Help with managing Calendars

[Liamnacuac]

I work for an agency that has dozens of projects and CAD managers with thousands of drawings and print dates, etc. We are using SharePoint to control the documents, Autodesk included, and we synchronize with a network hard drive(s) and an FTP site for downloads. I am working converting to OneDrive for at least the FTP side, but I am not experienced in how to use one drive to replace our collaboration system, although I want to. Baby steps for now.
My question is this; We have Office 365 accounts and use Outlook calendars and SharePoint Calendars, BUT our schedulers provide us with quarterly .xls spreadsheets with milestones listed. If I were to create a collaboration calendar in SharePoint, I will have to transfer dozens these dates to my site quarterly, and I've been told even then the dates are only vaguely accurate. Does anyone have a good system that works with Office products, that I can tie information together without having to manually touch the data (the calendar dates)? Is this task a "Cat Herding" task?

[BlackBox]

The 'simplest way' to do what you're after, is to use PowerShell... What you're going to have to learn to do what you're after, not so simple (unless you have internal/external enterprise Exchange/O365 help).



Basically, Microsoft Office 365 (O365) is dependent on PowerShell. Period. Yes, there's a UI, and a cozy lil' web portal to log into, etc. but to actually 'manage' O365, Active Directory sync, DNS, SSL Certificates, crossover between O365 (online) & on-premise Exchange server, Skype for business (FKA Lync), etc. one must use PowerShell; that's just how it is.

You're essentially going to want to use PowerShell to write a script that iterates your collaborative calendar(s), and export those events to Excel... and perhaps a reverse script that will effectively 'import' events (so long as they do not already exist?).

That said, here are some links I have saved that may help get you started:

http://powershell.office.com/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../dn568031.aspx



Cheers

[BlackBox]

Here's another useful O365 PowerShell reference; ended up needing to refer to it today, as it happens:

http://o365info.com/manage-office-36...assword-using/


Note - Pay special attention to the 'Read More' area under the "PowerShell | Help & additional information" heading (below Table of Contents).



Cheers

[Liamnacuac]

This might work! I wonder if I'll get it working before Microsft or someone else comes up with an app or a tool

[BlackBox]

This might work! I wonder if I'll get it working before Microsft or someone else comes up with an app or a tool

They did already come up with a tool - it's called PowerShell.



Pending some permissions being added to your user account (Active Directory), Outlook, Sharepoint, etc. you can already use this tool, just hit the Windows button and start typing "PowerShell" - there's two flavors, Windows PowerShell (aka Console), and Windows PowerShell ISE, both of which can be run as Administrator.

This may also be of use:

https://4sysops.com/archives/10-reas...shell-console/



Cheers

[Liamnacuac]

HaHAHa!! Alright! I get it, I'll check Powershell. I already use it to do my synchronization to SharePoint and FTP.