Cronofy calendar integration

Public

PageUp and Cronofy

PageUp has partnered with Cronofy to provide real-time scheduling and 2-way calendar sync.

Schedule interviews and meetings in minutes based on real-time availability of users and meeting rooms including conferencing.

For user information refer to Calendar integration (login required).

Demo

About Cronofy

Cronofy is a UK based SaaS vendor offering a suite of APIs that SaaS vendors rely on to power embedded scheduling into their services.

Cronofy is compatible with all major calendar services plus conferencing.

Integrated conferencing:

  • Google Meet is the integrated conferencing for Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite)
  • Teams is the integrated conferencing for Office 365

Default conferencing:

  • 8x8 for all other calendar providers such as Exchange

Custom conferencing:

  • Zoom
  • GoTo Meeting

PageUp has partnered with Cronofy for their Enterprise Connect service.

Enterprise Connect - allows the connection of an entire organisation's calendars, ensuring all staff & meeting room calendars are accessible for availability & creating events.

Provides the option to restrict permission set to free / busy only as well as set availability preferences and working hours.

PageUp uses the following Cronofy services:

Privacy and Security

Data is hosted via AWS data centres in the USA, Germany (EU), Australia and Singapore.

In terms of Cronofy accessing and storing the data, Cronofy by default takes the position that they want access to as little data as possible. However, full mailbox access is requested by default, because of how the AWS API is architected (more information). Cronofy only stores the data required to provide services, and data is typically only stored for 30 days before being deleted. Data is encrypted both in transit, and at rest, and Access Control policies are in place to ensure data is at all times, protected.

Using Enterprise Connect, clients can restrict Service Account access to only calendar folders (as opposed to the whole mailbox). Clients can also configure which accounts can be impersonated using distribution groups. If clients require more visibility of  PageUp/Cronofy activity, Mailbox Auditing, and alerting is also available. This allows clients' IT to monitor (and alert) against what the Service Account is doing, and can be configured to alert if it breaches rules.

Clients maintain full control over the access that Cronofy has. This can be revoked at any time.

Cronofy takes Information Security incredibly seriously, managing a robust information security program, ensuring compliance with SOC2, ISO27001, HIPAA, GDPR and CCPA.

For more information refer to Cronofy's pages on Security and Performance and Privacy and Security.

PageUp client activation process

Firstly, all PageUp system users and room resources must have their calendar connected to PageUp via Cronofy.

There are no additional costs for clients for this implementation or for ongoing use.

To enable the calendar integration feature, the client's authorised representative will be asked to agree to Cronofy's End User Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Once you have made the decision to integrate, PageUp provides clients with a link that generates a one-time authorisation token that the IT Calendar administrator can use, following the prompts to connect the organisations' calendars with this service.

The IT Calendar Administrator provides Cronofy with permission to access the organisations' calendars and fully controls which user groups can authenticate with Cronofy. You will only have to provide this permission once, rather than on a staff member by staff member basis.

Once connected, Cronofy will then provide PageUp with the authorised access to the customer’s calendar.

Where required, Cronofy will provide full support on briefing customer IT teams on security policy and getting Enterprise Connect up & running.

Authorisation token for IT

In PageUp, navigate to System settings > Third party settings > Calendar integration. In the Calendar integration pop up (see image below), follow the instructions to copy the email template including the one-time activation link. Email it to your internal IT Calendar Administrator. The token expires in 24 hours, therefore it's recommended to have the IT team ready to go. You can generate a new one if the setup process is not actioned in time.

Note: If you are setting up more than one domain and/or you have a combination of Google and Outlook/Exchange, you will need to generate a one-time activation link for each domain.

Connect

Your IT Calendar Administrator can provide permission to access the organisations' calendars and fully controls which user groups can authenticate with Cronofy. You will only have to provide this permission once, rather than on a staff member by staff member basis.

Confirmation

Navigate to System settings > Third party settings > Calendar integration.
The current connection status should now be Connected.

Initial setup is now complete. A Superuser can continue in PageUp with Configuration (login required).

Documentation for IT administrators

Using the one-time token, the IT administrator will need to create a service account that Cronofy will use to connect to the calendar server. Details for how to do this for Office 365 and Exchange are provided by Cronofy.

For Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite) you will need to install the Cronofy Enterprise application from the Google Workspace Marketplace (https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/cronofy_enterprise/902414518019?pann=cwsdp&hl=en-GB).

* Screenshot from Cronofy page. Cronofy Demo will be replaced with PageUp (Region).

Once the calendar provider is selected

Permissions model

There are two different places in which permissions can be restricted while using Cronofy:

  • Restrictions on the service account on the calendar server
  • Restrictions on what scopes the application using Cronofy asks for

Restrictions on the service account

A service account is an account created on the client’s calendar server by the IT administrator that is used by Cronofy to access and write to individual’s calendars.
There are three different levels of restrictions that can put on this service account:

Only specific accounts

Limited to access calendar folders

Free-busy only

Free-Busy gives access to view a calendar's availability, but prevents access to create events in a calendar - this is not recommended as it negates a key benefit of calendar integration. Only a calendar invite email (with ICAL attachment) can be sent in this scenario.

Therefore, it is recommended that you give Full Access to be able to create interview events in a calendar.

Restrictions on the application

The application is developed by PageUp and calls APIs provided by Cronofy.
Each client can choose the level of detail we will display in PageUp when requesting data from Cronofy.
This means that we can choose different levels of detail per client.
At this level, there is no difference between calendar providers.

Free-busy information

Retrieving a series of free-busy periods returns data that looks like the following:

"free_busy": [
{
"calendar_id": "cal_U9uuErStTG@EAAAB_IsAsykA2DBTWqQTf-f0kJw",
"start": "2020-08-12T08:00:00Z",
"end": "2020-08-12T08:30:00Z",
"free_busy_status": "busy",
},
{
"calendar_id": "cal_U9uuErStTG@EAAAB_IsAsykA2DBTWqQTf-f0kJw",
"start": "2020-08-14",
"end": "2020-08-15",
"free_busy_status": "free",
}
]

Full event information

Retrieving a series of full event information returns data that looks like the following:

"events": [
{
"calendar_id": "cal_U9uuErStTG@EAAAB_IsAsykA2DBTWqQTf-f0kJw",
"event_uid": "evt_external_54008b1a4a41730f8d5c6037",
"summary": "Company Retreat",
"description": "",
"start": "2014-09-06",
"end": "2014-09-08",
"deleted": false,
"created": "2020-08-12T08:00:01Z",
"updated": "2020-08-12T09:24:16Z",
"location": {
"description": "Beach"
},
"participation_status": "needs_action",
"attendees": [
{
"email": "example@cronofy.com",
"display_name": "Example Person",
"status": "needs_action"
}
],
"organizer": {
"email": "example@cronofy.com",
"display_name": "Example Person"
},
"transparency": "opaque",
"status": "confirmed",
"categories": [],
"recurring": false,
"event_private": false,
"options": {
"delete": true,
"update": true,
"change_participation_status": true
}
}
]

Verification

After selecting Office 365 or Exchange, the IT administrator will see a screen similar to the below which will verify the Service Account credentials. Once complete, you will be redirected back to the PageUp application and we will be able to synchronise your user/resource calendars.

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