Exchange Availability Dashing Widget

README.md

This is a dashing job to find users' availability in their Exchange calendar and puts it on a dashboard.

Note: I am not a rubyist. I'd certainly welcome some idiomadicy lessons in the comments.

Setup

Drop ews-availability.rb in jobs/ (or dashing install b084fa409966f22badaf), and add the following settings to config.ru:

set :ews_uri, 'https://exchange.example.com/ews/Exchange.asmx'
set :ews_user, '[email protected]'
set :ews_pass, 'super-cool-password'
set :ews_email_list, ['[email protected]','[email protected]','[email protected]']

Note that your user needs access to talk to Exchange via EWS and read free/busy details from specified users.

Then add 'gem 'viewpoint' to your Gemfile and bundle again to install it.

When you run your dashboard, the job will run every 5 minutes and publish availability for each user in the list as ews-availability-[emailaddress] e.g. [email protected].

I like to use the Simplemon widget I found here as the dashboard widget for the data:

  <li data-row="1" data-col="4" data-sizex="1" data-sizey="1">
    <div data-id="[email protected]" data-view="Simplemon" data-title="Example User"></div>
  </li>

Statuses

The job checks back and ahead 30 minutes to see if there are any meetings in progress or coming up.

Valid statuses are:

• Currently marked busy: "BUSY"
• Becoming free within 10 minutes: "HERE SOON"
• Becoming busy within 10 minutes: "BUSY SOON"
• No meetings within threshold: "HERE"

Screenshots

busy.PNG

ews-availability.rb

require 'viewpoint'
require 'time'
include Viewpoint::EWS


# EWS puts things in stupid-complicated XML results.
# The C# SDK makes it easy to work with, the Ruby one doesn't.
# Just feel around in the result hash until we get the info we're looking for
# Oh god, I don't know how to Ruby
def get_user_arrays(hash)
	hash.body.first[:get_user_availability_response][:elems].first[:free_busy_response_array][:elems]
end

def get_user_events(user)
	if(user == nil)
		return nil
	end
	user[:free_busy_response][:elems][1][:free_busy_view][:elems][1][:calendar_event_array][:elems] 
	
	rescue
		return nil
end

def get_event_subject(event)
	event[:calendar_event][:elems][3][:calendar_event_details][:elems][1][:subject][:text]
end

SCHEDULER.every '5m', :first_in => 0 do |job|

#==== CONFIGURATION: Please define these variables in config.ru ====#
	endpoint = nil
	if ! defined? settings.ews_uri
		print_warning("Please configure ews_uri in config.ru!")
		next
	else
		endpoint = settings.ews_uri
	end

	user = nil
	if defined? settings.ews_user
		user = settings.ews_user
	end
	
	pass = nil
	if defined? settings.ews_pass
		pass = settings.ews_pass
	end
	
	# Array of email addresses. Who we're asking EWS about
	userlist = settings.ews_email_list
	
#========== /CONFIGURATION ==========#

	cli = Viewpoint::EWSClient.new endpoint,user,pass
	cli.set_time_zone 'Eastern Standard Time'

	# Set our current time, the "...soon" threshold and the
	# whole window we are going to request from EWS
	now = Time.now #Time.parse("2014-07-15 14:00:00 -0400")
	lower = now - (10*60)
	upper = now + (10*60)
	start = now - (30*60)
	endt = now + (30*60)

	start_time = start.iso8601
	end_time = endt.iso8601

	# Make the EWS call. :detailed view returns more data than we need right now
	# but who knows, we may use it.
	user_free_busy = cli.get_user_availability(userlist,
	  start_time: start_time,
	  end_time:   end_time,
	  requested_view: :detailed
	)

	# Separate free/busy data for each user into an array
	users = get_user_arrays(user_free_busy)

	# EWS doesn't return email addresses in the huge XML
	# they drop on us, but they are in the same order as
	# we requested, so we can just use a counter and line up
	# with the userlist.
	i = 0

	users.each do |user|
	
		busy = 'Here'
		color = 'green'
		user_events = get_user_events(user)
		
		# User has no events in this time range. Not busy.
		if(user_events == nil)
			# Send event to clients
			send_event("ews-availability-#{userlist[i]}",{value: busy, color: color})
			i+=1
			
			next
		end
		
		user_events.each do |event|
			st = Time.parse(cli.event_start_time(event))
			et = Time.parse(cli.event_end_time(event))

			# User has an event happening now.
			# Set busy and stop looking, because 
			# that's most important status
			if (st <= now and et >= now)
				busy = 'Busy'
				color = 'red'
				break
			end
			
			# User has an event ending soon.
			# Set status, but keep looking in case
			# they have another meeting
			if (st < lower and et > lower)
				busy = 'Here Soon'
				color = 'yellow'
			end	
			
			# User has an event starting soon.
			# Set status, but keep looking in case
			# they are currently in a meeting
			if (st < upper and et > upper)
				busy = 'Busy Soon'
				color = 'yellow'
			end
		end	
		
		# Send event to clients
		send_event("ews-availability-#{userlist[i]}",{value: busy, color: color})
		
		i+=1
	end
end

here.PNG

soon.PNG

I can't get this to work no matter what I try. I'm getting an empty events array, and I've actually checked the response given by get_user_availability, and there's absolutely no reference for the calendar, it's nowhere to be found. I'm using Office 365 online to test this. Can you help me with this?

I can see events in /events which means I'm getting the data, but the panels aren't updating. I may not have a proper installation of simplemon though as I copied the raw widget folder into place rather than installing the rest. (Never mind, got it working, I had the wrong widgets set it is working now. I did need to generate an app-password as I use MFA however.

Additional note, EWS support is ending October 2020.