DST and resource mailboxes - Auto Accept Agent and Direct Booking
Published Feb 16 2007 06:57 PM 2,509 Views

When running the Exchange Time Zone Update tool, or the Outlook Time Zone update tool, issues may arise with Resource mailboxes. There are two methods of managing Resource mailboxes. The first method is using the Auto Accept Agent. The second method is by implementing Direct Booking using Outlook's Resource booking functionality.

The Auto Accept Agent is installed and configured on the Exchange Server where the resource mailbox resides. The following workarounds can be used to mitigate problems with the Time Zone Update tools.

UPDATE 3/1: We have consolidated the listed workarounds below to the list of workarounds that will give you the best results only. 

Auto Accept Agent

Workarounds are listed from easier to harder.

Auto Accept Agent Workaround #1

The hotfix for the Outlook tool is now available. Please see the following KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933146

Please note that the original Outlook tool has to be installed before the hotfix is applied. The article contains information about new switches available in the tool.

Auto Accept Agent Workaround #2

1. Disable the Auto Accept Agents by unregistering the mailboxes.

2. Run the Exchange Time Zone Update Tool.

3. Log in to each Resource mailbox, and manually process all updated meeting requests.

Auto Accept Agent Workaround #3

1. Install the Windows and Exchange DST patches.

2. Do not run either the Exchange Time Zone Update Tool, or the Outlook Time Zone Update Tool. Have meeting organizers update the Subject of the meetings only to reflect the correct time and time zone.

Direct Booking

The hotfix for the Outlook tool is now available, this is your best way of dealing with Direct Booking resources. Please see the following KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933146

Please note that the original Outlook tool has to be installed before the hotfix is applied. The article contains information about new switches available in the tool.

- Ben Winzenz, thanks also to Richard Roddy

60 Comments
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For resource MB what if you just stop and disable the Microsoft Event Service, open each MB after rebasing is completed and accept all requests that are sent? Will there be any issues with this approach?
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Do you have to actually rebase the Resource MB?
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The 2003 Autoaccept agent is sink based and so doesn't need the Event service to be running. Event service is 5.5 technology..
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Thanks for all the work.  Personally, I'll be watching for a new version of the tool.
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Do you have any ETA for a new version of the tool?  
Thanks.
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We would like to know an ETA so we can better plan for our deployment schedule.  We hope it is posted early this week than next:)
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What happens if a user that got declined in the past because the resource was taken has the resource in the "resource" invitee list still.  Then the person that had the room originally has the time zone update tool ran after this mailbox.  Sounds like the original meeting will get booted from it's time slot because of this.
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Updated DST Home Page Microsoft’s DST Home Page at http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007 has been updated
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If you have been checking our DST Webcast page, you could see the following Webcast is coming up shortly:...
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How did you get Exmrege to archive the meeting information from the calendar?  Exmerge only gives the option to archive a date range based on Message Delivery or last Modification Time.  The calendar entries do not fall into either category.
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How long do we need to wait for the AAA update tool? Microsoft made the Windows update critical last week. Computers are starting to get the Windows DST patch installed and are starting to see issues when creating meeting requests during March 11th and April 8th. The sooner the better for everyone! Thanks.
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I'm copying an entire blog post because the info is really good.... for those who have Public folder
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Is the "Automatically decline conflicting meeting requests" setting exposed to CDO or Outlook APIs?

We have 1900 resource mailboxes to update this weekend, and the process or clearing and then resetting this option on each one is going to take a long time. I could easily code something if this option can be accessed via an API.

Thanks
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We have a lot of direct booking, where is thst new tool?
Or if anyone has a script to adjust the "decline conflicting"...

In the time it's going to take me to change all of these both ways manually I see a lot of new conflicting meetings booked.
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This is really getting old.  How can we decide on whether or not "we can wait" when you won't tell us how long we have to wait?  GIVE US A DATE, PLEASE!!!!  I understand MS is trying to help by updating these tools, but in reality you're hurting us by not making any commitments.  So instead we are forced to move forward with our existing plans based on existing tools (because this is so time critical), only to what -- find out a day or two later that you've released something new that makes more sense in our environment and we have to change our plans all over again?  Can someone over there please stand up and flippin' start communicating dates?  Even if you say "this is the target date and it may slip", that's better then this open-ended FUD you keep flinging around.  While you're at it, get the Outlook team to frickin' communicate some dates for the client CDO updates!  Your products rock, but your ability to truthfully help your customers through this situation is pathetic.
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Jon,

I am sorry there is no better date that I can give you other than say it will be the week of 2/26 when the new OL tool will be out.
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Scott - please send me an email and I'll send you an app that I cobbled together today.
Steve.A.Smith@shaw.ca
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All - FYI: the Exmerge Archive option to clear out the meeting room calendars between a certain date range does NOT work.  

Don't expect to use that workaround!  In testing, setting the Archive option in Exmerge only worked if you did not specify a date range.  If you specify a date range it doesn't work.

Kind of a pain for large companies that have lots of meeting rooms to manually clear out the meetings or write a script.  If anyone has written a script, please post!

Thanks,
Kristin
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Steve,

I'm interested in the you have that address the "decline conflicting", I will email you..

Thanks,
John
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Kristin,
That's odd that you mention the Archive option doesn't work for you.  I was able to archive calendar entries for 1 of our resources successfully and then send an update and the room accepted the request.  
I specified the date range from the 11th to 1st as well.  
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I'm with Jon. We are still bantering back-n-forth between running the Exchange took, Outlook tool or having the users work their own calendars manually. We are a small-medium shop with 3 Exchange servers on Exch 2003, about 1000 mailboxes, users running Outlook 2002. We have 1 critical app that is a Pop3 account and would be devastating if we "lost" our server. I wanna final fix because we're running out of time. We have to have a decision  made by tomorrow because whatever we do, we have to do by Mar 2 weekend.
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I have the same question JeffBe had on Feb. 20th.  It does not appear the the most current publicly released version of Exmerge can remove the appointments.  Does MS have a newer, or more powerful version of Exmerge?  If so, how can we obtain it?  If not, please let us know in detailed steps how to use the tool properly.  

Thanks,
John

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I see a new version (2.0) of the tool was released today  - is this the one ?



http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A9336886-4B28-4010-9416-36D38429438D&displa...

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Within Exmerge select only the calendar to process and then go to Dates and enter the target dates which would be 3-11-2007 through 4-1-2007.  This will export all the information from the calendar within those target dates.  

(This worked for me...Not sure why it wouldn't be working you either)

Thanks,

Jason
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Kristin, John and others that have issues with Exmerge:

This is unfortunately something that might but also might not work for you depending on when your appointments were created... we had some customers that used this option with success. We do not have a newer version of Exmerge, no.

Now for the good news: the updated version of the Outlook tool that was mentioned as option #1 in the post above is scheduled to be released next week, should be early in the week. This is the tool that will have additional options that will help with rebasing the resource mailboxes. While realizing it is getting awfully close - I would suggest you wait until the tool is out, as it should help especially if you have a lot of resource mailboxes.
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Guy,

The tool you linked to is the updated Exchange tool which brings some good imporovements but is not what will help rebase resource mailboxes. The updated Outlook tool is going to release next week, should be early in the week, and that is the tool that will have new functiinality to address PF calendars and resource mailboxes better.
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Thanks for the 2.0 tool.  I am going to advise my clients to start utilizing that to update everything but resource mailboxes.  Just for my own curiosity, where can I find what the 2.0 version of the tool fixes or does differently than the 1.0 version.  I downloaded it and looked for a readme, but there was none.  Please let us know.  

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Following John Orsini's comments, in 1.0 version, there is a daylight.prf file, while in 2.0 version, the daylight.prf is gone. KB article 930879 was updated yesterday to reflect the change. My question is do we still need the daylight.prf master .prf file?
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John, the http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930879 says:

Version 2 of the Exchange Calendar Update Tool was released on February 21, 2007. This article refers to version 2 of the Exchange tool. If you are running version 1 of the Exchange tool, uninstall it and install version 2. Version 2 of the Exchange tool includes the following improvements:
• Performance in version 2 is twice as fast as version 1 when you run the tool in Update mode.
• User interface is improved.
• Memory leak is fixed that required client computers to be frequently restarted.
• Improved algorithm is included for mapping extracted time zones to the operating system time zone.
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I am getting the following message when I try to install version 2 of MSEXTMZ.MSI - Unable to install because previous version of 'Microsoft Exchange Calendar Update Tool'  and/or 'Microsoft Exchange Calendar Update Configuration Tool' was detected. Please uninstall them and run this setup again. I have uninstalled the previous version and rebooted and still get the error and do not know what more to do. Any one have an idea on what to do.
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The previous version of kb930879 article said the DST udpates 931836 and 926666 should be applied before running EXchagne Calendar Update Tool. I did apply the updates on my exchange servers. Today the updated version 11 of kb930879 reversed the order. DST updates should be applied after Exchange tool. This is very frustrated. While I am waiting for the new Exchange tool next week, can someone tell if I don't uninstall the DST updates, would that be bad? I have 7 exchange servers. That requires a lot of outage work.
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when the new Outlook comes out next week - do we simply reinstall the new Outlook tool  that is installed on our server we are running the Exchange tool so that the Exhcnaeg tool points to the new Outlook tool (TZMOVE)?
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Exchange 2007 Discontinued Features The 10 most common Exchange Server issues and how to avoid them Exchange
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has any tried the workaround #3?  i've tried #2 and it isn't working
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The exmerge option doesn't work. It appears that exmerge looks for when the calendar entry was created and is not looking for the date that the entry is for. In other words if I create a booking for March 26 on Feb 1st, exmerge is looking at the Feb 1st date. Take a look at the resource under the .backofficestorage location and you'll see what I mean.
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You CANNOT do workaround #2 (step 1).  Exmerge doesn't have the ability to select dates of meetings to archive, ONLY dates of when emails were generated or modified.  Since many of the meetings may have been generated (and not modified since) last year, they won't be included in the date range of the DST change period.  I have tested this several times and cannot get only the meetings on those dates to archive.  If there is a hack to make this work, please post it.
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Our MS TAM just reported that the new outlook tool should be out VERY shortly... waiting for the website to be updated, in fact.
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The new tool is out (via a hotfix updating the old tool):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933146/en-us
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Removed the AAA, run the exchange tool , open each resource mb and accept all meetings.
Make sure your clients do not have full mailboes - increase the limts  this will allow them to send updates
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Anyone else having trouble installing the hotfix.  Some of my boxes have kicked back with

DEBUG: Error 2754:  The File 'C:WINNTInstaller30fe4b0f.msp' is not a valid patch file.
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Maybe off-topic, but we are thinking of doing the following to help users process the meeting updates after rebasing:

1. register all users' mailboxes with the AAA
2. run the exchange data update tool to rebase calendar data
3. unregister all users' mailboxes from the AAA

Does anyone see any problems with this?
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After I rebased my resource mailbox calendar (running AAA) by following kb933146, I am still getting the declined message when schedule the calendars within the extended DST The problem is that, if I schedule a meeting (let's say 2-3 pm) right before another already scheduled meeting (let's say 3 - 4 pm), I got the declined message from the resource mailbox. I can clearly see 2 -3 pm timeslot is available but the resource mailbox won't let me schedule the meeting. Our users are very frunstrated about this. Does anyone run into this problem? Is this a different problem than rebasing?
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To Dean:

you rebased your AAA mailboxes?
I'm trying to run the tzmove.exe with the /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSALLUPDATES switch and it doesn't
work at all.  Any suggestion is appreciated
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Hi Karol,

Here is what did:
1. Run tzmove.exe with the /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSALLUPDATES. The calendars in the resource mailbox were set one hour back.
2. Run tzmove.exe without /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSALLUPDATES against user mailbox, the calendars were set one hour back.

This is the order I did. I didn't do anything special. However,  I did notice one thing. If I run /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSALLUPDATES twice against resource mailbox, my user calendars won't get moved. Can MS Exchange guys make a comment on this?

I would like to hear others' experiences about this new outlook tool hot fix.

Hope this helps.
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I ran the new update against my mailbox and I didnt see and declines or updates but the log shows it moved appointments that are not listed in my calendar and belog to other groups??? I am waithing on a call back from MS now to figure this one out. Basically it is moving appointments that are not in my mailbox and do not belong to me, crazy! If anyone can shed some light on this taht would be great..
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I ran Run tzmove.exe with the /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSALLUPDATES. against a resource mailbox, some appointments were set one hour back, but from what I can tell they are not the ones that should have moved, in fact it looks like it moved the ones that were good and not the ones that needed movement.

Then I ran /FORCEREBASESUPPRESSEXCHANGEUPDATES on a mailbox and at the very least found it moved meetings that it should not have.

I would use the /onlycreatedprepatch:etc but you can't use them with the /force options?

What do we do if we need both?

Does anyone have a script that will allow conflicts for direct booking?
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I may be misreading the logs, the meetings I didn't think had been moved from the log have in fact been moved, correctly.

Unfortunately others have also been moved that should not have.
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Q: Will there be an automated fix for updating Resource calendars? A: At this time there is additional
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Q: Is there anyway to "Auto-Accept" any changes made by the tool run on the Exchange Server? A: Please
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Q: If the rebasing tool is run from the server side, will it update resource calendars, such as conference
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