Office 365 REST API - Access meeting rooms calendars

Question

Using the Office 365 API, we'd like to allow users to view meeting rooms calendars and reserve them for events according to their permissions within Office 365.

I understand it's possible with an Admin consent using a service app, but this is not possible for all our use cases. We need to work with the user's actual permissions and not bypass them with the admin's permissions in the background.

I also understood based on this question and that question that it was not possible to do so using the former Office 365 API.

My question is whether it's now possible to do so using the new MS Graph API and whether it's version 1.0 is stable for production use. If not, is it planned to be supported and when?

Thanks!

Claudelle

Answer 1

The Graph API doesn't solve this problem, unfortunately. It has the same authentication limitations as the Outlook APIs. The good news is we are working on changes to enable this scenario, though I don't have any firm timeline.

Version 1.0 of Graph should be stable for production. It is not considered a "preview" or "beta", so you should be fine to use it.

Amey

@Jason Johnston - thanks again for your answer. Since this was posted I understand new APIs have been released. Is it now possible to retrieve meeting rooms calendars to get Free/Busy times? msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/api/… – Claudelle

@JasonJohnston This appears to still be a limitation with the beta Graph APIs. Any news on the ability to do this in the future? – Demonism

Answer 2

You might take a look at the FindMeetingTimes feature and see if it helps. It's currently in preview. To view the details, use this link and then change it to view the Beta version of the article (top right in the main column): https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/api/calendar-rest-operations#Findmeetingtimespreview

Details below from the article, but please use the link to get the latest:

Find meeting times (preview)

Find meeting time suggestions based on organizer and attendee availability, and time or location constraints.

This operation is currently in preview and available in only the beta version.

All the supported scenarios use the FindMeetingTimes action. FindMeetingTimes accepts constraints specified as parameters in the request body, and checks the free/busy status in the primary calendars of the organizer and attendees. The response includes meeting time suggestions, each of which is defined as a MeetingTimeCandidate, with attendees having on the average a confidence level of 50% chance or higher to attend.

Hope that helps.

Buchalter

Thanks @Freya that could be really useful for many of our customers. Any timeline for when this feature goes out of beta? – Claudelle

Thanks again Freya. I understand that this API is now live. Do you know if there's also an option to get the meeting room calendar itself to see free/busy times? – Claudelle

Unfortunately this doesn't work properly due to authorization issues that are waiting to be fixed since Oct 2016... Check github.com/microsoftgraph/microsoft-graph-docs/issues/559 – Neglect