Skip to main content

Create a Microsoft Teams Group Calendar tab application using the Graph API and FullCalendar JavaScript library

Group calendars have always been one of the big asks for in any group collaboration programs back from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange and now Microsoft Teams. There are a few ways of getting a Group calendar working in Teams, one is hosting the OWA web apps see or some other people advocate using a SharePoint calendar and hosting that similarly.

Here is a different method you can use by taking advantage of being able to call the Graph API in a  Tab application.The getSchedule Graph action (still currently in beta) allows you to query up to 62 days of Freebusy information on up to 100 calendars in a single call this makes it a good option for this type of application. So as long as users can view each others calendars or have detailed freebusy permissions the action should return the level of detail required for a Group calendar.   The other thing you can do with the Graph API is get the users photo and build a nice legend for the Group calendar also. To make this visually appealing you need a good calendar display library which there has been a few over the years but a recent one that is really nice is FullCalendar https://fullcalendar.io/ . It ticks all the boxes it looks great, its easy to use and its free to use. To make the calendar appointments from graph appear in the calendar is as easy as building and array from the return JSON from the graph and throwing in a little random color code to break this up and then stitching in the user photos as they are returned asynchronously from the server to build the legend.
 Here are some screenshots of the Tab in action using Graph data


    Daily view


Weekly view


List view


 I've put together a separate GitHub repository for all the code that is required for this app https://github.com/gscales/TeamsGroupCalendar and put some detailed install instruction in the Readme in Github.

 I'm currently looking for work either contract or fulltime so if you need a creative developer with lots of energy to write C#,JS, NodeJS, Azure or Lambda functions, Messaging DevOps or PowerShell scripts then please contact me  at gscales@msgdevelop.com
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Gr...
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

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
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.