Shared Outlook Calendars into Power BI for Resource Management

[JoeJenkins]

Hi, 

My role at my job is as a Resourcer for a team of 34 developers, all of whom are working on upwards of 30 projects simultaneously. Currently I input what projects they'll be working on as events in their individual calendars (I have Editor permissions), on a full or half day basis. 

I'd like to be able to pull these calendar events from everyone's individual calendars into Power BI in order to visualise the already-planned time per project/team/developer and then see where there is resource available. However, I am unable to "Get Data" in Power BI from anyone else's calendar but my own - I get the below error when I attempt to add another persons' calendar: 

DataSource.Error: ErrorItemNotFound: The specified object was not found in the store., The process failed to get the correct properties. 
Details: 
     DataSourceKind=Exchange
     DataSourcePath=[users' email here]
     Details=

I have attempted to follow the resolution in the following post but neither myself nor any other user has the same view of their calendar permissions: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Power-Query/Connect-to-Shared-Calendars/m-p/681477#M22992

I have also explored the option of exporting users' calendars into CSV first rather than into Power BI directly, however it seems that once more I can only export my own calendar (if I could get this working this might even be preferable as I'd have more freedom to narrow down the information to exactly what I need; i.e. removing meetings, etc.). 

We also use the service TimeFlex, which mirrors Outlook calendars into a single viewable screen that we can filter by group (e.g. PHP Developers, UX developers), yet this only supports exporting into PDF and produces unusable results when using a PDF-CSV converter. 

Is there any way that this is easily possible? Currently it seems like a severe shortcoming in Outlook & Power BI that I am unable to view the resource of my team easily using either Microsoft application (or any others for that matter), due to the limitations on exporting and grabbing data from Outlook. 

NB: the way I am utilising Power BI right now is I have a 20,000 row spreadsheet that breaksdown what project each person is working on by the hour, 8 hours a day. Every time any project is added or modified, I must reflect the change in the spreadsheet. This is cumbersome, time-consuming and leaves far too much room for human error.

Please can someone assist? 

Many thanks, 

Joe

[Anonymous]

Bump

I need this too!

[JoeJenkins]

Hey @Anonymous ,

We've now found an alternative option to our resource reporting issue - we've now moved to Ganttic (https://www.ganttic.com/), a relatively cheap bit of software that allows us to view all schedules in custom views, sync to the individuals' Outlook calendars and create reports/charts based on the data entered. 

Definitely simpler than trying to crowbar Outlook to Excel to Power BI!

Thanks, 

Joe

[v-juanli-msft]

Hi @JoeJenkins 

There is some reference for Shared outlook calendar configuration

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/ict/self-service/connect-communicate/email/access-shared-c...

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/ict/self-service/connect-communicate/email/create-shared-c...

Best Regards
Maggie

[JoeJenkins]

Hi Maggie @v-juanli-msft , 

Thanks for the links, but I'm still unable to either export other users' calendars as CSV or grab the data directly from Power BI, I can still only select my own. 

All the other users' calendars are already shared with mine, I have Editor permissions as I input all the events into their calendars. 

Thanks,

Joe