Accept & Do Not Send a Response

[#1]

Hi, we posted in March to start receiving feedback from the forum. In August, we started investigating how to implement the feature, and we're actively working on it now. I don't have exact timelines but I'll certainly update this thread once we've released it.

[#2]

I assumed it always worked this way and am shocked it doesn't.  Please have Do Not Send a Response literally mean to send no email.  The accept should still be tracked.

[#3]

Yes. Much more intuitive.

[#4]

This is a critical issue for me in my role at work. I do event planning and send building wide outlook calendar requests to 240 people on a regular basis.  I have found that people assume that the "accept but do not send response" records your acceptance for the sender but simply avoids sending an email. I do not want to read through 240 emails, but I do need to see how many people have accepted or declined.  None of us want unnecessary emails in our inbox.  It seems to me that any actions within the accept, decline, or tentative categories need to filter back and be recorded in the sender's tracking view.   

[#5]

Perhaps changing the response to "Accept but keep response secret" might avoid the confusion that attendees think they're helping the manager avoid the clutter of meeting responses filling up the mailbox. Really, the meeting organizer should uncheck the option to receive meeting responses in their inbox if they choose.

[#6]

Or "Add to My Calendar Only"

[#7]

Yes to both questions...in fact I am quite surprised that the system doesn't already work this way.  How would an organizer even know if enough people RSVP to even conduct the meeting. Hope you fix this ASAP...

Thanks!

David

[#8]

Yes, and yes.

The second point is actually a very welcome change.

[#9]

Hello @Julia Foran,

Thank you for your update. I am waiting for this change for a while. As there is a huge complain from people that they are receiving a hug amount of mails with meeting confirmation. Maybe for me it will be also nice to have "confirm without notify organizer" as the first option :).

P.

[#10]

All responses should be recorded on Tracking Status including the 'do not send response' which I expected would be just no email to the organiser. I finally understand why people show up to events/meetings that I didn't know were coming.

[#11]

Julia, any update on timeline? Is this going to be released as part of Office 2019?

[#12]

Yes, please implement your suggested change as soon as possible.

I believe, the third option (Do not send a response) does not notify organizer, so the attendee's response remains as "None" in the organizer's tracking list, is at this moment, the most useless feature of Outlook.

[#13]

Yes, please make both changes.  All responses should be recorded in the organizer's tracking list.  Whether they request a response or not. 

[#14]

Yes to both questions!
I think the organizer would want to see accurate tracking information and not always necessarily want to receive a bunch of response emails.

Just let us indicate our attendance and not send annoying emails.

[#15]

I believe this change may have already been implemented, but you have removed a feature that I use very often. I am invited to meetings, and do not wish to accept the invitation because I do not plan to attend the meeting. However, I have folks that work under me that attend those meetings and want to keep them in my calendar for reference. Now, I can only accept making the organizer think I am coming to the meeting, which is wrong, or decline and have the meeting removed from my calendar. From this perspective, this change is no good.

[#16]

I know there's a solution in the works - but here's a solve in the meantime. Bit of a roundabout, though should help.  

Problem:

• When you “Accept but do not send a response” for a meeting invite, the organizer has no way of knowing if you accepted the meeting.
• If you “Accept and send a response,” the organizer gets bombarded with emails.

Solution:

• When invited to a meeting, always send a response but…
• Have everyone change their Outlook settings.  
• File > Options > Mail
• Scroll down to the Tracking section, and check the boxes that say:
• “Update tracking information and then delete responses that don’t contain comments.”
• “After updating tracking information, move receipt to:” (select folder, e.g., Deleted Items)

Result: No one has to feel bad for filling up inboxes, BUT now all meeting organizers will know that you’re attending. And if you’re the organizer and there was a comment in the response, it’ll still show up in your inbox!

[#17]

Bravo Caroline - as workarounds tend to do, this one is a bit fiddly but IT WORKS! One good thing about Microsoft's delay in addressing known issues is we get the opportunity to get creative and find solutions.  

[#18]

Ha! Agreed. Not the most simple solve. But perhaps a win-win. I hate deleting meeting accepts in general - even if someone did want to notify me. :)

[#19]

1. YES!

2. YES!

In my experience, users expect the response to be visible to the meeting organiser even if an email is not sent - the fact that this option does not behave the way users expect has cause considerable frustration and confusion in my office. Either the function should be updated or the wording should be clarified.

When is this going to be implemented? The questions were posted months ago!

[#20]

Yes, please do it. Is it on MS Office365 roadmap for near future to implement? 

[#21]

Hi everybody, we did ask the question earlier this year but didn't start work until recently. Each Outlook client uses different APIs and mechanisms to respond to meeting invites, so it's not a simple change on our side to quickly change this behavior. We are actively working on fixing this across all the clients & APIs, so we really appreciate your patience as we work on this improvement. I'll definitely update this forum as soon as it's released.

[#22]

Yes, please! So many users think that when they choose "do not send a response", it just means it doesn't send the email (a very thoughtful assumption) when, in reality, the meeting organizer has no way of knowing whether the person plans on attending. As someone who schedules a lot of meetings, it's caused issues over the years. The organizer needs to know who will be attending/not attending.

[#23]

OMG!  Yes and Yes!  I've been using Outlook for decades and just found out last week that this isn't how it already works.  Please make the change!

[#24]

Yes & yes!

[#25]

This is the behaviour I would expect to happen - so very happy for the change.   That way a "No response" is truly that - people have neither accepted or declined. 

[#26]

Hi, yes i like this change. Best Ralf

[#27]

I absolutely think the tracker should record as much info as possible. The only thing I expect from "Do not send a response" is not to get an email. Otherwise I want to be able to see it in the tracker. Same thought process for the second question. When will this change be made? Hurry!

[#28]

1. Yes
2. Yes

Otherwise it lead to misunderstanding. For long years I thought that when I accepting without respond sender did not receive email confirmation but will se my respond in meeting.

[#29]

Is there any update to this?  The OP doesn't seem to have any edits but it's almost 1 year old.  Is there a UserVoice page we can use to track this change assuming it is already being worked on?

[#30]

Yes to both.

I'm also wondering if this will also be the case for hosted Exchange 2016, which we are currently using with Outlook 2016. We are hoping to transition to Exchange Online in the future...

[#31]

Yes to both.  I believe both changes would be very welcome.  Usually, when an organizer does not request a response, it is because it is sent to a large audience, so makes sense for no email reply.

[#32]

Hi all, Thank you for your patience and your responses on this feature. We really value your feedback, and we've made very good progress on changing the way that responses work. As you can imagine, it's quite a large undertaking given the number of clients, protocols, and configurations that can exist across Exchange, Outlook, and 3rd party services.

We're excited to let you know that the first release is out! When you respond to a meeting using Outlook the web, iOS, or Android, the organizer's tracking list will be updated even if you choose not to send an email response.

There are a few notes to this initial release:

1. This only works today if you and the organizer are in the same organization, and both of you are hosted in Office 365. It does not yet work for meeting invitations across organizations.
2. If you respond to the meeting (or change your existing response) using Outlook on Windows or Mac, the organizer's tracking list will not be updated.
3. This only applies to meetings where responses were requested. If the organizer chose NOT to request responses, their tracking list will not be updated regardless of which client you use to respond.

Please feel free to direct message me if you have any questions. I'll continue to keep this forum updated as we release subsequent updates.

Thanks,

--Julia

[#33]

Is there any ETA on phase 2 (or 3 or whatever) as to when it will work in the Outlook 365 desktop clients?

[#34]

Hi Mike,
The next client will be Outlook for Mac, but we do not have an exact timeline yet.

[#35]

1. yes
2. yes

[#36]

Yes and yes. Please! It is sooooo logical.

[#37]

Did you use the control ID's to accomplish this?  Or a different route?  If so which controlID's did you use?

[#38]

Yes no matter what the user chooses to respond with, if they are accepting or declining the meeting, the expecting result would be that the senders tracking would reflect that response email or no email

[#39]

This is absolutely weird and illogical. Irrespective of Organizer getting email or not for the response, responses should be tracked in tracking system. How would Organizer know if he needs to continue with the meeting or not in absence of recorded responses on tracking system.

[#40]

Yes this is definitely needed.   And if the user selects the 'Do Not Send a Response' option when accepting the invite, they will not be notified if there are updates to the calendar invite (ie location change, content change, etc.).  When you make a change to the event and click 'Send Update', that user will not get notice of the updates on their calendar.  Hopefully this change will also fix this issue.

[#41]

Hi everybody, and Happy Monday!

We're excited to announce that this now works for Outlook Mac as well!!

Summary of status/feature:

When you respond to a meeting using Outlook the Web, iOS, Android, or Mac, the organizer's tracking list will be updated even if you choose not to send an email response.

Notes:

1. This now works regardless of whether you and the organizer are in the same organization, as long as you are both hosted in Office 365.
2. If you response to the meeting (or change your existing response) without sending a response using Outlook on the Windows, the organizer's tracking list will not be updated. The Outlook client on Windows needs to make a change to support this feature, but we do not yet have an ETA.
3. This only applies to meetings where responses were requested. If the organizer chose NOT to request responses, their tracking list will not be updated regardless of which client you use to respond.

[#42]

So what about Windows?  The biggest userbase....

Ah, I see you say no ETA.  Still hoping you might have a guess...

[#43]

@Julia Foran any timeline for Windows users? I would love this function, too...

[#44]

Yes to both. I'm surprised that accepting doesn't show as I've accepted. @Julia Foran 

[#45]

yes to both questions, I'm eager to see this change implement on Outlook for Windows!

Which versions of Office/Outlook will receive the update?

[#46]

When the change comes to the Outlook for Windows client, it will only be for the ProPlus Subscription customers whose mailbox is hosted in Office365.

[#47]

@Julia Foran  We have Office 365 Premium licenses.  Will that be covered? I'm unfamiliar with the license you mentioned...

Thanks!

David

[#48]

@David Riberi @MarcoDST @Julia Foran 

When this update comes to Outlook for Windows, this will be available to all O365 subscription customers, including Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal, Office 365 Business (including Business Premium), and Office 365 ProPlus products.

Thanks everyone for your feedback and interest.

[#49]

@Jennifer Lu are you saying that this is NOT going to be supported on on-premise office installations?  Are organizations that don't have Office365 not going to have this feature?

[#50]

@drullo Yes, that is correct. This will be an Office 365 only improvement.

If you look at the first note in @Julia Foran's most recent update, she summarizes this succinctly:

This now works regardless of whether you and the organizer are in the same organization, as long as you are both hosted in Office 365.