How to check if conference room is free/busy

[Bambula]

Hello, I am working on the Onboarding flow and need advice on checking if the conference is free. If the conference room is taken I would like to book another one but my flow takes the same room . Flow trigger is when the item in SharePoint is created . When the 1st day is the office I would like to check whether the conference is occupied and to book the next available conference room.

Please, can you give me some advice because I'm obviously doing something wrong?

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

Are you currently using a Find meeting times action in your setup?

Within that action it is possible to use a room in a resource attendees field. The response of that action will tell you if the attendees are available for your meeting (start and end time need to be included). With a condition you can check what the outcome is of this action.

Below is an example.

Check if it has found any meeting suggestions at all.

length(outputs('Find_meeting_times_(V2)')?['body/meetingTimeSuggestions'])

is greater than 0

Check if the empty reason is empty

empty(outputs('Find_meeting_times_(V2)')?['body/emptySuggestionsReason'])

is equal to true

Check if the found slot is 100 confidence score. If it is for example 50 one of the attendees can't make it.

outputs('Find_meeting_times_(V2)')?['body/meetingTimeSuggestions'][0]['confidence']

is equal to 100

[Bambula]

hi @Expiscornovus, I try to find a meeting but still create the meeting in only one room.

There's no way he can make me a meeting for the south even though the north is busy. It makes me 3 the same meetings still. This is part of the Onboarding app when in SharePoint list item is created.

After that when is AutoSchedule true I would like to check conference rooms and in the free room create a meeting.

Variable for conference rooms 

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

Apologies, the solution I suggested checks one conference room at the time for availability. 

Let me have a look if I can change the configuration to facilitate checking two or more conference rooms.

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

I would use a split on the Conference room variable with the ; character. Loop through the results of the split and check per room if it has a 100% confidence match. If so, book the meeting for that attendee and room mailbox.

Below is the adjusted approach.

I used this for the split

split(variables('RoomMailbox'), ';')

And I am using item to refer to each room within the loop.

item()

[Bambula]

Hi @Expiscornovus It's working for me thank you.

Now I have only one problem, events are created in all conference rooms. 

I need to check the availability of Conference rooms and avoid conflicts. This I use if the new employee is first-day location office. If somebody has already been taken conference room two events are created in the same conference room.

These are events from my onboarding app. 

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

That is not what I expected from this setup 😅

When the first free meeting room (say Room A) is found the event will be booked for both the attendee and the room.

When it loops and tries to do the same for the next room (Room B) in the loop I would expect every option to come back with a confidence of 50 because the attendee is already booked for that same time in Room A.

The same rule applies for the resource attendee (room). If it is already booked it should come up at 50 or even lower. 

Can you share your flow run history?

[Bambula]

hi @Expiscornovus , here is my flow history 

This is in a test environment when the flow will work I will migrate it to my onboarding flow.

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

Apologies, I need to be a bit more specific. I was talking about the details of your flow run.

I am interested in the output of the Meeting time suggestions field of each item in your apply to each loop. Also see the animation below how you can find that.

[Bambula]

hi , @Expiscornovus I'm sorry my bad.

here is run history 

ty you for helping me .

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

In this example it cannot create an event at all, because the organizer already is busy.

Btw, I did not notice before. But I see you have an create event (v4) 4 action in the If No section.

Can you please remove that action. That action is not needed. You only want to create an event if the "room is free" conditions are met (If Yes), correct?

[Bambula]

hi  @Expiscornovus , I removed the action but my expression result is false. 

Thank you very much for helping me.

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

It looks like the organizer/the account used in the connection of the create the event action is already busy (pozbolt) during that start/end time.

Not only the attendee and the resource/room need to be free, also the organiser needs to be free in order to be able to find a meeting slot and to meet the conditions to create an event.

[Bambula]

hi @Expiscornovus , i used date 

sunday and no meetings but still is false . 

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

The default setting for the Find Meeting Times (v2) action is that it will look for available time during work days. I expect Sunday is not a working day for you/the organizer 😉

Can you test it with a Mon-Fri kind of working day which is free in the Calendar or alternatively, change the Activity Domain setting in the action?

[Bambula]

hi @Expiscornovus, Date I put is 29.09.2022. thursday 09:30 - 10:30.

 

when I put Unrestricted or Personal condition is True but still create more than one event. When is the domain "Work" still condition "false",

The event is created in only one free room "west" it's working but why does flow creates 4 more flows with no location?

[Expiscornovus · Accepted solution]

Hi @Bambula,

I would have expected the first event created would set your availability to busy for the 09:30 - 10:00 slot on the 29th. But, I might be wrong.

Can you configure the Show as field in the Create an Event (v4) in the If Yes section as busy? Let's see if that makes a difference.

[Bambula]

hi @Expiscornovus it's working yey 😄 and send emails .

Now is only one problem, how to stop the flow to create empty events with no room.

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @Bambula,

Depends on what value you are using in your initialize variable action?

If you are using the below it will loop through 2 items

rooma@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;roomb@contoso.onmicrosoft.com

If you are using a value which ends with a ; character it will split it into 3 items, the last one being empty/null

rooma@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;roomb@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;

See the below example in a Compose:

split('rooma@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;roomb@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;', ';')

[Bambula]

Hi, @Expiscornovus I am using 

Now create only 3 meetings it sends mail and it says which room is free or busy.

 Says the room is

but still creates a meeting. Is there any way to avoid it?

Only to create one meeting in the free room.

But it works well. You help me a lot.