Configuring Asta Powerproject to publish resource allocations as Microsoft Outlook calendar appointments

In order to publish resource allocations as appointments in your permanent resources’ Microsoft Outlook® calendars, you have to configure Asta Powerproject as described below.

You must also configure Outlook and the Exchange server to enable integration.

You cannot publish details of permanent resource allocations to Microsoft Outlook and via SMTP email in Asta Powerproject SaaS.

Grant one or more users publishing rights

You must grant one or more Asta Powerproject users the right to publish details of permanent resource allocations to Outlook. You do this by configuring a security group to give it the appropriate access rights, then assigning the security group to the user(s) that you want to be able to publish:

Enter Library Explorer and navigate to the Security Group library.
Right-click the security group to which you want to grant publishing rights and select Properties. The Security Group Properties dialog appears.
On the General tab, select the Publish check box.
Click OK.
Within Library Explorer, navigate to the User library.
Right-click the user to whom you want to grant publishing rights and select Properties. The User Properties dialog appears.
In the Security group field, select the security group to which you have granted publishing rights.
Click OK.
Assign the security group to any other users that you want to be able to publish via Outlook.

Ensure that the correct email address is stored against each permanent resource

In order for Asta Powerproject to be able to publish details of permanent resources’ allocations to Outlook, the correct email address must be stored against each permanent resource. If you have imported permanent resources from your Outlook address book, this should be the case, but check the E-mail address field on the Details tab of the Permanent Resource Properties dialog for each permanent resource to be sure.

Specify that you want to publish resource allocations as appointments

To specify that you want to publish details of permanent resource allocations to Outlook as appointments in your permanent resources’ Outlook calendars:

On the Allocation tab, in the Tools group, click the Publish dropdown and select Email and Publishing Options. The Email and Publish Options dialog appears.
Select the Outlook radio button.
Select the Publish tasks as appointments check box.
Click the Details button to display the Publish to Outlook dialog, which you use to specify whether you are going to publish to each user's Outlook folder or to a shared or public folder on the Exchange server.
Select the Publish manually radio button if you want to publish details of permanent resource allocations at a time and frequency that suits you (by clicking the Publish dropdown in the Tools group on the Allocation tab and selecting Publish), or select the Publish automatically radio button if you want allocations to be published automatically, each time an allocation (or a task with an allocation) is created or edited in Asta Powerproject.

Note that if you choose to publish automatically by email, your permanent resources may receive a large number of emails. If you choose to publish manually, all allocations are combined together into a single email for each permanent resource, resulting in fewer emails.
Click the Detailed format or Compact format radio button to specify the amount of detail that you want to publish about each relevant task; click Fields to select further information to include about each task.
Permanent resources may make changes to the appointments that are created for them in Outlook. For example, a resource could change the start and finish dates of an Outlook appointment. Select the Apply user changes when publishing check box if you want to check for any changes that have been made to Outlook tasks and appointments since they were last published. If you select this check box, you will be presented with a list of the changes that have been made at the end of the publication process, and you can choose to accept or reject each one.

Note that any changes that are made to appointments in Outlook are only picked up by Asta Powerproject when you perform a publish from Asta Powerproject to Outlook; changes made in Outlook do not trigger an automatic publish from Outlook to Asta Powerproject on their own.
Select the Use Outlook all day events check box to specify that allocations that have a duration of 1d (or 3d, or 4d, etc) rather than a duration that gives a specific number of hours such as 5h, 7h or 7.5h should result in 'all day event' Outlook appointments, or clear the check box to specify that they should result in Outlook appointments with start and finish times that are taken from the appropriate calendar.
By default, Asta Powerproject expects the address book that contains details of your permanent resources to be called "Global Address List". In most cases, this name will be correct. However, you may be using an address book with a different name. This may be the case, for example, if you are using one language variant of Asta Powerproject and another language variant of Outlook, as the name of the Outlook address will be in a different language to that expected by Asta Powerproject. If you are using an address book with a name other than "Global Address List", enter its name in the Alternate address book field.
Click OK.

Note that you can select more than one method of publication on the Email and Publish Options dialog. For example, you might choose to publish details of your permanent resources’ allocations as calendar appointments and to send them an email at the same time to notify them of the appointment.