Introduction

The epowerhr esuite allows training administrators to invite training participants via Outlook Meeting Requests using Microsoft Graph.

By default, the participants are invited via e-mail.

Prerequisites

To invite participants via Outlook Meeting Requests, the following items should be present:

• An Office 365 mailbox from which the invitations can be sent, e.g. training@company.com.
• A valid e-mail address for all participants you want to invite.

Steps

1. Configure an external account
   Add the mailbox which you will use for sending meeting requests as an "External account" with Microsoft Graph via the following procedure, Microsoft Entra ID Integration for Microsoft Graph.
    
2. Settings
   - Go to "Settings" under the section "Training" (admin)
   - Change the value for the setting "Training invitation type" to "MicrosoftGraph".
   - Fill in the setting "Exchange invitation synchronization" with the Microsoft Graph Outlook external account you created (see above).
   - Press "Save"
    
3. Invite participants
   - Select a training session
   - Make sure that it has at least one session date
   - The participants you want to invite should have the status "Subscribed".
   - Go to the tab "Invitation" and press "Send invitation".

The application will now send an Outlook Meeting Request per session date to all participants with the status "Subscribed". The subject and body of the Meeting Request will contain the title and text mentioned on the "Invitation" tab.

Extra configuration options

On the "Invitation" tab, there are a few checkboxes with extra configuration options.

• Online session: this will add an automatic Microsoft Teams link to the meeting request
• Resend invitation automatically: this will send all updates made on the session, participants, dates, ... to all subscribed participants, so you don't have to click on the button "Send invitation". An additional Service Task "Sent or resent session invitations (via Microsoft Graph)" should be configured to determine at what frequency this should be scheduled.

Scenario's

There are a couple of situations in which the application will need to create/update Outlook Meeting Requests. Most scenarios require the user to press the link "Send invitation" or will be triggered with the service task if you have activated the option "Resend invitation automatically" on the session. This allows the user to take multiple actions before triggering the Outlook Meeting Requests.

A message will be displayed above the "Invitation" tab in case a (re)send is required due to modifications that are made to dates, participants, location, supplier or training.

Room reservations

Optionally, it is also possible to make use of the room reservation functionality in Outlook.

Creating the list of Rooms

You first have to configure the list of rooms that can be used. This can be done via Admin > General > Lists > Room.

Each room has a unique e-mail address that will be used in the Outlook Meeting Requests. When adding the "Room" to the List, it is important to provide the correct e-mail address. The Code and Name are just added as a reference for later.

Checking the availability

When adding/updating/deleting session dates on the tab "Dates", an extra field "Room" is added where the user can select a room from the list that was created in the previous step.
After a room was assigned to each session date, the user can press the button "Check room status" to verify if the rooms are still available for the indicated period.

The user has to press the "Send invitation" link before the changes related to the rooms are sent to the subscribed participants.

Things to know

• The responses to the Outlook Meeting Requests are not managed by the application. If a participant rejects, writes a comment, ... it is up to the administrator who has access to the mailbox, to take the necessary actions.
• Users can also delete items from their calendar without sending a notification to the organizer. This is standard Outlook functionality and are not managed by our application.