Exchange Meeting Resource Rooms, Booking, Delegate to Assistant

Exchange 2007/2010 Meeting Resource Rooms, Booking, Delegate to Assitant

What we want:

Because users can book meeting rooms and sometimes do that wrong IT or assistants want a solution so they can “Approve” each meeting before it gets finally booked.

This is called Resource Delegates in Exchange World 😉 Microsoft has made a great effort to make things complicated so only someone understands this who has written a post-doc report on Groupware.

 Here is an example of a room resource “car1” and two people who have to Aprove each meeting BEFORE it finally get fixed.

1) A users books a meeting the right WAY (He invites other people AND additional the ROOM itself to the meeting) (Do not use Direct booking > Right click!)

2) The meeting temporary get’s booked BUT the two Delegates will get an E-Mail and they have to approve the meeting before it gets booked finally.

Here is our sample Room Resource / Raum Postfach

Room Resource: car1

Deleagte 1 we want user: assitant

Delagte 2 we want user: m.butsch

Exchange Administrator account: yourexchangeadminaccount (This may be a account your work with and has temporary permission on most room resources)

a) In Exchange 2007 GUI > New Mailbox > Room Resource > New User (This will generate a pseudo user for the room resource)

b) Use following Powershell command to set everything you can do in Exchange Powershell

set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -AutomateProcessing Autoaccept

set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -MaximumDurationInMinutes 10080
set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -BookingWindowInDays 730

set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -DeleteSubject $False
set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -DeleteComments $False
set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -DeleteAttachments $False

set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -AllRequestOutOfPolicy $False
set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -AllBookinpolicy $False
set-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” -AllRequestinPolicy $True

Also add oin Exchange2010:

—————————————————————————————————-

Add-MailboxPermission “car1”-AccessRights:fullaccess -User ( ‘assistant’,’m.butsch’,’yourexchangeadminaccount’)

Also add on Exchange 2007:

$raumname =”car1″
Add-MailboxPermission $raumname -User “assistant” -AccessRights FullAccess
Add-MailboxPermission $raumname -User “m.butsch” -AccessRights FullAccess

Add-MailboxPermission $raumname -User “yourexchangeadminaccount” -AccessRights FullAccess

c)  LOGON to OWA https://exchangeserver/owa with your yourexchangeadminaccount and open the Resource Mailbox (Right upper corner) and check OPTIONS.

Add the ALIAS/LOGONNAMES of the two Deleagates ; (Semilkon) seperated to the shown fields.

> the tricky part > These settings sometimes FAIL to SAVE or IF you and then re-OPEN they change. At the End, you best control everything in Powershell with command:

get-MailboxCalendarSettings “car1” | fl

—————————————————————————————————-

Some settings explained:

MaximumDurationInMinutes=10080 (Default 1440 and set the maximum a meeting can run = new 1 week)

BookingWindowInDays=730 (Default 180 and sets the time in advance [In the future] you can schedule a meeting

DeleteSubject=False (Per default any attachment or subject a person adds is removed. This is a privacy options. As example HR books a meeting called replacement wotrkforce Switzerland and other people should not know about it.

DeleteComments=False (Privacy same as above)

DeleteAttachments=False (Privacy same as above)

—————————————————————————————————-

More settings explained:

Send all request FIRST to the listed delegates:

ForwardRequestsToDelegates          : True

Accept the meeting first temporary UNTIL one of the delegates DOES accept it:

TentativePendingApproval            : True

These people have to aprobe (One of them):

ResourceDelegates                   : {m.butsch, assistant}

These people can book the meeting room as admin and need no aproval:

RequestOutOfPolicy                  : {m.butsch, assistant}

AllRequestOutOfPolicy               : False

These people can book the meeting room as admin and need no aproval:

BookInPolicy                        : {m.butsch, assistant}

AllBookInPolicy                     : False

RequestInPolicy                     : {m.butsch, assistant}

AllRequestInPolicy                  : True

AddAdditionalResponse               : True

—————————————————————————————————-

Here is how to get a list of all rooms or mailboxes wich are called “RAUM******”:

get-Mailbox | Where-Object {$_.Name -like ‘raum*’ }

get-Mailbox | Where-Object {$_.Name -like ‘raum*’ } | select name,Alias | Format-Table -AutoSize | out-File (‘c:\edv\alle_raueme.txt’)

—————————————————————————————————-

Some nice Links:

Managing Resource Mailbox Calendars

http://knicksmith.blogspot.com/2007/05/managing-resource-mailbox-calendars.html

Resource scheduling in Exchange Server 2007

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2007/05/14/resource-scheduling-in-exchange-server-2007.aspx

 http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/managing-resource-mailboxes-exchange-server-2007-part2-.html

 —————————————————————————————————-

Exchange 2010 change certain values:

get-CalendarProcessing -identity “Sitzungszimmer_1_OG” | fl

[PS] C:\>set-CalendarProcessing -identity “Sitzungszimmer_1_OG” -DeleteSubject $false
[PS] C:\>set-CalendarProcessing -identity “Sitzungszimmer_2_OG” -DeleteSubject $false

[PS] C:\>get-CalendarProcessing -identity “Sitzungszimmer_1_OG” | fl

RunspaceId                          : 6b6a4e3f-72b7-4000-ab30-87a93f3e
AutomateProcessing                  : AutoAccept
AllowConflicts                      : True
BookingWindowInDays                 : 720
MaximumDurationInMinutes            : 1440
AllowRecurringMeetings              : True
EnforceSchedulingHorizon            : True
ScheduleOnlyDuringWorkHours         : False
ConflictPercentageAllowed           : 2
MaximumConflictInstances            : 2
ForwardRequestsToDelegates          : True
DeleteAttachments                   : True
DeleteComments                      : True
RemovePrivateProperty               : True
DeleteSubject                       : True
AddOrganizerToSubject               : True
DeleteNonCalendarItems              : True
TentativePendingApproval            : True
EnableResponseDetails               : True
OrganizerInfo                       : True
ResourceDelegates                   : {}
RequestOutOfPolicy                  : {}
AllRequestOutOfPolicy               : False
BookInPolicy                        : {}
AllBookInPolicy                     : True