In Exchange’s 20+ year history, Microsoft has created numerous APIs — but with each new API comes a surge in ongoing maintenance and support as developers are forced to rip out the old protocols and implement the new ones.
In this blog, we’ll dive into the three most commonly used protocols to build an integration with Exchange:
EAS, literally “Exchange ActiveSync Services”, was introduced in Exchange 2003 to specifically sync Exchange with mobile clients (high-latency, low-bandwidth connections). It was very innovative at the time and introduced a lightweight, idempotent procedure for data synchronization.
ActiveSync is broadly deployed and supported natively by iOS and Android. In practice, it remains the lowest common denominator for integrating applications with different versions of Exchange. Unfortunately, being a licensed technology, there is no public SDK for ActiveSync. Clients wishing to use it must implement the protocol from spec.
ActiveSync is a proprietary binary protocol, which makes it way harder to interoperate with than SOAP or XML-RPC. An ActiveSync sync loop is typically done in three phases:
In the recursive folder procedure, each token represents either a unit of data (“inline string”) or a transition (“inline string follows”). Outside of the message body, a number of Exchange-specific headers must be added to the HTTP messages. ActiveSync can run over SSL and can authenticate via OAuth or NTLM.
Here’s an example of a decoded ActiveSync message (note the use of a sync key to represent the current/next page of results):
Request:
Email API
Calendar API
Scheduler
Contacts API
ExtractAI
Google email & calendar integration
Outlook email & calendar integration
IMAP integration
Calendar management
Embedded contextual email
Scheduling automation
Automated outreach
Intelligent data extraction
Ecommerce
Telehealth
Real estate
Financial technology
Educational technology
Expense management
Customer relationship management
Applicant tracking system
Communications platform
Marketplaces
Document management
Docs
SDKs
Tutorials
API status
Changelog
Support
Blog
Events
Guides
Inspiration gallery
Partners
Build vs. buy
Customer stories
Security & Compliance
Why Nylas
Newsroom<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<airsync:Sync xmlns:airsync="AirSync">
<airsync:Collections>
<airsync:Collection>
<airsync:SyncKey>866776076</airsync:SyncKey>
<airsync:CollectionId>7</airsync:CollectionId>
<airsync:ConversationMode>1</airsync:ConversationMode>
<airsync:Options>
<airsyncbase:BodyPreference xmlns:airsyncbase="AirSyncBase">
<airsyncbase:Type>2</airsyncbase:Type>
<airsyncbase:TruncationSize>500</airsyncbase:TruncationSize>
<airsyncbase:Preview>100</airsyncbase:Preview>
</airsyncbase:BodyPreference>
</airsync:Options>
</airsync:Collection>
</airsync:Collections>
<airsync:HeartbeatInterval>60</airsync:HeartbeatInterval>
</airsync:Sync>
Response:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Sync xmlns="AirSync" xmlns:email="Email" xmlns:airsyncbase="AirSyncBase" xmlns:
email2="Email2">
<Collections>
<Collection>
<SyncKey>1992475662</SyncKey>
<CollectionId>7</CollectionId>
<Status>1</Status>
<Commands>
<Add>
<ServerId>7:1</ServerId>
<ApplicationData>
<email:To>"Albert Einstein" <[email protected]></email:To>
<email:From>"Alexander Graham Bell" <[email protected]></email:From
>
<email:Subject>Test Mail</email:Subject>
<email:DateReceived>2012-06-20T19:13:48.827Z</email:DateReceived>
<email:DisplayTo>Albert Einstein</email:DisplayTo>
<email:ThreadTopic>Nuclear Phones</email:ThreadTopic>
<email:Importance>1</email:Importance>
<email:Read>0</email:Read>
<airsyncbase:Body>
<airsyncbase:Type>2</airsyncbase:Type>
<airsyncbase:EstimatedDataSize>319</airsyncbase:EstimatedDataSize>
<airsyncbase:Data></airsyncbase:Data>
<airsyncbase:Preview></airsyncbase:Preview>
</airsyncbase:Body>
</ApplicationData>
</Add>
</Commands>
</Collection>
</Collections>
</Sync>
Source: Microsoft Docs
ActiveSync was built for mobile phones of the early 2000s, and missing functionality was spread across MAPI-over-HTTP and WebDAV.
Which is why Microsoft ultimately released Exchange Web Services (EWS), which addresses the scattered landscape.
EWS is a much more typical XML SOAP service, replete with all the structural formalities and WS-Addressing that you would expect. Unlike ActiveSync, it does not have a provisioning phase to enforce mobile device policies.
EWS-aware applications are typically enabled individually (or as a group) by the Exchange administrator. This means that the authentication procedure is done more or less transparently through the SDK by providing a user’s credentials. Like ActiveSync, EWS also supports SSL, OAuth, and NTLM.
Below is an example of an EWS mail sync message. Like ActiveSync, requests and responses trade a state key. EWS also uses a ChangeKey to represent the current version of an item.
Request:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:m="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"
xmlns:t="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types"
xmlns:soap="https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soap:Header>
<t:RequestServerVersion Version="Exchange2010_SP2" />
</soap:Header>
<soap:Body>
<m:SyncFolderItems>
<m:ItemShape>
<t:BaseShape>AllProperties</t:BaseShape>
</m:ItemShape>
<m:SyncFolderId>
<t:DistinguishedFolderId Id="inbox" />
</m:SyncFolderId>
<m:SyncState>H4sIAAA==</m:SyncState>
<m:MaxChangesReturned>10</m:MaxChangesReturned>
<m:SyncScope>NormalItems</m:SyncScope>
</m:SyncFolderItems>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
Response:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<s:Header>
<h:ServerVersionInfo MajorVersion="15" MinorVersion="0" MajorBuildNumber="731" MinorBuildNumber="10" Version="V2_3"
xmlns:h="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types"
xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" />
</s:Header>
<s:Body xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<m:SyncFolderItemsResponse xmlns:m="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages" xmlns:t="https://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
<m:ResponseMessages>
<m:SyncFolderItemsResponseMessage ResponseClass="Success">
<m:ResponseCode>NoError</m:ResponseCode>
<m:SyncState>H4sIAAAAAAAEAO29B2AcSZY==</m:SyncState>
<m:IncludesLastItemInRange>true</m:IncludesLastItemInRange>
<m:Changes>
<t:Update>
<t:Message>
<t:ItemId Id="q04QAAAA==" ChangeKey="CQAAABYAAADZGACZQpSgSpyNkexYe2b7AAAAird/" />
<t:ParentFolderId Id=" AgENAAAA" ChangeKey="AQAAAA==" />
<t:ItemClass>IPM.Note</t:ItemClass>
<t:Subject>RE: Company Soccer Team</t:Subject>
<t:Sensitivity>Normal</t:Sensitivity>
<t:DateTimeReceived>2013-08-29T15:22:10Z</t:DateTimeReceived>
<t:Size>23110</t:Size>
<t:Importance>Normal</t:Importance>
<t:From>
<t:Mailbox>
<t:Name>Albert Einstein</t:Name>
<t:EmailAddress>[email protected]</t:EmailAddress>
<t:RoutingType>SMTP</t:RoutingType>
<t:MailboxType>Mailbox</t:MailboxType>
</t:Mailbox>
</t:From>
</m:Changes>
</m:SyncFolderItemsResponseMessage>
</m:ResponseMessages>
</m:SyncFolderItemsResponse>
</s:Body>
</s:Envelope>
Source: Microsoft Docs
Microsoft Graph is a fairly new service meant to unify all Office APIs (like Excel and OneDrive) and has officially preempted EWS. Therefore, Graph’s schema is organized not by product but data type (like the Mail API, Calendar API, Notifications API, etc.). This represents a convenient abstraction over the inner workings of Outlook and Excel but represents a major migration from the EWS API.
It should also be noted that not all features have been ported over – for example, [free/busy] is still in beta. Also, Graph cannot be used with on-premise deployments of Exchange. Support for hybrid deployments is currently in beta.
With Graph, authentication is typically done via OAuth and is segmented into scopes with access tokens. Being an Exchange 365 product, applications must register via the Azure active directory service, as opposed to with Exchange itself.
Below is an example of a Graph mail call:
https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/messages
{
“@odata.context”: “https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/$metadata#users(‘48d31887-5fad-4d73-a9f5-3c356e68a038’)/messages”,
“@odata.nextLink”: “https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/messages?$skip=12”,
“value”: [
{
“@odata.etag”: “W/\”CQAAABYAAAAiIsqMbYjsT5e/T7KzowPTAAEMTBu8\””,
...
“sender”: {
“emailAddress”: {
“name”: “MyAnalytics”,
“address”: “[email protected]”
}
},
“from”: {
“emailAddress”: {
“name”: “MyAnalytics”,
“address”: “[email protected]”
}
},
...
Source: Microsoft Docs
Integrating with EAS can take as long as 6 months or more, and the ongoing maintenance and support costs increase over time as your platform scales.
We built the Nylas Email API to provide a simpler way to integrate with the Exchange, Gmail, Outlook, and every other email provider in the world. With Nylas, you can build full CRUD and bi-directional sync between your app and 100% of email service providers in the world.
The Nylas API is built for developers first. We support three major SDK languages to help make your EAS integration as simple as possible.
Try the Nylas API today – create an account and sync up to 5 accounts for free here!
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