Hi O365 Forum members,

We have been now using Exchange Hosted by Microsoft for about a month or so.  I have had a very mixed bag with calendaring and am about to pull my hair out. 

I am familiar with powershell and basic commands within it.  I am familiar with the Admin console for Exchange Hosted through Office 365.

Here are my current issues:

  * when creating a new 'Room' calendar, does not always take default settings and will not properly accept appointments from users designated as owners. 

  * even when settings are correct, recurring appointments cannot be created on some calendars

  * appointments disappear from room calendars unexpectedly

  * Creation of a new room calendar does not guarantee functionality

  * Appointments can only be edited by those who created them, which they have to be created using Outlook (not OWA) and created using the 'New Appointment With Room Name' option in Outlook, and cannot be edited once created

  * New appointments on some calendars still show either blank appointment names or name of user, even when set properly within powershell to not do that.

  * Calendar sharing amongst users is troublesome at best

These issues are severely hampering my functionality with this system.  If anyone has experienced these issues and overcome them, and can provide some guidance, please do so.  Microsoft Support is normally taking over 24 hours to respond to my requests/updates on tickets, and now my support contact on my latest ticket has disappeared, emails to him are bouncing back.

Any help is appreciated...

Hi WCHAdmin,

In order to narrow down this issue, I would like to confirm the following information:

1. When you say “creating a new 'Room' calendar”, do you mean create a new room mailbox or creating a new calendar in an existing room mailbox?
2. Regarding the “appointments disappear from room calendars unexpectedly” issue, I would like to know the permission settings for these calendars. For example, who have the permissions to delete items from these calendars?
3. I notice that you have submitted a service request. Please let us know the service request ID, so that we can check the status of the service request for you.

I would like to explain that room mailboxes are special resource mailboxes that are used to reserve physical locations, such as conference rooms, auditoriums, and training labs. Normally, there should be only the default calendar in one room mailbox. For more information about room mailbox, you can refer to the following article:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchangelabshelp/ff628697

If you would like to create calendars which can be accessed and edited by a group of users, I suggest you use shared mailbox which allow users to share a common calendar. For more information about shared mailbox, you can refer to the following article:
http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/Ee441202.aspx

Thanks,
Mindy Pan

Hi Mindy,

When I say 'Room Calendar' I am referring to creating a Room Mailbox, which the point of is to use as a Calendar only.

Regarding the permissions on question 2.  All users have owner permissions, that has been the only way we can make these calendars work at all, so we use the set-mailboxfolderpermission command to set the default to owner.  The thing is, only one user enters the appointments on this calendar, others may view (if they can figure out how) but it is unlikely any of them deleted an item.  Also, Exchange online should provide a method to log that or look at it, so if there is a methodology for that I'd appreciate knowing about it.

There are multiple service requests, they are not being worked on by Microsoft, and contact from Microsoft is sporadic at best on these, usually over 24-48 between contacts.

Using a shared mailbox is not the point here.  Room Mailboxes are used to create rooms for physical locations, which is what we are trying to do.  The problem is the system is inconsistent and/or not following the settings when building accounts each time.

This morning I tested running the following Powershell command to try to set all of the parameters of the offending rooms in one shot, to see if things get any better:

Set-CalendarProcessing -identity roomname@domainname -addnewrequeststentatively $false -addorganizertosubject $false -allbookinpolicy $true -allowconflicts $true -allrequestinpolicy $true -automateprocessing AutoAccept -bookingwindowindays 0 -deletenoncalendaritems $true -deletesubject $false -enableresponsedetails $true -enforceschedulinghorizon $false -maximumdurationinminutes 0

What our ultimate goal is, is to get back to using rooms like we did in Exchange 2003.  We want users to be able to schedule the room as a , source, have Exchange tell us if there is a conflict, and get the rooms out of IS hands.  We have been successful with about 5 rooms so far, deleting and rebuilding them from the web based interface/admin console, not setting any powershell command other than setting the users as owners... but that is not always the case.  I just want to see some consistency in the system, so that we can count on things working when they are setup.

Let me look up the service tickets for you:  [SR numbers removed by moderator], others.

We  have also been working with LiftOffLearning initially on the calendar issues.  These are just the tickets submitted online, there may be others.  

I've been trying to wrap up this migration to hosted exchange for over a month now.  Any help you can give is appreciated.

Ken

Hi Ken,

Thank you for your prompt reply and providing the detailed information.

I have checked the service request status for you, and a support engineer is still working with you. Given this situation, in order to avoid providing duplicate suggestions and causing confusion, I recommend continuing to work on the service request. I will keep monitoring the service request for you. Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,
Mindy Pan

Hi,

We are experiencing the exact same frustrations. Unfortunately I do not have a solution but I hope someone else can provide us with one.

Regards

Matt

While I appreciate your comments and the fact you looked it up.  There is no support.  I have been waiting since last week mid-week for any follow up.  I have had 0% success in dealing with Microsoft support on any open ticket, and have had to resolve all of them myself via other means.  I need solutions, thus I turned to the forums since Microsoft Support is not meeting our needs, not even close.

Good Luck, it appears I've just been blown off through the forums as well as through support.  No luck here.

Hello Matt,

Thank you for your post.

Due to the issue is complex, and our support engineer is working on the service request about it. If there is any solution or workaround, we will post them here. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Jack Sun

Hi Ken,

I notice that the support engineer Ravindra has closed your service request. If you need any further assistance on this issue, please feel free to contact us.

Thanks,
Mindy Pan