Exchange Update February 2009

Featured in this update:

• Meeting Requests Not Appearing in Your Calendar
• Accepting/Declining Meetings - Responses Required!
• Options for Printing Your Calendar (for Outlook users)
• Equipment List as the Default Global Address List in Outlook
• Maximum Booking Windows for Resources
• Risks of Ignoring Declined Messages from Resources
• Publishing Your Future Availability (a.k.a. Free/Busy Time)
• Disregard the "Last Modified" Window
• Improving the Speed of Your Outlook Program
• Why Does My Calendar Appear Blank to Other People?
• Questions?

MEETING REQUESTS NOT APPEARING IN YOUR CALENDAR
A number of people are reporting that meeting requests are not appearing in their calendars or are not appearing consistently.   The most common action that causes this to occur is meeting participants deleting the calendar invitation message before responding. It is important that meeting requests are not deleted from your inbox until AFTER you have responded (Accept/Decline).  If you delete the email message before responding, you are deleting the meeting request from your calendar.   If you inadvertently do this, and your deleted items folder has not been purged, you can still find the original email and respond “Accept” to have it appear on your calendar.   Note: Due to the way that Outlook and Entourage "cache" information, users may experience a delay in meeting requests appearing on calendars.

 

ACCEPTING/DECLINING MEETINGS – RESPONSES REQUIRED!
In order for the meeting organizer to know whether or not you are attending a meeting, you must choose to send a response.  This means that, after selecting Accept /Decline/Tentative, you need to choose either “Edit Response before sending” (if you want to send additional information to the meeting organizer) or “Send response now”.  If you do not choose either of these options and instead choose “Do not send response”, your attendance status will show as “none” to the meeting organizer.  Therefore, in order for your status to be known to the meeting organizer, you need to send a response.

 

OPTIONS FOR PRINTING YOUR CALENDAR (FOR OUTLOOK USERS)
All resource owners have been contacted about configuring their resources in Exchange.  If you need to print a resource calendar from Outlook, or if you need some additional calendar printing functionality in Outlook for people or resource calendars, you will want to use Microsoft's Calendar Printing Assistant.  More details can be found at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/calprintasst.shtml.

 

EQUIPMENT LISTED AS THE DEFAULT GLOBAL ADDRESS LIST SEARCH IN OUTLOOK
Having trouble when you go to search the global address list (GAL) in Outlook?  Does it always default to the Equipment list?  There's an easy way to fix that by following the simple instructions at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/defaultaddrlist.shtml.

 

MAXIMUM BOOKING WINDOWS FOR RESOURCES
Resources can only be booked out 1080 days into the future (that's just shy of 3 years).  This is a global setting for the all resources, so if you're trying to book anything further out than 1080 days from now, a resource will not be able to be booked.  

 

RISKS OF IGNORING DECLINED MESSAGES FROM RESOURCES
Just because you try to book a resource, doesn't mean that you actually get to use it!  Be sure you pay attention to the response email that the resource sends you to let you know if your meeting was accepted or declined by the resource!  Unlike CorporateTime, you can still schedule a meeting, even if the resource is unavailable.

 

PUBLISHING YOUR FUTURE AVAILABILITY (A.K.A. FREE/BUSY TIME)
If people invite you to meetings more than 2 months into the future, you may want to adjust your free/busy publishing time.  Instructions on how to do this are available at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/futureavail.shtml.

 

DISREGARD THE "LAST MODIFIED" INFORMATION IN THE CALENDAR
When you look at calendar entries, you might notice a "Last Modified" information on the entry.  This "Last Modified" information does not appear to be entirely accurate.  We continue to research this issue with Microsoft and will update you when more information is available.

 

IMPROVING THE SPEED OF YOUR OUTLOOK PROGRAM
Does your Outlook program run like it's on a dinosaur computer from the mid-1990s?  One of the ways you can improve the speed of your Outlook program is to limit the number of shared calendars you have open, or even listed, in Outlook.  The more calendars you have open (or even listed), the slower Outlook will load. To remove someone else's calendar or a resource calendar from view, just right-click on that calendar in the list and choose "Delete Calendar."  You won't actually delete the calendar, you'll just remove it from the list.

 

WHY DOES MY CALENDAR APPEAR BLANK TO OTHER PEOPLE?
The most common cause for someone seeing your calendar as blank is a misconfiguration of your calendar sharing permissions.  We have published a chart to help explain which permissions show or hide information in either the shared calendar view or the scheduling assistant.  You can find this chart on the web at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/accessrightsdisplay.shtml. 

The key to allowing someone to open your calendar and NOT see a blank calendar is to make sure you give that person Reviewer rights or more.  If you only want someone to view free/busy time or free/busy time with subject and location, that person can ONLY use the scheduling assistant.

If you need to adjust your permissions, you can find the instructions at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/shareyourcalendar.shtml.

 

QUESTIONS?
Many questions can be answered by reviewing the information found on the OIT Exchange web site at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange.  The OIT has also created Quick Reference Guides that will walk you through these types of questions, as well as many other common calendaring functions.  Quick reference guides are available for Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Entourage 2008, OWA with IE, and OWA with other web browsers, and you can find them all at: http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/training.shtml#qrg

If you need further assistance, please contact your departmental IT support staff or the OIT Help Desk at 574-631-8111 or oithelp@nd.edu.