Any Way to Transfer Calendar Data into/out of Exchange?
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 11:20am
I'm working on an Intranet for the Archdiocese, and one of the primary concerns brought up by the Data Center is online calendaring. They mentioned that our offices already use Microsoft Exchange/Outlook for shared and personal calendaring functionality, and they don't want to create duplication of efforts (or, worse, mismatched data) between the Intranet and Exchange.
My searching so far has been entirely futile, but I'm wondering—is there any way at all to import, export, sync, or do pretty much anything with calendar data in MS Exchange? Using Drupal, I can grab almost any type of information from anywhere and output that data in any format imaginable, so it's hard for me to believe a product as huge as Exchange could be entirely insular.
(This is related to my earlier question about whether I should work with SharePoint for an Intranet). Also, here's the reference issue on the Archdiocesan development site: Decide what to do about Online Calendaring...
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 11:43am
#2
The problem is, there are so
The problem is, there are so many more things against my adoption of SharePoint that I really, really want to avoid that. I'd more likely scrap all calendaring functionality on the Intranet than use Sharepoint to get that working... and, even in Sharepoint, calendar integration isn't the best... especially for certain group calendaring functions.
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 11:59am
#3
I received a link to one of
I received a link to one of these articles from @bennyfactor on Twitter... looks like Exchange Web Services could have some of the magic that is needed, but it might be (a) prohibitively time consuming, and (b) a HUGE ordeal. Like most things Microsoft :-/
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 10:16pm
#4
Dude...
Just walk - scratch that - run away. ;)
Seriously though, your A & B assessments are spot on. My guess is you're going to have to dig deep into the guts of Active Directory and Exchange. Very worthwhile if you want to be an MS Network Administrator (which I was for 5 long years)...but in the end you might know more about the network than the entire IT staff and you can start taking support calls on it. ;)
If you can get by with just creating a 'read-only' view of a calendar(s)...you could try sticking OWA in an iframe - here's a link that'll probably get you there: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31919360/exchange-public-cale...
Here's a link to a guy trying suck the calendar into ICS: http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/05/28/in-search-of-an-ics-publishing-compo...
M$ did publish the protocol used for some of that functionality, but they're complex and more trouble than its worth to try re-implementing. Honestly, you're better off just using sharepoint to do what you want.