Outlook Rooms == CRM Facilities?

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Posted on by awalters

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We have a number of rooms set up in Exchange/Outlook for people to be able to book meetings in. Is there any way to get this to sync with CRM "Facilities", or otherwise have them in CRM for booking (while still available through Outlook as well)? If not, what's the usual procedure here? If they're just rooms in Exchange they can't be viewed/booked if an appointment is created in CRM, but if they're just Facilities in CRM how can people view/book them if they're creating the appointment in Outlook? I'm quite surprised that you can't load a room mailbox in as a facility, the way you link an AD user to a CRM user.

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David Jennaway 14,065 on at

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There's no useful way to combine these. CRM scheduling only works on data within CRM, and will not be aware of the data in Exchange.

Theoretically it could be possible to build something to sync the data, but it wouldn't be simple, and it also wouldn't be real-time (you could make it real-time from CRM to Exchange, but not vice versa), s you could get conflicts.

I expect the reason that it hasn't been done is that it's pretty hard, and difficult to make robust (as you could get conflicts, and it depends on a reliable sync)

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awalters 3,079 on at

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So what do people do instead, and how do they overcome the limitations of using only one system or the other?

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Peragin 135 on at

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Also looking for a solution for this.

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Kim Kragh - AS3 on at

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We are also looking for a solution to this!

In our case Facilities are Locations (offices) and we would like to book meetings in rooms located in these offices.

Locations are in Dynamics 365, rooms are in Exchange 365 and the two have no reliable connection (only some tags/names in room properties).

Would the only way be to add code on the Dynamics side:

1. Query Exchange for rooms tagged as located in the current location

2. Show the Dynamics user the rooms and their availability (as in Outlook Scheduling Assistant)

3. Enable them to book a room (still in Dynamics)

4. On save - send the booking requests to the room mailbox in Exchange

This seems complex as indicated by @david. Not to mention what needs to happen on changes to location or meeting time, but if end user is meeting owner, this could then happen from his own calendar, which however would leave Dynamics data inconsistent.

All our users has access to both Outlook 365 nativejavascript:void(0); client and Outlook online in case someone can see any way forward using these.

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Wayne Walton 13,730 on at

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I admit, I am confused as to the use-case here. Why not just keep rooms in Outlook/Exchange? What's the value of having them as facilities in Dynamics? That's definitely not an intended use for facilities.

If anything, it seems like maybe using Microsoft Teams to pull data from both places might make a little more sense (start an appointment from Teams, invite the room, and pull any Dynamics data you care about into the same Team), once the Dynamics integration comes out of preview. But even then, I'm not sure I "get" why you would want your room accounts in Dynamics.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Meetings can be created through CRM. Meetings (often) need rooms booked. It seems a very straightforward use case to me. Why have a function in CRM if you're missing a relatively integral part of it?

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Wayne Walton 13,730 on at

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Rooms can still be added through email address, just like any other attendee. I just don't get what you gain by trying to force a room to be a facility. Heck, if you wanted, you could make the Contacts with that email address if you needed to.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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If they're just by email address, you can't see the schedule of when they're booked/available.

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Kim Kragh - AS3 on at

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I agree - the big issue is to access the free/busy on all rooms in a location/office together - to get the overview of which room can be used...

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Peragin 135 on at

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If one could integrate, exchange, dynamics crm and the new bookings app on o365 - that would be something! AFAIK there is no connector yet for bookings on MS Flow and one can't have multiple locations on the app.

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