Calendar: Setting Up Microsoft Office/Outlook Integration

At this time, Law Ruler’s 2-Way Calendar Sync feature is ONLY compatible with Microsoft Office 365 without taking additional steps per below. 

NOTE: Older versions of Microsoft Outlook/Exchange (2007, 2010, 2013) can also be paired with Law Ruler but they do require additional steps to implement which are described below.  It is recommended that you have your firm’s IT Manager or Managed Service Provider assist you with pairing older versions of Outlook the first time during setup.  The simple reason is that older versions of Outlook (prior to Office 365) were not designed for access by outside cloud applications other than Outlook itself. 

Older versions of Outlook(Other than Office 365) will be supported on a limited basis by Law Ruler’s Support Department since it is outside of our scope of work to provide support to Microsoft’s applications.  If you do require custom support for older versions of Outlook, then Law Ruler can assist you with a Level-2 Engineer which is available at our Hourly Consulting Rate, but it is recommended that you have your firm’s IT Manager or Managed Service Provider assist you.

Calendar Integrations with Gmail and other E-Mail Accounts are not currently available in Law Ruler, but are available via a 3rd Party Application(Appointlet), but will be developed in the future.

Microsoft Office 365

Law Ruler offers a seamless 2-way integration with Microsoft Office 365 which is Microsoft’s cloud-based e-mail, calendaring and other office productivity-based tools.

If you have followed the steps above in How to Pair Your E-Mail with Law Ruler, then you will be ready to use the Law Ruler Calendar IF you have Microsoft Office 365.

Microsoft Office 365 is the ONLY version of Outlook/Exchange at this time that auto-detects shared calendars and is truly designed for cloud integration outside of your Microsoft Outlook application.

Older Versions of Microsoft Outlook: 2007, 2010 and 2013

For MSFT Outlook/Exchange 2007, 2010 and 2013, the proper way to connect to your shared calendar is going to be different than Office 365 which features automated pairing of shared calendars.   In Non-Office 365 versions of Outlook/Exchange, each shared calendar has to be authenticated once which must be done manually AND the proper Delegated Access must be given inside of each user’s Outlook application, since older versions of MSFT Exchange do not allow that automation due to how it was designed. 

This is not a limitation of Law Ruler, but the way that Microsoft designed its security and operability of prior versions of Outlook/Exchange, most of which were intended before cloud computing was prevalent. 

Older versions of Outlook/Exchange do not automatically detect shared calendars through web-based CRM integrations (ex: Law Ruler).  Each shared calendar must be authenticated to be visible.  It only needs to be done 1-time per shared calendar.

How to Access Shared Calendars Inside the Law Ruler Calendar:

1. Click the "Request User" button as shown below, to add each Shared Calendar, one at a time, so you may View/Add/Edit events for other users at your firm.

2. Enter the email address of the user that you want to access for Shared Calendars. This must be performed for each user that you want to access their Shared Calendar. 

3. Once you press the submit button, you may want to let the recipient user know that they will receive an e-mail from Law Ruler asking them to give you permission to Link their Shared Calendar to Law Ruler for your use.

4. If the Shared Calendar request is not completed, then you will NOT have access to View/Add/Edit events in their Shared Calendar.

5. IMPORTANT 2^nd Step for Each User: Per Microsoft, you MUST ALSO request each user to give you Delegated Access as an author/editor/viewer from within Microsoft Outlook.  If this step is not complete, then it you will NOT be able to View/Add/Edit events in their Shared calendar.  It is recommended that you provide Add or Edit access to each Delegate if you want them to be able to Add or Edit calendar events using your Shared calendar.

Please review this Microsoft Office Forum thread on How to: Allow someone else to manage your mail and calendar with Delegated Access:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Allow-someone-else-to-manage-your-mail-and-calendar-41c40c04-3bd1-4d22-963a-28eafec25926