How to Set Up Rooms Syncing from MS Exchange Calendar to Salesforce Calendar¶
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Rooms syncing from the MS Exchange calendar to the Salesforce calendar is a feature that allows displaying MS Exchange room availability data in Salesforce using RG Sync Engine.
RG Sync Engine can detect and sync the room availability data along with event data from MS Exchange to Salesforce, so users can see the full information about a particular MS Exchange room (i.e., when room is occupied, what event will hold there, when it is available) right in their Salesforce calendar.
This article describes step-by-step guidance on how to set up the sync of rooms from the MS Exchange calendar to the corresponding Salesforce calendar. This feature is controlled by serversync setting SalesforceEventReadResourceLocation which enables (“1”) or disables (default value “0”) special location handling for Events. This feature supports only one-way synchronization from MS Exchange to Salesforce. Therefore, all relevant changes in MS Exchange will be reflected in Salesforce after synchronization.
Proceed with the following steps to set up the sync of rooms from the MS Exchange calendar to the Salesforce calendar.
1. In Admin Panel¶
1.1. Open Revenue Grid Admin Panel and go to the Settings tab
1.2. Find the following settings and set the value = 1 for each to enable them:
a. SalesforceEventLinkResourceLocation = 1
b. SalesforceEventReadResourceLocation = 1
2. In MS Exchange¶
2.1. Check the list of available rooms in the MS Exchange calendar. To find all available rooms list, you can use the Room Finder in your calendar. Also, consult this Microsoft article describing how to use the Room Finder
2.2. Copy the names of the MS Exchange rooms – you will need them for the configuring in Salesforce
3. In Salesforce¶
3.1. Switch to Lightning Experience as described in this article
3.2. Click the Gear (Setup Menu) icon in the upper right corner of the page to open Salesforce Setup menu
3.3. In the Quick Search box in the upper left corner, type "Public Calendars and Resources" to quickly find the necessary tab
3.4. Select Public Calendars and Resources
3.5. On the Resources tab, create the resources with names similar to rooms in MS Exchange, the ones you copied in step 2.2. Click the New button on this tab to start the creation
Note
Matching of Exchange rooms with Salesforce resources is based on the exact room/resource name (non-case sensitive) and to active resources in Salesforce only
Once all configurations are completed, the rooms specified in the MS Exchange calendar items will be synced to the relevant public Resource calendars in Salesforce. Also, for every shared event, the sync engine will add a resource (room) to the corresponding event in the Salesforce calendar:
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as a Text item to the Location field, and
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as a Resource item to the Attendee field
Currently, the rooms syncing feature is based on the following principle: MS Exchange event with only one room (location) can be synced to the public Resource calendar in Salesforce. If more than one room is specified in the MS Exchange event, the sync engine will save them only as a text to the Location field of the relevant Salesforce event and not link to any public Resource.
How to add public (shared) Resource calendars in Salesforce¶
1. Open Salesforce Sales Console and go to the Calendar tab
2. Find Other Calendars on the right-hand pane, click the Gear (Options) icon, and select Add Calendars
3. In the opened Add Calendars dialog, switch from "People" to "Public Calendars and Resources" using the button on the left-hand side of the Select Calendar Type box
4. Start entering the name of the room/resource in the Select Calendar Type box and select the necessary one from the drop-down list
5. Click the Add button to add the selected room/resource to your Salesforce calendar
6. The selected Resource calendar should appear in your Salesforce calendar, displaying slots when this room/resource is occupied
To add more public Resource calendars for other rooms, repeat steps 2-5 described above.
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