Forum Discussion

rober1ba's avatar
rober1ba
Brass Contributor
Sep 16, 2021

Outlook Calendar not auto-accepting Bookings appointments

I have tried everything I can think of and still no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated.   A group of our university academic advisors created a Bookings calendar to allow students to book ...
Bookings
  • Kevin260's avatar
    Kevin260
    Nov 09, 2022

    We finally found a fix for this. Because of how long it takes for Exchange account updates to go through, I'm not completely sure which step fixed the issue.

     

    For us the issue happened because of what people are calling "ghost delegates" in an account, where a previous delegate isn't being removed correctly. Note that we still have delegate access on the mailbox itself (which includes the calendar), but we have removed delegates from the calendar account itself (details in these steps):

     

    1. Remove all delegates from the Calendar itself, except for these two:
    2. In Powershell connect to Exchange online: `Connect-ExchangeOnline`
    3. Run `Get-Mailbox -Identity "[EMAIL]" | Get-MailboxPermission`
      This will show any delegates you have on the mailbox itself. It's fine to keep these.
    4. Run `Get-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "[EMAIL]:\Calendar"`
      This will show any calendar delegates you have on the mailbox itself. I think that this needs to just contain "Default" and "Anonymous". Even though we had "ghost delegates", they didn't show up here.
    5. At this point, we created and cancelled a Bookings event. Only the cancellation message showed the following, which indicated that we must still have a "ghost delegate"
    6. Run `Remove-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "[EMAIL]:\Calendar" -ResetDelegateUserCollection`
      This cleans up the mailbox, and I believe it was this step that removed the "ghost delegate"
    7. (optional) For some reason we didn't have "Anonymous" as one of the delegates, so we ran this as well:
      `Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "[EMAIL]:\Calendar" -User Anonymous -AccessRights None`

    As a result of these changes, when a booking is created, it is now auto-accepted. And when it is cancelled, we no longer get the message about cancellation being "sent to your delegate(s)", so I hope these steps also help someone else.

davisjr's avatar
davisjr
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 09, 2022
Can you please confirm if the user for whom this does not work have any delegates configured on their calendar? Depending on the settings, the event might get forwarded to the delegate and might remain unaccepted on the original recipient's calendar.
Kevin260's avatar
Kevin260
Copper Contributor
Nov 09, 2022
We have set up "read and manage" permissions on the mailbox from the 365 Admin center for the user, to allow it to be opened as an additional mailbox for the user(s). However I don't see any forwarding of the event outside of the mailbox.

If this is the cause, is there a way to retain the "auto-accept", but still keeping the "read and manage" permissions for the mailbox?
  • Kevin260's avatar
    Kevin260
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 09, 2022

    We finally found a fix for this. Because of how long it takes for Exchange account updates to go through, I'm not completely sure which step fixed the issue.

     

    For us the issue happened because of what people are calling "ghost delegates" in an account, where a previous delegate isn't being removed correctly. Note that we still have delegate access on the mailbox itself (which includes the calendar), but we have removed delegates from the calendar account itself (details in these steps):

     

    1. Remove all delegates from the Calendar itself, except for these two:
    2. In Powershell connect to Exchange online: `Connect-ExchangeOnline`
    3. Run `Get-Mailbox -Identity "[EMAIL]" | Get-MailboxPermission`
      This will show any delegates you have on the mailbox itself. It's fine to keep these.
    4. Run `Get-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "[EMAIL]:\Calendar"`
      This will show any calendar delegates you have on the mailbox itself. I think that this needs to just contain "Default" and "Anonymous". Even though we had "ghost delegates", they didn't show up here.
    5. At this point, we created and cancelled a Bookings event. Only the cancellation message showed the following, which indicated that we must still have a "ghost delegate"
    6. Run `Remove-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "[EMAIL]:\Calendar" -ResetDelegateUserCollection`
      This cleans up the mailbox, and I believe it was this step that removed the "ghost delegate"
    7. (optional) For some reason we didn't have "Anonymous" as one of the delegates, so we ran this as well:
      `Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "[EMAIL]:\Calendar" -User Anonymous -AccessRights None`

    As a result of these changes, when a booking is created, it is now auto-accepted. And when it is cancelled, we no longer get the message about cancellation being "sent to your delegate(s)", so I hope these steps also help someone else.

Resources