About personal calendars

Overview

Without Launcher, the typical pathway to accessing personal calendars and calls during a meeting is to use a keyboard to sign-in to Office 365 on the meeting room display, which presents a number of problems: time spent signing in, need for peripherals like keyboard and mouse and, more importantly, security concerns around signing in to individual Office 365 accounts on a shared device.

With Launcher, users can use their smart phone to securely sign in and out of the meeting room display to access their calendar and OneDrive.

How it works 

Using the Launcher mobile app users can sign in with their Office 365 account to get Outlook Calendar and OneDrive information.

Authentication is done using the Microsoft identity platform to retrieve a valid token that is used for accessing Microsoft Graph API . 

As authentication is done in Launcher client apps, the Microsoft token is sent to Launcher Windows securely through RabbitMQ using TLS. This token is never stored, and it is completely forgotten once users disconnect or the application is closed.

Personal calendars

Once signed in to their Office 365 account, users can view their personal calendar and launch calls in via the meeting room display or the Launcher client app.

Viewing a personal calendar via the display

By signing in to Launcher with a 365 account, users get access to 'My Calendar' via the home screen, as is shown in the image below, where a user has signed in and is given access to options to open their Outlook Calendar and One Drive. 

The "My Calendar" option generates a new window that will show any meetings that are scheduled with the user's Outlook Calendar, as is illustrated in the screenshot below.

In the screenshot below Carlos has opened his calendar, which shows that he has a Business Strategy Meeting in the boardroom using Skype for Business from 12pm to 1pm. To start that video call all Carlos to do is tap the Launch now button.

The "My Calendar" window lets users view every scheduled meetings and events for that day. Note that some of these meetings and events may not have been scheduled for the meeting room in which the user is currently signed in, which means that users can access their calendar to launch calls from any room. It is also worth noting that not all meetings will have an associated video conferencing call.

The "My Calendar" window will always open up at the current time, so if it is 2pm, meetings and events will be displayed from this time onwards, with access to past or future events available by swiping left and right. 

Viewing a personal calendar via the mobile app

Like the method for viewing the personal calendar on the display, the Launcher app lets users view every meeting and event scheduled for the current day, which may or may not have an associated video conferencing meeting, which can be used in any room.

And like previous approach, the current day meetings and events can be navigated using swipe interaction, and meetings can be launched onto the main display by tapping the option to launch within the mobile application.

In the example below, Carlos has Business Strategy meeting in the conference room using Microsoft Teams from 2pm to 3pm