Using Dash with Exchange and other calendar services

If you're using a service other than Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, you can set up Dash to work with your calendar system by connecting the service your device's built-in calendar and then configuring Dash to read events from your device. If you can get your rooms and meetings to display in your device's built-in calendar app, then it will work with Dash.

Setting up an on-prem Exchange Server to work with Dash

If you're connecting Dash to an on-prem Exchange server, follow the steps below to prepare the server first. If you're connecting Dash to a different service, proceed directly to the Adding calendars section below.

Your device (and therefore Dash) connects to Exchange using one or more user accounts, and as such Dash will have access to all the calendars that the account can see. You will need to share your meeting room calendars with this account in order for them to be visible to your device and Dash.

Sharing your meeting room calendars

First you'll need to create a user account on your Exchange server to use with Dash. Then (as an administrator) share your resource calendar with that account (giving it write access). You can find instructions for sharing in Microsoft's online guide. If you have more than one meeting room, repeat the procedure for each room until you can see all meeting room calendars in Outlook, when signed in with the user account you'll be using with Dash.

If calendar sharing doesn't work

Some Exchange servers do not allow devices signed in with an account to see shared calendars. If this is the case for you, you can still use Dash with your Exchange server by connecting your device to each meeting room individually. To do this, for each meeting room:

Open Active Directory Users and Computers.
Select your domain in the navigation tree, then select Users.
Find your meeting room account in the list of users.
Right click on the account, and choose Reset password... Enter a new password for the account.
Right click on the account, and choose Properties Switch to the Account tab, and under Account properties make sure that Account is disabled is unchecked.

Now on your device, add a new Exchange account, using the email address and password for the meeting room. If you do this for each room, you should be able to see the calendars in Dash. You can use Dash's Rename calendars feature to give each calendar an appropriate name - we recommend doing this each time you add a calendar as they will all come through with the name "Calendar".

Adding calendars to your device

Adding calendars to your iOS device

Go to the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, and go to Accounts & Passwords. Select the type of account you would like to add. If you do not see your account type in the list, it may be listed under Other. Follow the instructions on screen to enter your credentials and add the account to your device.

You will have a choice of what information to sync between your account and your device (for example Mail, Contacts, and Calendars). It is recommended to turn off everything except Calendars to speed up syncing.

At the bottom of the Accounts & Passwords settings screen, you will see a Fetch New Data option. Select it and make sure that Push is turned on. At the bottom of the screen you will see an option for Fetch frequency. Make sure that this is set to Automatically.

Adding calendars to your Android device

Go to the Settings app on your phone or tablet, and go to Accounts. Click Add account and select the type of account you would like to add (e.g. 'Exchange'). For some services not natively supported by your device (e.g. for CalDav) you will need to install a separate app that functions as a 'sync adapter' in order to see your service in this list. Once you have selected your service, follow the instructions on screen to enter your credentials and add your account to your device.

Once your account has been added to your device, go to Account sync. You will have a choice of what information to sync between your account and your device (for example Mail, Contacts, and Calendars). It is recommended to turn off everything except Calendar to speed up syncing.

You can now select your calendar from Dash. Open Dash, go to Settings, choose the 'Calendar' option and select the calendar for your meeting room from the list.

Troubleshooting

I don't see my meeting room calendars in Dash

Dash can see all the calendars added to your device. Double check by opening your device's built-in calendar app. If you can see your calendar in the app and not in Dash, please contact us for assistance. If you do not see your room in the calendar app, double check that the account has been added correctly to your device. If you've just added the account, it can take some time for all calendars to sync, so we recommend waiting to see if your room shows up.

My meeting room calendar is not showing updates in Dash / my meeting room calendar has stopped syncing

Dash regularly asks your device to sync its calendars, but there are several things that can interfere with this:

A full sync of all data can take a long time, so make sure you've set the account to just sync calendar information. You can find instructions for this in the connection guide above
Some newer versions of Android place restrictions on how apps can request the calendars to sync. Recent versions of Dash work around this, so we recommend using Dash 1.5.26 or later.

I can't book my meeting room from Dash

Your device needs to be able to make changes to events in the meeting room's calendar in order for Dash to book the room. If you are using calendar sharing with an account, you may need to give the account write access to the meeting room calendar(s) to enable booking.

Some connection types are read only, so make sure that you are using a connection that allows you to make changes to events. If you need help, please contact us for assistance.