Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Max — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:45:00 GMT

Thanks for a very good post here!

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Kristina — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:46:39 GMT

Great article for those who didnt know the differences and advantages of AAA. Good job. I would also like to see some troubleshooting tips. We have AAA in our organization and I barely know what to look for.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Bruce — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 19:42:33 GMT

Just what the Dr ordered - we are currently migrating from Exch 5.5 and are actively debating how to migrate DB of resources. One drawback to DB that you did not mention is having to create a user account for the resource. AAA seems like a good alternative.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Dan — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:11:33 GMT

I've worked with the 5.5 Autoaccept scripts in the past and also extended them to include features not provided by the original scripts. I am pleased that the 2003 version now includes much of this extended functionality but there is still one significant omission - the ability to notify a designated contact of any schedule changes within a given resource calendar. The simple ability to CC a designated contact with any newly accepted booking, update or cancelation would address this need. The absence of this functionality in the 2003 AutoAccept scripts is the one feature preventing this from being a usable solution in our environment.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:46:11 GMT

Bruce thanks for your comment. I will see if I can incorporate this in my future blog on AAA.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:48:50 GMT

Dan thanks for your feedback. I was wondering about the thought process on CCing a designated contact. Can you elucidate more on why a contact. Maybe we can see if something along the lines of what you need maybe incorporated in the near future if we dont have it now.

Weekend reading

subject: exchange — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:56:30 GMT

Hurray, 2 week vacation starting today&nbsp;;-)

How to enforce Microsoft Outlook cached mode via...

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Dan — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 02:36:43 GMT

Thanks for the response Nagesh!

The though process primarlily relates to an auto-booking scenario where there is human intervention required such as the following:

A meeting room and a video conferencing device are both listed as seperate bookable resources in the Exchange GAL and enabled for AutoAccept booking. A designated contact (let's call her Sally) from the Audio Visual Department is responsible for ensuring that the video conferencing device is setup in the designated time and place.

Let's say I book a meeting for Wednesday afternoon from 2:00 - 4:00 and I invite both the devices. They are both available and autoaccept my request. On Wed morning Sally checks the schedule and sees that she needs to set up her device in room #403 at 2:00. She will be unaware of changes that might occur between when she first checks the Calendar in the morning and when the device is scheduled. The reason for the change could be that I have cancelled the meeting, changed the time, or maybe got bumped out of the room I wanted by someone with more authority and needed to change the location.

You could argue that the resource owner should have the resource Calendar open constantly but our users who manage the setup of these devices will only accept the autobooking functionality if we can provide this real-time notification when booking changes occur.

We have looked for ways to use rules to accomplish this functionality in conjunction with the AutoAccept scripts but since any "check messages after sending" rules are client-side only, we were not able to make this work seamlessly.

Hope this makes sense! BTW, all the functionality that is included with the 2003 scripts works great and I would highly recommend it for most implementations that don't have these more advanced requirements.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Dan — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 02:42:54 GMT

Nagesh, I just re-read your post and perhaps I am confusing the matter with my poor choice of words. Notifying an Exchange contact (as opposed to a user) is not the requirement here. We just neeed the ability to CC another mailbox from the Exchange GAL.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Brian — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 16:39:34 GMT

What are the risks of using more than 6 months of window when booking a appt?

Thanks!

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 18:36:28 GMT

Brian, the booking window can be changed to be longer than 6 months if necessary. Whether the window is treated as a “hard limit” is actually controlled by a setting EnforceBookingWindow that allows the booking window to be “weakly” enforced. The meeting is essentially “truncated” at the 6 month mark (or whatever the booking window is set at).

However, to avoid problems with organizers not realizing that their room has “run out” after 6 months, using the hard limit is probably the best configuration. With that said, I dont see any other risks. You can change the booking window but would have to educate the concerned people.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:57:49 GMT

Dan, so what I’m getting out of this is that you want Sally to be notified if there is a change made to the resource. I don’t recall a way to customize that through the xml file. I’ll see what I can find. Sorry for the delayed response.

Thanks,
- Nagesh

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:33:04 GMT

Dan, the functionality that you are looking for isn’t in the product (that I can find). One way to get around it might be to do an event sync, maybe when an item is added to sent items, that forwards it to the user.Sorry.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Dan — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 03:43:54 GMT

Thanks Nagesh. You are correct that in the scenario described, we would want a method of notifying Sally with an email anytime a change is made to the resource. Would you expect that this functionality may be provided in the future? Currently we are looking at a third-party product to accomplish this but it seems like a relatively trivial addition to the existing agent.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:02:54 GMT

Dan I will definitely pass this feedback to Dev and see if this can be incorporated in the future or if it is already in the next version of Exchange. Thanks for the suggestion Dan. I will keep you posted.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:04:09 GMT

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Mike — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:03:49 GMT

How do I make sure a resource is not configured for direct booking before configuring the resource to use the Auto Accept Agent script? I couldn't find anything in the Deployment Guide or Microsoft's KB on how do do this?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:32:13 GMT

Mike, the quickest way to figure this out would be to create a profile for the resource mailbox, log into it using Outlook. Go to Tools | Options | Calendar Options | Resource Scheduling - If "Automatically accept meeting requests and process cancellations" or any of the check boxes are selected, then this resource mailbox is configured for direct booking.

How to direct book a resource in Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002, or Outlook 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;291616

Hope this helps.
- Nagesh

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:43:34 GMT

Dan, we are incorporating Auto Accept Agent functionality out-of-the-box in E12, with some significant additions to the E2K3 AAA functionality including custom per-mailbox responses and finer grained controls over who can book and when. The particular feature below is not in the plans, but E12 web services will allow for notifications on calendar changes. I dont have much information about E12 web services at this time.

Hope this helps
- Nagesh

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

George — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 00:00:51 GMT

Nagesh,

Would the things Dan requested be as simple as making the user a Delegate and forwarding meeting requests to them. I do believe when something updates that the delegate is notified as well.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:28:01 GMT

George, if you set up a delegate, the current configuration for resource mailboxes is for only the Delegate to receive copies of meeting requests. Forwarding meeting requests only to a delegate causes two issues with the AAA function and management:
1. No copy is saved in the resource mailbox's inbox. Because the sink is triggered by the OnSave event, it is required that the request actually be saved in the Inbox.
2. When both the delegate and the resource receive meeting requests, there is no clear indication that the request has been processed by AAA. This would cause Sally a good deal of confusion – she would have to cross reference each request with AAA responses.

To overcome these issues, it is recommended to configure the mailbox to no longer send meeting requests to the resource mailbox's delegate

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks,
- Nagesh

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Tommy Estes — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:46:15 GMT

I'm having a problem with Auto Accept. When I first installed AA, whenever I booked a couple of test meetings for our resource, it would give me a popup confirmation saying it was successfully booked. It would do the same for when it found a conflict, would not let me book it until I picked a free time for the resource. Now it's not doing this. It's just going ahead and sending the email to the invites, but it does send me a Decline email saying there was a conflict. This is nice, but I would rather get a popup prompt when the user tries to schedule, instead of it emailing everyone, and THEN saying the meeting was declined. Any help?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Matze K. — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:53:49 GMT

Hi everybody,

we're using Auto Accept Agent and now have some new issue. What we need is the same thing like Auto Accept Agent, but it should not deny the request when there is a conflict... I know that the Auto Accept Agent is only for booking ressources, but it would be perfect, if there could be somekind of parameter to set, so that the Agent does allow conflicts not only with recurring meetings.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Matze K.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Bobby — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:54:57 GMT

This is an excellent read for those who are testing auto accept agents.. Thanks Nagesh...

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 00:40:20 GMT

Tommy, I have 2 more blogs coming up on troubleshooting. Is this happening with all resources or some resources? Do you still see the problem with a new resource?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Mike Lagase — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:18:42 GMT

Tommy,

Direct Booking and Auto Accept do not play nice together. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;903290 for additional information.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:10:03 GMT

Matze I am in the process of verifying something with the product team. Please hang tight and I will post a reply regarding your question soon.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:35:25 GMT

Matze, there are no plans to add more functionality to the E2K3 Auto Accept Agent.

For E12, however, we are adding an “AllowConflicts” bool that will allow unlimited number of conflicts (including single meetings) if set to true.

Hope this helps.
- Nagesh

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:42:27 GMT

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Tommy Estes — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 20:49:36 GMT

Currently, we are only using one resource. THis is a new domain.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Matze K. — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:47:00 GMT

Thanks Nagesh for the quick reply,

this will help if AutoAccept for E12 will work on E2K3. I think the AutoAccept feature will be integrated in E12? So we have to upgrade to E12 whenever it's released... This would help but we just bought the E2K3 and i don't think that we can afford an upgrade to E12 soon.

Is it possible to program a modified event sink who does nothing else than accepting meeting requests? has anybody a suggestion how to do this? Are there any source-codes of AutoAcceptAgent so i could modify it myself?

Thanks in advance

Matze K

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Gates — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 22:27:41 GMT

One thing I'm trying to figure out is if I use the direct booking will I receive a reply from the resource if it has been successfully booked?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Matt — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:19:24 GMT

Hi,

I'm having the exact same problem as Tommy - I use 8 different resources and only one of them (which is setup exactly the same as the rest) displays the dialog box when users book a meeting saying whether or not it was successfully booked.

Matt

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:10:02 GMT

Gates, yes, but only if you add the resource to the Resources when invited. You will get a pop up saying "The resources for the meeting were successfully booked"

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:18:54 GMT

Matt it looks like you have set up your resources for direct booking. When you mentioned it displays "dialog box" it makes me believe that you have direct booking and not AAA. If you are using AAA, you will get an email saying whethere or not the meeting was successfully booked. Am I missing something?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Matt — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:35:43 GMT

Definitely using AAA - direct booking is not used with any of the resources! Yes the users do get an email saying that the resource has been booked but one of the resources displays the dialog box which is very helpful! Checked that particular resource and direct booking is not enabled!

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:18:03 GMT

Matt, AAA is a tool that automatically processes meeting requests (message class:IPM.Schedule.*) sent to one or more resource mailboxes, such as conference rooms. The agent hosts a store event sink to handle meeting requests as they arrive in a resource mailbox. Once the agent is registered on the inbox folder of a resource mailbox, meeting requests sent to a resource mailbox are automatically processed by the event sink. The sink handles acceptance,cancellation and update requests and sends notifications to the organizer. It is odd to note that you get a dialog box. Is this mailbox specified in the xml file? Does this mailbox have any delegates? If so is the "Send meeting requests and responses" check box checked by any chance! Even with that I wouldnt think the dialog box should pop up.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Gates — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:42:47 GMT

Is the Auto Accept Agent the only way to get a reply from the resource then?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Robert — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:59:21 GMT

This brings up something I have been facing for some time. When users are terminated and they have booked several resources. How do I clear that out?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:51:02 GMT

Gates, yes and no. Yes from AAA vs direct booking perspective. No because you can write your own sink that can emulate AAA or as an add-on to AAA

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Gates — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:57:09 GMT

Sounds like AAA is the simplist way to go then.

Troubleshooting Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent installation issues

You Had Me At EHLO... — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:11:10 GMT

This post is a 2nd in the series talking about Auto Accept Agent (see the 1st post here). As mentioned...

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:32:26 GMT

Robert, good question. The recommendation is to use the Exchange Mailbox Manager to automatically purge the AAA managed mailboxes. The mailbox manager runs on designated servers and purges mailboxes based on recipient policies. This allows the Exchange administrator to select the exact mailboxes that will be examined and which messages (by age and size) that will be purged. The recommended recipient policy should select only the mailboxes that are being processed by the Auto Accept Agent. The filter for the Mailbox Manager recipient policy will query by Alias and Information Store database. Since the AAA managed conference rooms will generally be consolidated onto the same database, this is a reliable method of scoping the filter to the right mailboxes. Since there is no need to set any special AD attributes, the amount of administrative overhead is kept to a minimum. The one draw back is that any mailbox that ceases to be AAA managed will continue to be affected by Mailbox Manager until it is moved to a different database. The one short-coming of the mailbox manager is that it does not purge recurring appointments. This is an explicit part of the design to avoid premature deletion of still active recurring meetings. You will have to do it manually.To stop the AAA from processing meeting request for a specific mailbox, unregister the sink from the mailbox. The REGISTERMAILBOX.VBS script includes an uninstall option (/U) to perform this task.REGISTERMAILBOX.VBS must be run from the console of the Exchange server. There isn’t a remote administration option with this script.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Gates — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:29:56 GMT

I have the AAA setup and working. I had one question when I cancel a meeting is it supposed to send a cancelation message back to the meeting organizer?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:34:52 GMT

Yes Gates. If you choose to "Send cancellation and delete meeting" or do a "Send update", the meeting organizer will get a cancellation message back.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Gates — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:21:53 GMT

I don't receive on from the resource. Do I need to turn this on?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Robert — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:37:59 GMT

One thing I did not see, does the AAA delete canceled meetings or do you need to setup Mailbox Manager to remove them?

Troubleshooting Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent using scripts

You Had Me At EHLO... — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:26:02 GMT

This is a 3rd blog post on the subject of Auto Accept Agent. You can go here to see the 1st one and here...

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:55:15 GMT

Gates you dont need to turn it on. It should be on automatically.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

David — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 04:34:15 GMT

Do you know of a way to run the RegisterMailbox.vbs script remotely, passing it an /M:blah@blah.com address?

Microsoft Exchange: Auto Accept Agent

Martin Pavlis - pavlis.net — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:52:51 GMT

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Dendy — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 19:37:23 GMT

I've just installed the auto accept agent with the recurring limit set to it's default of 12 months. Recurring meeting appointments are being truncated at exactly 9 months though - would this have been a change to the mentioned 6 month hard limit?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Nagesh — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 18:03:56 GMT

David,
/M:smtpaddr - Registers a single mailbox specified by the SMTP address. It cannot be combined with the /F switch.

REGISTERMAILBOX.VBS, must be run from the local console of the server which hosts the mailbox(es) being registered. You can check my next blog on the same subject and it has more information on registermailbox.vbs.

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Volker Wend — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:49:39 GMT

Hi,

I installed the auto accept agent but i get an Error. It is a migrated Mailbox from 5.5 which I moved to Exchange 2003 SP1.

What can I do ?

Ausnahme beim Verarbeiten von Objekt "file://./backofficestorage/XXX.de/MBX/EFGGruppenraum7/NON_IPM_SUBTREE/MTS-OUT/hhh.EML/hhh.EML". Dieses Objekt wird nicht verarbeitet.

Ausnahmeinformationen:
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040E19): Ein Objekt oder Daten, die den Angaben für Namen, Bereich oder Auswahlkriterium entsprechen, konnten innerhalb dieses Vorganges nicht gefunden werden.

at Private.Interop.Cdoex.IDataSource.Open(String SourceURL, Object ActiveConnection, ConnectModeEnum Mode, RecordCreateOptionsEnum CreateOptions, RecordOpenOptionsEnum Options, String UserName, String Password)
at Microsoft.Exchange.Agents.AutoAccept.EventSink.BindToCalMsg(String msgURL, String calendarLocation, IAppointment& inStoreAppt, String& calMethod, DateTime& deliveryTime)
at Microsoft.Exchange.Agents.AutoAccept.EventSink.ProcessOnSaveEvent(String itemUrl, DateTime& deliveryTime)
at Microsoft.Exchange.Agents.AutoAccept.EventSink.OnSave(IExStoreEventInfo pEventInfo, String bstrURLItem, Int32 lFlags)

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Volker Wend — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 00:08:40 GMT

Sorry, known problem, I used an Mailbox on the old Server...

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=840056

How do you know which mailboxes are registered with the Auto Accept Agent?

You Had Me At EHLO... — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:57:51 GMT

This is my 4th blog post on the subject of Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent. If you want to see previous...

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

David Heise — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:25:46 GMT

One problem I have is that when you use the AutoAccept agent to book resources, the resources' free/busy info is not getting updated. Has anyone else seen this?

re: Exchange 2003 Auto Accept Agent vs. direct booking

Michael Brady — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:54:07 GMT

I have been a senior pastor for the past three years. Before I took the senior pastors job we did Evanglism, I am hoping to get back into preaching around the world again. Are you a agent?