If your organization relies on Microsoft Office 365 for emails, documents, calendars, etc. and uses Freshservice to run your service desk, here’s the Office 365 Calendar integration to make both of them work together, better.
The integration between Freshservice and Office 365 Calendar allows agents to sync scheduled Tasks and Changes in Freshservice with their Office 365 Calendar account, in real-time. This allows them to know what their schedule looks like if service desk activities are added on top of their non-service desk activities such as team meetings, for example.
In addition, if agents need to meet the requester to resolve an issue, they will be able to schedule meetings with requesters at a mutually convenient time from right within the ticket interface. Freshservice will automatically suggest best times based on the schedules of both the agent and requester.Freshservice will automatically suggest best times based on the schedules of both the agent and requester.
To get started with setting up the Office 365 Calendar integration for Freshservice, follow the instructions below:
1. Go to the Admin console and click on Apps and search for office 365 calendar and click on Install.
2. Upon clicking on Install, you will be redirected to your Office 365 login page to authorize Freshservice to access your Office 365 account. Sign in with your credentials to continue.
3. In the page that follows, select the checkbox against events that you wish to sync with the Office 365 Calendar account i.e Tasks and Changes.
Select the checkbox against the option “Allow agents to schedule meetings with ticket requesters” if you wish to allow agents to schedule meetings with requesters to resolve any issues they may have.
Finally, hit Enable to finish the process and enable the auto-sync of calendar events
Once the integration has been enabled by the Admin, agents will have to authorize their Freshservice account to use it. There are two ways to do this,
1. Agents can follow the instructions specified in the email to authorize their Freshservice account.
Click on the Authorize button to authenticate the Freshservice account to use the Office 365 Calendar integration. A pop-up similar to the one shown earlier will appear requesting confirmation. Click on Yes to continue.
Note: When agents authorize Freshservice to use the Office 365 Calendar integration, they must be logged into their respective Office 365 accounts.
Schedule meetings with Requester:
With the Office 365 Calendar integration, agents will be able to schedule meetings with requesters to solve issues at a mutually convenient time. This can be done right from the ticket details page by clicking on the Schedule meeting with Requester option on the ticket details page.
Based on the existing calendar entries of both the Agent and the Requester, Freshservice suggests a range of best times to schedule a meeting. However, agents can also specify a time of their choice by specifying the Date, Start Time and End Time.
Once the date and time have been selected, hit the Schedule Meeting button to confirm. Details of this meeting will now be added to the Agent and Requester’s calendar along with an email notification.
Note: If your account is in the MSP mode, best times will be suggested only based on the Agent’s calendar as there are no Requesters, only Customers.
Office 365 Calendar View:
This is what an agent’s Office 365 Calendar looks like with the Freshservice integration. Information about all the scheduled tasks, changes and requesters will be available in one place thus saving time and effort involved with updating this information twice.
And that's it. Now that you've set up the integration between Freshservice and Microsoft Office 365 Calendar, agents and admins can now efficiently manage their time on and off the service desk along with enjoying a host of other features that come with these two products.
