Sending a calendar invite by use of glide and users email

Does anyone have experience in sending an calendar invitation to a meeting room (which will confirm/reject depending on the availability of the meeting room) in Exchange by using the users own email account ? The meeting room has its own email address

It is e.g. possible to create via an url with a tool like agical.io?

I have zero experience with Exchange accept for using it a decade back at work. So with that in mind, I would think that before sending the invitation you would have to determine if the time slot was open. It seems to me that the confirm/reject would come before even creating the calendar invitation. How is the meeting room status tied to the person you are sending the invite to? Can they look to see if the meeting room is available via some software feature that they are using?

As I understand agical.io it just creates a .ics file that can be opened (sent to) a calendar program.

Hi @Krivo

I have just been having a play around with this! Depending on your PHP skills you can easily generate a HTTP request for this to be generated :slight_smile:

I have just managed to link this to a button on my app and it downloads the ical and asks the user to add it straight away :slight_smile:

The content of the URL could be made dynamic by using the Glide template fields :slight_smile:

Heres a demo link :slight_smile:

http://ablx.co.uk/ICALDEMO/index.php?location=123%20Test%20Street&description=test%20event&summary=test%20summary&url=http://www.google.co.uk&date_start=2020-2-7 01:00M&date_end=2020-2-7 22:00

Simply by changing the text after the PHP variables you can alter the ICS file that is created :slight_smile:

For example if your ICAL file wanted to be for the following details:

  • Location - Glide HQ
  • Description - A Meeting with Glide HQ
  • Summary - A gathering with all the cool people at the glide HQ.
  • URL - http://www.community.glideapps.com
  • Start Date - 2020-2-7 12:00 *Donā€™t want to get up too early :wink: *
  • End Date - 2020-2-7 23:00

You could make your link like this and it would create a correct ICAL :slight_smile:

http://ablx.co.uk/ICALDEMO/index.php?location=Glide HQ&description=A Meeting with Glide HQ&summary=A gathering with all the cool people at the glide HQ.&url=http://www.community.glideapps.com&date_start=2020-2-7 12:00&date_end=2020-2-7 23:00

Give it a try! However donā€™t embed this script as its only on my server temporarily!

Here a demo app to show you it in use :slight_smile:

1 Like

Small Update -

Weekly Reoccurring events can be made by adding &weekly=yes to the end :slight_smile:

Ive updated the demo to show this in action :slight_smile:

@ablx thanks a lot
Iā€™m actually trying to send an invite to the meeting room email e.g. meetingroom1@firm.dk with start /end time.
I cannot see this happening with the iCal but I might be wrong.
When I send an email it will respond with accept or rejection.

@George_B
I donā€™t do an integration with exchange. But the calendar could be made public and in that way I can find out if the meeting room is available.
If so I want to send an invitation to the meeting room email e.g meetingroom1@firm.dk. It will then respond if the room is actually available with a confirmation or not. Only people on the companies domain will be able to send emails to the meeting room mail box - and get a response

so are you trying to make glide send an email to the email address meetingroom1@firm.dk from a users email address ?

Interesting how that works in exchange. So the meeting room has an email address that auto-responses with itā€™s availability. I assume that you have to format the body of the email in a special way so it knows what date and time to check for availability.

Does it automatically book the room as well if it is available?

Exactly but i need somehow to make it a calendar invite with date and time.
And that is what I struggling with

@George_B
If the meeting room mail receives an invite then exchange will book the room if possible otherwise the sender (the user) will get a rejectionšŸ˜œ

@Krivo Do you have an example of what the email needs to contain

@ablx
Well it is an invitation and I donā€™t really know how this look in a mail (if possible)
Guest: Meeting room email
Starts: Start date time
Ends: End date time

The question is if you were to send an email manually to the meeting room email address, what would the subject line and body of the email contain. And then, what would the auto reply contain.

@George_B maybe it isnā€™t an email that is send. It is just sent to an email address but is an invitation. Wonder whether it makes sense?

Are the ā€œmanualā€ steps currently:
You send an invite to a few colleagues and include as one of the invitees the meeting roomā€™s email address.

  1. What happens if the room is available? Do you get an email confirmation from the meeting room?
  2. What happens if the room is not available? Do you get an email stating that the ā€œroomā€ canā€™t make the meeting? What do you do then? What do the others you invited see?

We use exchange at work. Iā€™m guessing meeting invites are much more integrated between Outlook and Exchange. I use my Outlook calendar to set up meetings. I doubt there is an actual specially formatted email thatā€™s sent to the meeting room email and itā€™s instead a server request. The Outlook calendar will check availability of all invitees and sent out accepted or rejected notifications emails through the exchange server. Yes, it appears as an email, but itā€™s most likely an internal notification that appears like an email.

Then again, I could be making all this upā€¦
In hindsight I do get meeting invites from outside contacts, but I doubt they could sent an invite to a room to auto reserve it.

@jeff you are probably right. I might just be making up an illusionary solution.

And I forgot to to mention what Iā€™m actually trying to achieve. Not good being a business analyst :expressionless:
I just want to sent an email to the meeting room because I before hand have checked that the meeting room is available. The situation is so that Iā€™m standing in our meeting center trying to find a meeting room together with the meeting attendees. I just need a meeting room. Therefore I donā€™t need to inform the other participants about where the meeting is. I just need a room. And therefore I need to book an available room.

If it is possible to book just the room it would be fantastic

My best guess would be something through zapier.

@jeff thx for suggestions. Zapier seems too slow for my purpose but it might not be obtainable when Iā€™m thinking. I will keep investigating

1 Like