone no matter what calendar service they use opens up many possibilities. However, calendars also host sensitive, sometimes personal, information, and it’s an organization’s responsibility to ensure that the privacy of their employees is respected.

Enterprise Connect not only allows for every employee within an organization to be Calendar Connected in one go, but also makes this problem easier to control. Every user’s information is stored securely on our servers, using OAuth to ensure information is accessible while still protected. Securing and monitoring information is far easier when there’s only one gateway to monitor and not several thousand.

Using Cronofy, developers can feel confident they’re building secure, easy-to-maintain integrations that work for everyone.

Try it for yourself

Discover how easy it is to get started with the Cronofy Calendar API. Create your free account for up to 20 users now.