Does your office have Wi-Fi, use a company calendar, and is looking to deploy a room booking solution to manage your meeting spaces? If the answer is yes, then this Joan post is just the post for you!
To work its magic, your Joan device needs three things: a flat surface to be placed on, a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connection, and an online calendar with which to synchronize. Once these conditions are met, we can turn our focus to the types of calendars at our disposal.
Joan-supported calendars
Joan supports four online calendars: Office 365, G Suite, iCalendar and Microsoft Exchange. The integration process is very straightforward. All you need are the proper access rights – Joan Portal. And if you get stuck, you can always follow the instructions in our extensive Knowledge Base.
Now let’s take a peek at some useful calendar-specific information that will help you build a strong relationship with your favorite room booking solution.
G Suite
Please note that connecting Joan with a free Google email account requires a different set of procedures than doing so with the G Suite (Google Apps) account. Check out the differences.
Office 365
If you happen to be using the Office 365 German Edition (office365.de), there are certain steps you’ll have to follow to pair your Joan account with this version of the calendar. Once the proper rights have been delegated, you will be able to add room resources to your Joan portal account.
Microsoft Exchange
Pairing Joan with Microsoft Exchange 2010 and above demands an admin account that can manage and create Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, 2013, 2016 (Outlook) mailboxes. Check out the requirements and follow the necessary steps.
iCalendar
Setting up Joan with iCalendar is easy, but there are certain preparations to consider. One is making sure you have an iCalendar (.ical) URL for each room you want to connect. Another important aspect is that iCalendar is read-only, meaning it doesn’t support booking meetings on the spot. You can also establish this type of (partial) integration with Joan by using other calendar options, such as Zimbra.
Third-party scheduling apps
Is integration also possible with third-party scheduling apps, you ask? It is! The only requirement being that these have to include a “connector” that links one of our official Joan-supported calendars with the 3rd party scheduling system. Another possibility is to integrate the calendar with an .ical file – public URL format.
What about Outlook?
If you’re wondering whether Joan can connect to an Outlook account, wonder no more. It can. As it only functions as an email client for managing a particular mailbox, Outlook can be connected to any email account and thus access a calendar.
For example, if you sync your Gmail account with Outlook, you won’t need to open your browser, but can manage your mail and calendar via the Outlook application on your computer. The question you, therefore, need to answer is: “Which account is my Outlook connected to?” Once you’ve done so, simply check whether Joan supports this email service or not. You can always turn to your administrator for help.