Automatic Calendar Integration Stopped

[toriehigh]

Hello!

Many of our travelers used to get automatic calendar invites after booking travel, so that flight info, etc. would be populated into their outlook calendars automatically.  However, that appears to have stopped completely, which is creating issues for our admin teams.  

Our IT team believes that it is not an internal issue, and I'm going to open a case, but I thought I'd check in here to see if anyone else has ever experienced this issue and what steps were required to resolve it.

Thanks!

Torie Hightower

REI

**Professional Edition**

[KevinD]

@toriehigh Hello there. Guess who. LOL. Hope you are doing well. There is a thread somewhere on the Community regarding this. If I remember correctly, the thread was turning off the automatic calendar invites. However, the issue was something with Outlook settings. 

There is a setting for users in their Profile>Profile Settings>Other Settings>System Settings to enable calendar integration. 

Here is our Calendar Integration Setup Guide: https://www.concurtraining.com/customers/tech_pubs/TravelDocs/TSGs/Calendar_Integ_TSG.pdf.

Hopefully this helps.

[toriehigh]

Hi @KevinD, and  helloooo from Lakeridge Drive!  I'm the worst at remembering to come back in here and reply to responses, but this calendar thing has turned into quite the debacle.  Everyone was set up with the automatic integration, and all of our settings are correct, but something changed somewhere.  Our IT team is working through it, but it's definitely a struggle.  I'll let you know if I need some insider assistance, which it may come to.  Thanks!  

[dmcbaird]

Hello, 

This also stopped working for us on Monday, about 5PM CST.  While troubleshooting Exchange Online with Microsoft, one of our engineers found this:Travel: September 2022 Release Notes (concurtraining.com)

It seems to indicate this entire functionality is being (or has been?) deprecated.  Is this true?  Anyone know what the replacement is/how it works?  This will be pretty impactful for our users.

[DebbieBeaulieu]

@KevinD @dmcbaird Since the Automatic Calendar Integration feature has stopped, it has caused quite an issue, especially among Admins who manage multiple traveler's calendars and those that frequently travel and rely on their calendars for those reminders. The manual adds aren't cutting it and is a huge time suck for many users. At our company, I was asked if there was a petition our Admins and frequent travelers could sign to have Concur bring back the feature. @KevinD  - where do we sign up? Is there any possibility that Concur will reconsider retiring this feature? We are liking a lot of the upgrades that are coming, but that one (and the no more drag and drop receipts feature) need to come back, please.

[KevinD]

@DebbieBeaulieu the ability to have bookings added to your calendar hasn't gone away. There is an Outlook setting that must be turned on to have them come in. See this from Microsoft Support: Calendar Events. Also see my response to @toriehigh in this thread.

[DebbieBeaulieu]

Thank you for the Outlook Calendar Events information, and I will pass that on. We have it turned on here, but it doesn't work, so we'll investigate with our IT group. In the meantime, know that we would love to have the Concur Calendar Integration feature brought back into the Professional Edition of Concur.

[billwalker]

Could this sudden issue where Calendar items from Concur are not automatically entered into Outlook be due to the fact that Basic Authentication for MS is not allowed any longer? Isn't this the process that the Calendar integration vent from Concur relies on? In the PDF document linked by Kevin D earlier, it states the following:

"Note: The calendar integration relies on Basic Authentication for Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft is actively disabling Basic Authentication for protocols that tenants are not using. For this reason, a new activation of this feature will no longer work."

[billwalker]

Could this sudden issue where Calendar items from Concur are not automatically entered into Outlook be due to the fact that Basic Authentication for MS is not allowed any longer? Isn't this the process that the Calendar integration vent from Concur relies on? In the PDF document linked you earlier, it states the following:

"Note: The calendar integration relies on Basic Authentication for Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft is actively disabling Basic Authentication for protocols that tenants are not using. For this reason, a new activation of this feature will no longer work."

[Sgathaich]

The calendar integration feature is missing from System settings so this does not fix the issue. Who can address this?

There is a setting for users in their Profile>Profile Settings>Other Settings>System Settings to enable calendar integration. 

[KevinD]

@Sgathaich I'm a little confused by your post. You say the calendar integration feature is missing from system settings, but then you say there is an option in their profile under System Settings. 🙂

Are you saying the calendar integration is not showing in Profile>Profile Settings>Other Settings>System Settings?

[Sgathaich]

There is supposed to be a setting as described above, but I don't have it. 

[KevinD]

@Sgathaich the calendar integration option must be enabled by your site administrator for you to see that option. In doing some research, this option may no longer be available. I'm waiting for confirmation. However, you should still be able to have trips added to your calendar when you receive a booking confirmation email. There is a setting in Web Outlook to allow for event items to auto-add to your calendar.