Skip to main content

Twitter your Exchange Calendar reminders using Powershell and the EWS Managed API

As twitter is now more a part of the everyday rather than a flash in the pan it does give some new options for solving those time old problems the annoy us all. One of these is missing your meeting reminders or making sure your team or company don’t forget about any important calendar events if you have a company calendar or mailbox. Exchange and Outlook have always had a good functionality for tracking and setting reminders but human nature has something to do with us ignoring or not receiving them.

So how can scripting and a little EWS code solve this well it first has to start with a query of the calendar where the appointments you want to search against are located. Because reminders can be set for 2 weeks before an appointment you need to query for appointments during this time frame. Then filter anything thats set to private and you have some appointments that might have reminders you need to twitter. But before this you first need to use a little maths

x = minutesbeforeappointment or the calendar appointments .ReminderMinutesBeforeStart
y = Appointment StartTime
n = The Current time

so if (y-x) > n and (y-x)< n+15 and the last twitter anouncement doesn't have the same subject Twitter the subject of the appointment with the Start DateTime Attached. This means that if the appointment reminders is due in the next 15 minutes it will be twiitered. eg if the appoinment starts at 8:00 AM and has a 30 minute reminder then between 7:15 and 7:30 if this script was run it would twitter the reminder

Before running this script you need to set the email address of the mailbox where the calendar you want to twitter is located (if its a public folder then you would need to add some code to find that folderID first). And you also need to set the Twitter UserName and Password

eg

$MailboxName = "company@yourdomain.com"
$twitterusername = "username"
$twitterpassword = "password"


I've put a download of this script here the code itself look like

$MailboxName = "user@domain.com"

$twitterusername = "userName"
$twitterpassword = "password"


function updateTwiterStatus($PostString){

$tweetstring = [String]::Format("status={0}", $PostString )
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::Expect100Continue = $false
$request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create("http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml")
$request.Credentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential($twitterusername,$twitterpassword)
$request.Method = "POST"
$request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
$formdata = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($tweetstring)
$request.ContentLength = $formdata.Length
$requestStream = $request.GetRequestStream()
$requestStream.Write($formdata, 0, $formdata.Length)
$requestStream.Close()
$response = $request.GetResponse()
$reader = new-object System.IO.StreamReader($response.GetResponseStream())
$returnvalue = $reader.ReadToEnd()
$reader.Close()

}

function GetTwitterStatus(){
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::Expect100Continue = $false
$request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create("http://twitter.com/users/show/" + $twitterusername)
$request.Credentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential($twitterusername,$twitterpassword)
$request.Method = "GET"
$request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
$response = $request.GetResponse()
$ResponseStream = $response.GetResponseStream()
$ResponseXmlDoc = new-object System.Xml.XmlDocument
$ResponseXmlDoc.Load($ResponseStream)
$StatusNodes = @($ResponseXmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("status"))
$returnStatus = $StatusNodes[0].text
$ResponseXmlDoc.Save("c:\dd.xml")
return $returnStatus.ToString()
}

$dllpath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\1.0\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll"
[void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($dllpath)
$service = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2007_SP1)

$windowsIdentity = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
$sidbind = "LDAP://<SID=" + $windowsIdentity.user.Value.ToString() + ">"
$aceuser = [ADSI]$sidbind

$service.AutodiscoverUrl($aceuser.mail.ToString())

$folderid = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::Calendar,$MailboxName)
$CalendarFolder = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.CalendarFolder]::Bind($service,$folderid)

$cvCalendarview = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.CalendarView
$cvCalendarview.StartDate = [System.DateTime]::Now
$cvCalendarview.EndDate = [System.DateTime]::Now.AddDays(14)
$cvCalendarview.MaxItemsReturned = 200;
$cvCalendarview.PropertySet = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.PropertySet([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.BasePropertySet]::FirstClassProperties)

$upset = 0
$statusup = 0

$frCalendarResult = $CalendarFolder.FindAppointments($cvCalendarview)

foreach ($apApointment in $frCalendarResult.Items){

if ($apApointment.Sensitivity -ne [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Sensitivity]::Private -band $apApointment.IsReminderSet -eq $true){
$ReminderSendTime = $apApointment.Start.AddMinutes(-$apApointment.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart)
if ($ReminderSendTime -ge [System.DateTime]::Now -band $ReminderSendTime -le [System.DateTime]::Now.AddMinutes(15))
{
$twitString = $apApointment.Subject.ToString()
if ($twitString.Length -gt 140){$twitString = $twitString.Substring(0,110)}
$twitString = $twitString + " Starts : " + $apApointment.Start.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") + " "
[String]$currentStatus = GetTwitterStatus
$twitString = $twitString.Substring(0,$twitString.length-1)
write-host $twitString.ToLower().ToString()
write-host $currentStatus.ToLower().ToString()
if ($currentStatus.ToLower().ToString() -ne $twitString.ToLower().ToString()){
if ($statusup -ne 3){$statusup = 1}
$upset = 1
}
else{
$statusup = 3
}
}

}

}
if ($statusup -eq 1){
updateTwiterStatus($twitString)
"Twitter Status Updated"
}
else {"Nothing changed since last update"}
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Export calendar Items to a CSV file using Microsoft Graph and Powershell

For the last couple of years the most constantly popular post by number of views on this blog has been  Export calendar Items to a CSV file using EWS and Powershell closely followed by the contact exports scripts. It goes to show this is just a perennial issue that exists around Mail servers, I think the first VBS script I wrote to do this type of thing was late 90's against Exchange 5.5 using cdo 1.2. Now it's 2020 and if your running Office365 you should really be using the Microsoft Graph API to do this. So what I've done is create a PowerShell Module (and I made it a one file script for those that are more comfortable with that format) that's a port of the EWS script above that is so popular. This script uses the ADAL library for Modern Authentication (which if you grab the library from the PowerShell gallery will come down with the module). Most EWS properties map one to one with the Graph and the Graph actually provides better information on recurrences then...
Read more

Downloading a shared file from Onedrive for business using Powershell

I thought I'd quickly share this script I came up with to download a file that was shared using One Drive for Business (which is SharePoint under the covers) with Powershell. The following script takes a OneDrive for business URL which would look like https://mydom-my.sharepoint.com/personal/gscales_domain_com/Documents/Email%20attachments/filename.txt This script is pretty simple it uses the SharePoint CSOM (Client side object Model) which it loads in the first line. It uses the URI object to separate the host and relative URL which the CSOM requires and also the SharePointOnlineCredentials object to handle the Office365 SharePoint online authentication. The following script is a function that take the OneDrive URL, Credentials for Office365 and path you want to download the file to and downloads the file. eg to run the script you would use something like ./spdownload.ps1 ' https://mydom-my.sharepoint.com/personal/gscales_domain_com/Documents/Email%20attachments/filen...
Read more

Sending a MimeMessage via the Microsoft Graph using the Graph SDK, MimeKit and MSAL

One of the new features added to the Microsoft Graph recently was the ability to create and send Mime Messages (you have been able to get Message as Mime for a while). This is useful in a number of different scenarios especially when trying to create a Message with inline Images which has historically been hard to do with both the Graph and EWS (if you don't use MIME). It also opens up using SMIME for encryption and a more easy migration path for sending using SMTP in some apps. MimeKit is a great open source library for parsing and creating MIME messages so it offers a really easy solution for tackling this issue. The current documentation on Send message via MIME lacks any real sample so I've put together a quick console app that use MSAL, MIME kit and the Graph SDK to send a Message via MIME. As the current Graph SDK also doesn't support sending via MIME either there is a workaround for this in the future my guess is this will be supported.
Read more
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.