How can I Log on to Exchange Web Services

Question

I need to add a calendar event for an exchange user from a web app.

The web app knows the exchange users email address. The web application that is not integrated with Active Directory. Ideally user should not need to accept the event in outlook

We discussed a few posibilities:

1. Store the users exchange passwords in the web app DB (discounted)

2. Set up an dummy exchange user for the web app, and send the caledar event to the real user as a request from the dummy user (not ideal as the real user would need to accept, and client does not have specs for what to do in case of rejection)

3. Integrate with Active Directory, and impersonate the user (requires either windows authentication, or the users password, and the person using the app to add the appointment will not be the person whose calendar it needs to go into, so windows authentication wouldn't help.)

So is this possible?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this.

Exchange Web Services operations provide you the ability to impersonate another user, so your application would authenticate to EWS using its own name/pw, then set the proper impersonation parameters on the "add calendar event" operation, specifying the user that it's acting on behalf of.

Obviously, the account your application is using would need to be granted the appropriate permissions in Exchange to allow it to impersonate any user.