Objective

Integrate Microsoft® Exchange with Coconut to provide staff members with the ability to sync and view appointments in either application.

This article provides an overview of how to create, update, and remove actions on calendar events in Coconut sync with Microsoft® Exchange.

General

Coconut retrieves future events from Microsoft® Exchange (plus one day prior) relative to the date the Exchange user’s calendar is initialized. As a result, events created/updated/deleted in the past will not appear in a staff member’s schedule in Coconut.

The sync can be affected by network bandwidth throttling from the Exchange server for both imported events and exported events, because there is a set number of requests which a server can process within a given timeframe. When the requests exceed this limit, the server delays the requests and processes them again once the queue is cleared up, therefore re-syncing the backed up events.

Hot Tip!

Coconut retrieves changes from Exchange at regular intervals of up to 60 minutes. In other words, it takes on average 5 minutes, but up to 60 minutes, for events to sync. If an event is updated in Coconut before the change is synced from Exchange, the latest changes in Coconut are used.

NOTE: Only mobile phone number is synced through Microsoft Exchange, regardless of the primary phone settings set in Coconut.

Hot Tip!

Coconut recommends breaking up multiple weeks of unavailability into several smaller blocks to ensure that calendar items sync properly.

Event requirements

The following requirements must be met for an event in Coconut to sync to Microsoft® Exchange:

The event must be for a service provider (employee) in Coconut whose email address in Coconut is the same as the primary email address set in Microsoft® Exchange

NOTE: At this time, multi-user appointments are supported if your organization uses Exchange Web Services for the integration with Coconut, but not if your organization uses Graph for the integration.

Create events in Coconut

The following happens when an event created in Coconut is synced to Exchange:

An event is created in the primary calendar in Exchange for that staff member with the following details:
- The name of the service the appointment is for is set as the event title
- The appointment’s location address is set as the event location
  - If it is a virtual appointment, the location field is left blank
- The appointment’s start & end dates & times in Coconut are set in the event details to the correct time zone in Exchange for the staff member
- The event shows as busy in Exchange
- Notes included in the Coconut appointment (as displayed in the Notes tab) are saved in the event description in Exchange
- The first name, last name, and email address of attendees added to the appointment in Coconut are included in the Exchange event’s description field below any notes
- An attendee’s notes and custom question responses from an appointment in Coconut are included in the Exchange event’s description field below the attendee’s first name, last name, and email address

Update events in Coconut

The following are updated in Exchange on a sync if they are updated in Coconut:

The title of an absence event
The appointment’s service (for example, opening an account is updated to investment planning session)
The appointment’s location
The appointment’s date and/or time
Notes are added or modified in the appointment in Coconut
Attendees are added or removed from the appointment in Coconut

NOTE: These updates occur in the employee’s primary calendar in Exchange.

Update staff assignment of an event

When staff members are reassigned to an event in Coconut, the following occurs when synced to Exchange:

The event is removed from the Exchange calendar of the original staff member assigned to the appointment
The event is added to the Exchange calendar of the newly assigned staff member