Perfecting simplicity is a challenge that has kept the Joan team on their toes for over a decade. During this time, we have paved the way for an entirely new generation of digital signage. Based on an electronic paper concept called Place & Play, Joan enjoys all the cutting-edge privileges a sustainable, secure and sleek e-paper scheduling display has to offer. In this short article, you will discover what it takes to connect Joan to Office 365 calendar.
But there’s one particular feature that has ensured Joan a foot in the door of hundreds of organizations worldwide, and that is its user-friendliness.
A physical extension of your calendar
From ordering and receiving your device to installing and using it, the process of deploying Joan in the office is exceptionally simple. All you need is an appropriate surface, even a glass wall will do, a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connection, and an online calendar.
Joan is virtually a physical extension of your existing digital calendar, meaning it uses your calendar to book and free up rooms. So, for the device to start doing its room management magic, it’s important to know which calendar you use. Why? Because Joan supports the following calendars: Office 365, G Suite, Microsoft Exchange, iCalendar or any other room scheduling solution that allows you to retrieve a publicly accessible .ics file from your calendar.
If you happen to be an Office 365 calendar user, here are a few tricks that’ll perfect your Joan experience.
Can’t book a room without… a room
First, you’ll have to create a Room resource. You can only do so by logging into the Office Portal as an Admin user since regular users lack the necessary permissions to set this up. Then go to the “Resources Rooms and Equipment” section and click “add”. You can name the room whatever your heart desires, which gives scheduling a lovely personal touch.
Another option is to check your room resources in Office 365. To do so, log into “Admin”, proceed to “Exchange admin center” and select “recipients” from the left-hand menu. If the room isn’t listed, add it to your resources by clicking “Resources”, “New”, then select “Room mailbox”, enter the room’s details, click “Save”, and voila – you’ve successfully created a room resource!
Where’s my meeting info?
For Joan to display your meetings correctly, you’ll need to edit a few of the resource’s properties.
The default Office 365 setting shows the name of the organizer instead of the actual event, meaning something that is happening in a particular room. To change this, run Windows PowerShell as an administrator and follow this guide.
Next, run the module as Administrator and connect to Exchange Online PowerShell using multi-factor authentication. This allows Joan to correctly retrieve a meeting’s title and description and display the names of all events scheduled on the room calendar.
Security and permission
To book a room, Joan demands access to read and write your company’s calendar. Nothing more, nothing less. Joan doesn’t access any other data besides the meeting information provided by the calendar and doesn’t permanently store this data on servers. This keeps your mind at ease, knowing that nothing could possibly be leaked.
However, pairing your device with Microsoft Office 365 does involve granting Joan permission to manage your Office 365 calendar. There are two ways of going about this: You can either sign in as a Global Admin User or a Delegated User.
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For a more detailed guide on how to prep Office 365 for Joan and vice versa, follow the instructions found in our Joan Knowledge Base support site.