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Community Articles > Lotus Notes > Notes calendaring and scheduling > How to view a Notes calendar overlay in Outlook
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How to view a Notes calendar overlay in Outlook

If an Outlook user wants to view a Domino user’s calendar in their Outlook client as a read-only calendar feed, they can do that. This will include view-level data about the user’s calendar (no details) provided that you have the appropriate access. To do this, the 9.0.1 Domino server must ...

Getting Domino calendar view data for a range of dates and getting a URL for specific events

This article exposes how to leverage ReadViewEntries to get calendar view data for a range of dates. It also explains how to formulate a URL which would open a specific entry in iNotes.
Community articleHow to view a Notes calendar overlay in Outlook
Added by ~Kim Deshipikony on February 23, 2015 | Version 1
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If an Outlook user wants to view a Domino user’s calendar in their Outlook client as a read-only calendar feed, they can do that. This will include view-level data about the user’s calendar (no details) provided that you have the appropriate access. To do this, the 9.0.1 Domino server must enable REST calendar service. Then, an end user can click a specially formatted link, enter credentials, and view the calendar feed in Outlook.
Tags: outlook overlay
If an Outlook user wants to view a Domino user’s calendar in their Outlook client as a read-only calendar feed, they can do that. This will include view-level data about the user’s calendar (no details) provided that you have the appropriate access.
To do this, the 9.0.1 Domino server must enable REST calendar service. Then, an end user can click a specially formatted link, enter credentials, and view the calendar feed in Outlook.

Install and configure the REST calendar service


1) Verify that the Domino mail server(s) with the mail file(s) that you want to subscribe to is version 9.0.1 or higher.

2) Enable and configure the calendar service for basic authentication


Important: Depending on how your environment is configured, you need to ensure that you make server document and address book changes on your administration server, and not your local server.
a) Use the Domino Administrator client to open the server.
b) Select the Configuration tab, then select Web
 
Internet Sites.
c) If there is an Internet Site document for your server, open it.
a. Click the Edit Web Site action.
b. Select the Configuration tab.
c. In the Domino Access Services section of the form, select the Enabled services drop-down menu.
d. In the Select Keywords dialog, check Calendar if it is there, or else add Calendar using the New keyword field, and make sure it is selected.
e. Internet Site documents for REST URLs use forms authentication. To ensure proper access for users, add a session authentication override rule for the URL */api/*.
d) If you do not have an Internet Site document for your server, then in the Domino Directory navigator, select the Configuration tab, then select Cluster
 
All Server Documents.
i. Open the server document for your server.
ii. Click the Edit Server action.
iii. Select the Internet Protocols tab, then select Domino Web Engine.
iv. In the Domino Access Services section of the form, select the Enabled services drop-down menu.
v. In the Select Keywords dialog, check Calendar if it is there, or else add Calendar using the New keyword field, and make sure it is selected.
vi. Save your changes, and restart the server's HTTP task.
3) Validate the REST service is properly installed by visiting: https://server.ibm.com/api/ and verify you see output that includes:
{

"name":"Calendar",


"enabled":true,
"version":"9.0.2",
"href":"\/api\/calendar"
}

Determine what URL to use for your event feed

You must know the URL to the Domino server and NSF file hosting the mailfile (for instance, the URL you would use to view in iNotes). And, you must have credentials with read level access to the calendar of that mailfile

Example: https://server.ibm.com/mail/flastname.nsf

1) Visit this URL in the browser and verify that you can view the calendar

2) Append “/api/calendar/events?format=icalendar” to the URL in step 1. Visit it via the browser and authenticate if needed.

3) Upon hitting enter, an ics file will attempt to download. Depending on browser/system settings, Notes, Outlook, or another application might attempt to load. If you are prompted to choose an application, simply select Notepad. You should then see a file called “events.ics” that starts with these three lines:


BEGIN:VCALENDAR

VERSION:2.0

BEGIN:VEVENT


4) Close your browser and start a new browser session, visiting the same URL from step 2. You should be prompted to authenticate. If the authentication screen shows “Welcome to Lotus iNotes”… then this is not basic authentication. If this is the case, revisit the first section regarding configuring the REST services (in particular, the part about session authentication override).
A correctly configured server will result in the native browser window’s authentication shows (such as this, but browser dependant):

5) Now, replace the https with webcal in the URL, and you are ready to go! This URL looks like wecal://server.ibm.com/mail/flastname.nsf/api/calendar/events?format=icalendar… and is what you need to distribute to end users to subscribe to that calendar.

Subscribing to the calendar feed in Outlook


1) When an Outlook user has the URL to the calendar feed of the database they want to subscribe tom there are two possibilities:

a. Outlook is configured to handle the webcal protocol and you can simply click the URL you were given

b. Outlook is not configured to handle the webcal protocol. In this case, go to your Outlook calendar and select (from Manage Calendar section of the ribbon): Open Calendar->From Internet. From there, you can past the URL you were given.


2) Once you have followed the above steps, you will be promoted for authentication, which would be the credentials you need to access the calendar (internet credentials)


3) You may want to give the feed a name or set other Advanced properties (but this can be done later). Then click Yes.


4) You should now be able to see the calendar feed in Outlook, toggle it on or off, etc. This will include only a finite amount of future data (not into the past), but is enough for most purposes.

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