Using Microsoft PowerApps with Azure Functions to View Exchange Meeting Room Bookings

Microsoft PowerApps provides a large range of connectors to access data from external services. However, when the service you require is not there what options are available?

One recent scenario I had was to provide a display of the bookings in our organisation's meeting rooms on a given day. We use Exchange Online, as part of Office 365, to manage our meeting room calendars. I needed a way to connect to these meeting room calendars and present the information easily and quickly.

Happily, PowerApps provides the ability to define a custom connector allowing you to access a Web API which provides quite allot of potential.

Using Azure Functions, its possible to create an API that will expose details of meeting room lists (e.g. meeting rooms per building), meeting rooms for a given list and the bookings for a meeting room on a given day.

This API can be used with PowerApps, via the custom connector, to create the solution:

Over a series of posts, I will go through how to build the solution:

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Create a Microsoft PowerApps App to View Meeting Room Bookings

In this series of posts I am creating three Azure Functions to provide an API for use with PowerApps, via a custom connector, to display bookings from Exchange Online meeting rooms. Introduction Creating an Exchange Meeting Rooms API with Azure Functions Create a Microsoft PowerApps App to View Meeting Room Bookings (this post) In this final post of the series we will now use the Azure Functions API in the PowerApps app. Open up PowerApps studio and create a new blank Phone layout. On the first screen, drop in a rectangle shape (which is found on the Insert tab, under the Icons drop down) and position it into shape as a header. Add a label (set the colour white for contrast) and change the text to the name of your app. Then, on the Insert tab click Gallery and choose Vertical. Position it to take up the available width and height under the header. Give it a name, like 'RoomLists'. With the control selected, from the properties pane choo...

Create an Exchange Meeting Rooms API with Azure Functions

In this series of posts I am creating three Azure Functions to provide an API for use with PowerApps, via a custom connector, to display bookings from Exchange Online meeting rooms. Introduction Creating an Exchange Meeting Rooms API with Azure Functions (this post) Create a Microsoft PowerApps App to View Meeting Room Bookings The Azure Functions described here were developed with Visual Studio 2017 using the Azure Functions Tools Add-in that provides an efficient way to create Azure Functions that can be developed and run locally before being deployed to Azure. With the tools installed, create a new project using the Azure Functions template. Once the project is created, right-click on your project in the Solution Explorer and choose Manage NuGet Packages . Search for and install the Microsoft Exchange WebServices package. Create three C# class files, copying the code below (rename the namespaces as appropriate for your project). GetRoomLists.cs ...

Richard McGrath

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