Meetings are Double Booked
SS&E uses the institutional Outlook Exchange API when checking for each person's availability to schedule a meeting.
If meetings are being scheduled at the same location with overlapping times, this is most likely due to a delay from the Outlook Exchange free/busy API. In theory, the free/busy Exchange API should be instantaneous and is what prevents meetings from being double booked. However, if double booking occurs, this is the first place to check.
- In order to sync meetings via the Outlook API, the user's primary email domain must match the service account domain in Meetings Configuration found here.
- Meetings at different locations may overlap by design if allowOverlappingMeetingAvailabilities is set to "True". More information about this Application Configuration setting can be found here.
If the Application Configuration setting is False, the following instructions explain how to test the Outlook Exchange free/busy API by using the scheduling assistant:
- Log into Office 365 with the EWS Service Account credentials (listed in SS&E Administration - Application Administration if using basic Auth)
- Schedule a test meeting.
- Find this test meeting in the Office365 calendar.
- Click on the meeting, then click edit.
- Click on Scheduling Assistant.
- Verify that the event is displaying both on the calendar you logged in with on step 1 and on the calendar of the staff member that the meeting is scheduled with.
If the test results show that the filled time slots are still displaying as available, then it explains why SS&E is currently able to double book a meeting at the same location with an overlapping meeting time.
For a resolution, this must be escalated to the your local IT staff in order to fix the Outlook Exchange free/busy API.
Meetings are only double-booked for an individual user
If Meeting Scheduler is working for most users, yet an individual user is experiencing double-bookings or inconsistencies between the availability displayed in their calendar and within SS&E:
- Confirm that the user's individual calendar permissions/settings are configured so that their free/busy status is available to others and not set to private.
- The service account must be able to read their free/busy status for Meeting Scheduler to accurately reflect their availability.
All Time Slots are "Busy"/There is no meeting scheduling availability
If the calendar displays no time slots to select from then most likely there is an associated email address that is invalid.
If this is the issue, as soon as an invalid email address is corrected, the calendar availability will immediately display.
To find an invalid email address, find the staff member(s) who should be available and check the email address that displays on their Person record.
- From SS&E Administration-People & Roles-People, find each "available" staff member.
- Verify the primary email address on the Person record.
- Verify the primary email address on the Person-Override menu.
- If there is an email address entered in the Override "emailAddress", remove this, save the Override menu, and re-enter it if necessary.
- When present, any value that is on the Override menu takes precedent.
- A space or extra character will cause a value to be "invalid", and sometimes this is invisible or difficult to identify from the UI.
- Removing, saving, and re-entering the value is the quickest way to test this and see if this was causing the missing time slots/no calendar availability.
- If any email address was found invalid, once corrected test meeting scheduling again.
- If there is nothing invalid on the Person record email causing the missing time slots, please open a ticket with SS&E Support.
After selecting "Schedule a Meeting" with a specific person, the Meeting Scheduler prompts for a location/who to meet with
The reported issue is that when a student selects “Schedule a Meeting” with someone listed on their Home Page - Success Team, the meeting scheduler prompts the student for a meeting location ("Choose a location"). In addition, there are also many times when students have to search again for the person they selected initially to meet with.
- The reason that a student is prompted for a location is that they do not have a default location importing from the SIS*.
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- If a student does have a default location then it will be listed on their student profile displayed under "Campus".
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- The reason that a student is prompted to select a person again from "Know who you want to meet with?" is that they selected a subsequent location after their first meeting location selection**.
*Click here to view the SIS Import Data Definitions. Scroll to the Person data feed to find the locationId that displays as the "Primary campus/location a student is affiliated with." This imported value must match a location imported on the Location data feed.
**After a student selects "Schedule a Meeting" from their home page, whether the students chooses a location that is "correct" (meaning that it is listed in User Settings "Meeting Request Locations" for the "person they are meeting with") or not, the message "Meeting with persontype firstname lastname" will only display once. If this message appears and the student then selects a different location, the system will not "remember" the persontype firstname lastname from whom the meeting scheduling originated on.
If the student does not go back to "start over" and select a "correct" meeting location associated with the person they are meeting with (from the staff/faculty User Settings), or if the student does not know which location to choose and chooses the "wrong" location the first time they select a location, then all subsequent meeting location selections will require the student to search and select a person from "Who do you want to meet with?".
Furthermore, each subsequent meeting location selection will only allow students to select staff/faculty from the person dropdown that are associated with the selected meeting location on their User Settings.
There was a problem loading the available time slots
The meeting scheduler message "There was a problem loading the available time slots" indicates a communication error in the calendar integration.
- If Meetings Configuration shows that the Authentication Type is set to "Basic Authentication" then most likely the reason for this error is that Microsoft has deprecated Basic Auth.
- The first thing to try in order to resolve this error is to switch to OAuth Authentication, further explained in the following article found here. If you are already configured with OAuth then proceed with the troubleshooting steps below.
Administration
The following items must be entered correctly in Meetings Configuration Administration so that SS&E calendar integration will function properly.
- External Calendar Integration Method
- Authentication Type
- Service Account Name
- Service Account Email Address *The domain of the service email address must match the users email address.
- Tenant Id (only applicable for Microsoft Exchange EWS Calendar Integration)
If any of the above information is out of date or incorrect that would explain why calendar integration isn't working properly.
- Unfortunately, there is no way to determine if meeting scheduler settings are correct by looking at the Meeting Configuration Administration page since this information is provided at each individual institution by the IT staff/Email Administrator.
Troubleshooting
The first thing to check is the meeting configuration authentication settings that include the authentication type, service account name, service email address, and EWS Tenant Id found here.
- Verify that the email exchange service account information and authentication method are correct.
- Verify that the EWS Tenant Id is linked (applicable for EWS Calendar Integration).
- Verify that Autodiscovery is enabled for the above service account credentials. In order to communicate properly, Autodiscovery must be turned on and enabled for the provided Exchange account credentials configured in SS&E Administration Meeting Configuration.
- Test the account/service. Click here for troubleshooting steps to test the MS Exchange calendar integration account and Autodiscovery status.
Example
If the EWS Tenant Id displays in Meeting Configuration as "Not Linked", then SS&E will be unable to establish an EWS connection to retrieve calendar data and "There was a problem loading the available time slots" will appear. What this means is that most likley the integration steps were not completed or something changed. In order to resolve this, the EWS OAuth Authentication Integration Steps found here must be verified.
Summary
To summarize, in most cases this message appears because a step was missed or something changed in the calendar integration settings. To resolve this message:
- Verify that Calendar Integration was set up correctly by following the document found here.
- Verify that Calendar Integration was set up correctly by following the document found here.
- In addition, complete the steps in the document found here.
How to test if Outlook Autodiscovery is properly enabled:
Using the service account information configured in Meeting Configuration, test the Autodiscovery service to make sure that it is available for the Scheduler account by utilizing the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer found here: https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/tests/O365Ola/input.
Meeting Scheduler Time Zone is displayed Incorrectly in SS&E
By design, SS&E does not manage times zones and all calendars in Student Success & Engagement display the time zone that is associated with the logged-in user.
For this reason, each user should always enter their meeting availability and/or schedule meetings with others in their own time zone.
Any meeting displayed in another time zone that does not match up with the meeting time initially used to schedule a meeting in SS&E will need to be resolved by the institutional IT staff.
Meetings Scheduler is listing availability during times that are not available on the user's calendar
Most likely, the reason for this is that the user's default calendar permissions are set to "None" instead of "Free/Busy". Once changed, the calendar availability should start behaving as expected.