Forum Discussion
'End appointments and meetings early' feature now broken in Office Cloud Policy Service
Originally the option to in Outlook to 'End appointments and meetings early' was a simple on/off option and was reflected in the registry with a DWORD 'endeventsearly' in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar
Now a recent update now allows users to select 'End early' or 'Start Late' and the DWORD has been replaced with String Value ShortenEvents that can have the value 'End_Early', 'Start_Late', or 'None'.
However the Office Cloud Policy Service still only shows the previous settings which applies only the DWORD which now has no effect. Can you please update the Office Policy Service to reflect the new setting in Outlook so we can push this out to our users?
Thanks!
- HI Joe,
Do you know which update has caused this? We are trying to use GPO to push this registry change out to our users and are experiencing some issues, just wondering if we should be using these new values
Best
MattMatt_TheTrust Looks like it was a fairly recent change added to the "Current Channel" release track on Jan 26th.
Version 2101 (Build 13628.20274)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/current-channel#version-2101-january-26
If you can prevent your staff from receiving this update, then you should be able to keep using the old values / GPO settings. If not, then you may need use your GPO to push the reg values more manually. Of course in my case, GPO isn't much help cause no one is coming to the office and connecting to the DCs right now which is why I was hoping to push this out via the Office Cloud Policy Service, but it still hasn't been updated and doesn't have any way of pushing just regedits like GPO
Joe SavageI can't thank you enough for posting this. I have been so frustrated trying to resolve this after the update broke our GPO. If you don't mind sharing, how did you come to this conclusion. As in how did you find out a string value "ShortenEvents" needed to be added to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\outlook\options\calendar with the values you supplied?
I tried changing it manually in Outlook and comparing the registry before and after, but didn't find this.
Either way thank you!
Joe Savage thanks for this post! It has helped restore a bit of sanity after troubleshooting for at few hours and not understanding why Outlook is not reading the registry values I have been setting! As you say, some recent change in Office seems to have broken this.
We are hoping to roll out this feature to the company via GPO but I guess we'll have to wait. I am unable to make it work with GPO at all. Neither via the ADMX template values, nor via registry values via Preferences. Strangely, when setting the feature via Outlook GUI it works fine, despite the fact that the very same registry value is written to registry that I have been deploying via preferences.
Matthew
Joe Savage this is very insightful. I have been trying to set this up for our business but have realized I am really a novice with respect to deploying registry settings via GPO. My hope is MS will fix/unbreak the policy at some point. I will keep trying the registry adjustment with what you have written. Thank you.
This is a new registry key
Path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar
Name:ShortenEvents
Value:End_Early
Type:String- Hi
We used to set this key via SCCM: EndEventsEarly with a value of 1. This doesn't work anymore.
If I use your suggested registry key, it doesn't change the setting in Outlook. If I make changes manually in Outlook, the key changes. But not the other way around. Any ideas?
Oh man - spent two hours troubleshooting on this until I found this forum.
Why doesn´t Microsoft just fix their Template profile in Intune?
- Any update on this?
We enabled this through Intune but not working? is there any fix for us that are using cloud only?I managed to get it working by using Policies for Office apps.
I had tried that earlier, but it seems that Microsoft have done some updates
/ Torsten
I'm wondering if you know how to verify if the policy is pushed out to the user's system without contacting the system?
Thanks again for sharing this with us
Tuan
- Has anyone tried powershell with exchange online ?
Set-OrganizationConfig -ShortenEventScopeDefault 2 –DefaultMinutesToReduceLongEventsBy 5 –DefaultMinutesToReduceShortEventsBy 5- I tried the script below without any success. I can see the registery key changes on the devices but does not reflect setting in outlook.
pushed out through intune as with option "Run this script using the logged on credentials" YES
if((Test-Path -LiteralPath "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\options\Calendar") -ne $true) { New-Item "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\options\Calendar" -force -ea SilentlyContinue };
New-ItemProperty -LiteralPath 'HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\options\Calendar' -Name 'ShortenEvents' -Value 'End_Early' -PropertyType String -Force -ea SilentlyContinue;
New-ItemProperty -LiteralPath 'HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\options\Calendar' -Name 'EndEarlyShort' -Value 5 -PropertyType DWord -Force -ea SilentlyContinue;
New-ItemProperty -LiteralPath 'HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\options\Calendar' -Name 'EndEarlyLong' -Value 10 -PropertyType DWord -Force -ea SilentlyContinue;
Hi everyone,
as far I have seen, this thread did not include a solution for Office Cloud Policies. We are currently upgrading our MS365 Apps version from 2102 to 2108 in Semi annual Enterprise channel and therefore ran into the issue described here. Since MS has added the possibility to start meetings late in between these two versions, the cloud policy "End appointments and meetings early" stopped working in version 2108 SAEC. The new cloud policy which has to be configured is called "Shorten appointments and meetings" The values (minutes) which meetings end early or start late should stay valid In case you have defined it.
All values can be found under [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Cloud\Office\16.0\outlook\options\calendar]- It worked for me this WAY!
The GPO settings are clearly broken in the latest versions of Outlook Clients and after 4 hours of tweaking through the registry settings, It is found that the following registry entries will enforce the "Short appointments and Meetings" setting in the Outlook client for the end users.
Add the following registry keys under the GPO settings
<GPOName>\User Configuration\Preferences\Windows Settings\Registry
Registry Setting 1:
PropertiesHive = HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key path = Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar
Value name = ShortenEvents
Value type = REG_SZ
Value data = End_Early
Registry Setting 2:
PropertiesHive = HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key path = Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Settings\Data
Value name = global_shorten_event_scope
Value type = REG_SZ
Value data = {"name":"shorten_event_scope","itemClass":"RoamingSetting","id":"","scope":"global","parentSetting":"","secondaryKey":"","status":"SYNCEDTOSERVICE","type":"String","timestamp":0,"metadata":"","value":"End_Early","isFirstSync":"false","source":"UserOverride"}Sreekanth_Chityala This has worked fine, we only want to set it once for users, they can change afterwards, hence a locked down GPO would not work.
We deployed to all users with .reg file via SCCM.Thanks
Just an update, we are now successfully able to configure this setting via GPO with the latest ADMX files and M365 App version 2203.
Regards,
Matthew Stevenson
Matthew_Stevenson thank you for that. I will schedule some time to day to give this a try.
BarryBuchanan Matthew_Stevenson thanks for that, I'll wait for intune to update. Just wondering if you are using "Shorten appointments and meetings" or "end appointments and meetings early" and btw what is the difference ?
I used powershell command Set-OrganizationConfig to make changes org-wise:
Set-OrganizationConfig -ShortenEventScopeDefault EndEarly -DefaultMinutesToReduceShortEventsBy 10 -DefaultMinutesToReduceLongEventsBy 15
It seems OK: users in Outlook get minutes changed and End Early, except one minor thing box "Shorten appointments and meetings" is not enabled 🙂
and users have to check it manually. Is there any powershell command property to check it org-wise?
MindaugasG-IL You would use the ShortenEventScopeDefault switch for that. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/set-organizationconfig?view=exchange-ps
- I did as wrote in my message:
Set-OrganizationConfig -ShortenEventScopeDefault EndEarly -DefaultMinutesToReduceShortEventsBy 10 -DefaultMinutesToReduceLongEventsBy 15
but Outlook do not set checkbox for "Shorten appointments and meetings".
