Outlook Integration

Overview

PerfectServe’s integration with Outlook leverages Lightning Bolt’s scheduling data to populate scheduled events directly into each user’s Outlook calendar. This integration makes scheduled assignments more accessible for providers, and it also helps staff who don’t have access to Lightning Bolt accounts.

Practical Benefits

Ease of Access: Providers can quickly access their Lightning Bolt schedules directly from Outlook. This integration also enables administrative staff to easily view daily shifts through the Outlook calendar, simplifying the scheduling of meetings and other non-clinical work.

Reduction of Human Error: Automated data transfer minimizes the risk of errors associated with manual updates, ensuring accurate work hours pass through to Outlook.

Additional Notes

Mapping Limitations: There is no way to determine who should receive Outlook updates at the assignment level. If a provider has their Microsoft ID or UPN added to their account, any assignments that have Outlook mapping will pass through to Outlook once scheduled on a published Lightning Bolt schedule.

Opt-Out: If certain providers don’t want to integrate their Lightning Bolt schedules with Outlook, we shouldn’t enter their Microsoft ID or UPN in their Lightning Bolt personnel profile. This will cause the integration to omit sending the events to Outlook when these providers are scheduled.

Integrations Protocols

1. API-Based Integration: This integration leverages the Microsoft Graph API to post data directly to each user’s Outlook calendar as soon as the shift data is added to a published Lightning Bolt schedule.

2. Personnel Mapping: Requires a unique ID for each provider in Lightning Bolt, which must match the user’s corresponding Microsoft account. This ID can be added to the ‘UniqueID’ or ‘Custom1-4’ fields in Lightning Bolt.

3. Assignment Mapping: Involves setting various fields for each Lightning Bolt assignment:

• Send to Outlook: A true or false value to indicate if the shift in context should be shared with Outlook when scheduled.
• Include Schedule Notes: An optional field that will allow schedule notes to pass through to the event body in Outlook when added to the Lightning Bolt shift.
• Include Assignment Information: An optional field that includes the shift name in the body of the Outlook event.
• Send as Free: A true or false value that will determine if the event should be sent to Outlook marked as free or busy. The default is that each event sends as busy time.

4. Data Availability: All schedule data that appears on published schedules in Lightning Bolt will pass through immediately to Outlook once the schedule is published.

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