Publishing live calendar information to your Navori QL screens

I have been researching easy solutions you can use to display live calendar information in Navori QL.  My search was based on the following criteria:

• The solution had to be inexpensive (or free).
• There should be no coding involved.
• The solution needed to be seamless and require the least amount of steps.

I came up with two options...

Option #1 - Publish calendar information via a free online calendar service

This solution requires you to create and manage your calendar online.  There are many services that you can use for this (RSSCalendar for example) but I found 30 Boxes to be the easiest one to use.  It is a free online service that lets you publish your calendars as RSS feeds.

You just create an account on the 30 Boxes site, enter your data and publish it to RSS.  

Copy the RSS feed's URL and paste it in QL's Data Feed Manager.

That's all there is to it.  Next time you edit or update your online calendar, the information will be updated on your QL Players.  No software to buy and no coding involved.

Option #2 - Publish calendar information via XML using Outlook and Access

This is a free solution (as long as you own a copy of MS Access) and there is no coding required.  However, you must convert the calendar and publish the feed manually.

Here are the steps:  

1. Open the calendar in Outlook.
2. Under File, select Options > Advanced > Export.
3. This will launch the Import and Export Wizard.  Select Export to a File.
4. Select Microsoft Access. Click Next and then select a location to copy from (your Calendar).
5. Enter a name for this file and browse to the folder where you wish to save the file.
6. Click Next.
7. You may select only certain fields or export all of them.
8. Next you will be asked to enter a specific date range.
9. Click OK to generate the Access file.
10. Open the file in MS Access.
11. In the Database view, right-click on the Calendar icon.
12. Select Export.
13. Under Export Table "Calendar" to..., enter the name of the exported file and specify Save as type (*.xml).
14. Post the XML file to your server and then import it in QL's Data Feed Manager.

In conclusion...

Option 1 is by far the easiest to implement.  Downside is this is you must manage the entries using a 30 Boxes account.  It won't synchronize itself with a corporate Exchange Server for example so this is probably a good solution for small businesses.

Option 2 is more complicated but it has the advantage of working with Outlook. This means corporate users can take advantage of this option to publish their calendar information without having to invest in a dedicated software solution to synchronize their Exchange data with Navori.

There are more robust ways to publish live Exchange calendar data which I will cover these in the near future.