Question

Friends,

I have a question here.
I’m developing an VS2010 – MVC 3 Application with Razor engine for Human Resource Department of my office.

The objective is to automate the candidate hire process right from scheduling the interview till onboard.

Now comes the challenging part:

Interview will be scheduled and a meeting request will be sent to the panelists (All from the web application itself). Now, I’m in a situation to find out who accepted the invite, so that it can become the integral part of my application to know whether he/she is available to take the interview.

It should find out the free time of the panelist and then send the invite accordingly.

Now my thoughts:

I thought to have microsoft outlook installed on the server itself. We have a default sender ([e-mail]) whose mailbox setup has already been made. My application can have a web page to search for meeting requests sent and someone from HR can get the updates.

But this involves some manual work. I’m thinking to automate everything.

Can some of you throw some light? Please let me know if you need me to be more clear.

Answer 1

Have you taken a look at the Outlook Primary Interop Assemblies? It allows managed access to Exchange server.

Modifying http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff184601.aspx to return free/busy information:

private void GetCurrentUserInfo(DateTime start, int minPerChar, Object completeFormat)
{
    var addrEntry = Application.Session.CurrentUser.AddressEntry;
    if (addrEntry.Type == "EX")
    {
        var user = Application.Session.CurrentUser.AddressEntry.GetExchangeUser();
        if (user != null)
        {
            var freeBusy = user.GetFreeBusy(start, minPerChar, completeFormat);
        }
    }
}

Take a look at msdn for GetFreeBusy() usage.