How to configure the new Room Finder in Outlook
Published May 15 2020 03:05 PM 221K Views

Did you hear of room lists? What is a room list?

A room list is a collection of room mailboxes. Room lists are specially marked distribution groups that you can also use the same way you use ‘regular’ distribution groups. You can only create room lists using the Exchange Management Shell. This article goes over how to create a room list in Exchange. We highly recommend defining room lists to mirror your building layouts, so that the room finder works best.

We wanted to talk about this because we have now released the new room finder experience to Exchange Online Outlook on the web (and you should start seeing it roll out to other Outlook clients over the next few months).

Note: If room lists are not set up, the room finder will not be very useful.

Setting up the city property

If you want to have room list appear under specific cities, you must set the city property for rooms by using Set-Place cmdlet (use the -City property) or places API in Microsoft Graph.

Setting up this properly allows you to see cities under Room Finder, like the following:

1. List of recent room lists that user used or rooms that user booked that belong to those room list.

2. List of all cities where room list (buildings) are located.

RoomFinder01.jpg

Setting up filters

Filters for rooms are also set by using Set-Place cmdlet or places API. Some examples:

1. Capacity of a room (use the -Capacity property)

2. Floor on which the room is located (-Floor property)

3. Define other features a room may have:

  • Several properties that can be used to define the type of a device present in the room: -AudioDeviceName, -DisplayDeviceName and -VideoDeviceName
  • The -IsWheelChairAccessible parameter specifies whether the room is wheelchair accessible

RoomFinder02.jpg

Coming soon: to add more filters, the ‘tag’ property can also be set per room mailbox using Set-Place cmdlet (-Tags property) or places API. The room finder will display the unique tag string value for each room (see the “Bean bags” tag in the above screenshot, as an example.)

Room list FAQ

How can I see a list of all room lists without having to filter by city first or select recent room list?

This functionality is not available today but you can still search for the room list. The Outlook team has acknowledged there is a request to see all room list at once and will consider this request.

Why can’t I see all the cities that my company has a presence in?

There are 2 reasons why this may happen:

  • The city property for a room has not been set or
  • We are working through a bug that causes only a subset of cities to appear for some of our customers; if you have this problem, in a few weeks it will be history

Why is my room list (building) under the wrong city?

This is most likely due to an incorrect city value set for the room. Please review what the city value is for rooms and confirm it is correct.

I see the room finder in Outlook on the web; will the same show up in Outlook for Windows and Mac?

Yes. We are working on releasing this to other Outlook clients.

Do my room mailboxes need to be in Exchange Online for this room finder feature to work?

Yes.

Victoria Rodriguez

118 Comments
Steel Contributor

Awesome - really like this improved way of finding room. I can only confirm it would be great to be able to see rooms without first selecting city or room list. Also getting this feature to other platforms than "on the web" would be great.

Copper Contributor

We sync all of our room accounts and room lists over from on-prem AD to Azure. Judging by the notes for set-place cmdlet, this is only working on cloud-based accounts. So what now? I will surely not migrate all of our meetings rooms over to be cloud based.

 

With the new set up, all of our meeting rooms lists in OWA are messed up, but I do not have any way to correct it.

Nice job! (not).

 

Microsoft

Hey @Oliver Weber I've sent you a private message to see how we can solve the issue you are seeing. If you can, please submit a support ticket as well.

Brass Contributor

Hi,

Why does Microsoft enable those features, then we start adding all information about the rooms: audio and video device names, display device names, floors, buildings... and after few months it's ALL GONE, only capacity is left. Few months work is gone now. How do you expect us to use something and then it clears everything we set up using the Set-Place command?

Steel Contributor

Any Plans, when this functionality comes to Outlook for Windows?

Steel Contributor

I had a hard time figuring out which properties can be set at syncronized Accounts from an OnPrem Active Directory with AADSync. Error Message was very unclear. Maybe the Documentation can be updated to be more clear here.

Copper Contributor

Andres Bohren, could you describe what you found out about this with synchronized accounts? Thanks!

 

Oliver

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the information. Can you clarify "If room lists are not set up, the room finder will not be very useful.'?

 

What I have found, and I am supporting a customer with this Room Finder as well is that I can find Rooms without needing a Room List in my region. I am in North America. But my client, he just happens to be in Switzerland, does not have this basic functionality. He can launch Room Finder from OWA and it just doesn't find the rooms that we can clearly see in the tenant. It sounds like a bug, maybe it's just a rollout issue

Coincidentally, we have created a Room List and that did not make a difference. Can you comment on the roll-out? Are there know issues with EMEA?

Steel Contributor

@Oliver Weber

The following Parameters on a synchronized Account can not be set by the Set-Place command. This Information has to be populated in the OnPrem Active Directory. 

[-Street <String>]
[-PostalCode <String>]
[-City <String>]
[-State <String>]
[-Phone <String>]

 

Error in Powershell is not very helpful:

Interner Serverfehler.
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-Place], TaskException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=DB8PR10MB2683,RequestId=9295499d-707d-485f-912f-1af74cc72cb1,TimeStamp=27.05.202
0 13:11:05] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-TaskException] 4337D910,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.SetPlace
+ PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com

 

[-GeoCoordinates <GeoCoordinates>]

Don't know how to set the GeoCoordinates OnPrem. Did not find an Attribute for that. But honestly not needed, when you populate the Address.

[-CountryOrRegion <CountryInfo>]

And i don't know how to set this one. Sad there is no example how to set that. Tried "CH", "CHE", "756", "de-CH", "Switzerland". The Type "CountryInfo" is a mistery to me. Although it seems to be to be the two Digit CountryCode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes

 

Unclear Error Message

PS C:\> Set-Place -Identity SitzungszimmerCloudOnly -CountryOrRegion "Switzerland"
Interner Serverfehler.
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-Place], TaskException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=DB8PR10MB2683,RequestId=1d189997-80ab-4f37-9941-be7226480420,TimeStamp=27.05.202
0 13:38:07] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-TaskException] 4337D910,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.SetPlace
+ PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com

PS C:\> Set-Place -Identity SitzungszimmerCloudOnly -CountryOrRegion "CH","Switzerland"
Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'CountryOrRegion'. Cannot convert the
"System.Collections.ArrayList" value of type "System.Collections.ArrayList" to type
"Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.CountryInfo".
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (:) [Set-Place], ParameterBindin...mationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentTransformationError,Set-Place
+ PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com

 

[-Label <String>]

Don't know where that is visible. But we have already Display Name, Floor, and FloorLabel. And now another Label. Who needs this?


[-Tags <String[]>]

Tags seem to bee visible in the Hoover Menu. You can use it to show additional Equipment.

 

In my Opinion, there exists already a Propertyset for Additional Equipment with the set-resourceconfig

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/set-resourceconfig?view=exchange-ps

 

At least these  Properties are now shown in Filters 

[-AudioDeviceName <String>]
[-VideoDeviceName <String>]

[-DisplayDeviceName <String>]

[-IsWheelChairAccessible <Boolean>]

 

Also [-Capacity <System.Int32>] and  [-Floor <System.Int32>] can now be filtered. I like that. But in Outlook you currently can't.

 

I hope the Filters comes soon to Outlook for Windows.

 

Regards

Andres

Brass Contributor

@Andres Bohren 

The Geo Coordinates attribute now also has to be set through on-prem exchange PowerShell. The command is Set-User -Identity alias -GeoCoordinates "14,598643;-12,479087" etc.

What worries me and as I mentioned this already in one of the first messages under this post is:

1. When initially announced every attribute could be set using the Set-Place command even when hybrid was set up. So you could set up the address through this command as I have done numerous times. Then all of a sudden those attributes plus the geo coordinates could not be set through Set-Place command without providing any explanation of the error and no mention of this now being done through on-prem

2. I filled out like 40+ rooms with all the attributes using on-prem exchange powershell and Set-Place command and all was good until sometime before this article was published where ALL I've set was removed and I had to start over and search in mails for details of room attributes that people sent me and I had to set them again. I still am setting some of them.

How to trust those features if they are not even stable or consistent yet.

 

/Krzysztof Sienkiewicz

Steel Contributor

@Krzysztof Sienkiewicz

Thank's for the Tip with the Set-User -Identity alias -GeoCoordinates "14,598643;-12,479087

 

>Then all of a sudden those attributes plus the geo coordinates could not be set through Set-Place command

>without providing any explanation of the error and no mention of this now being done through on-prem

Communication might be bad here.

But i can understand that Attributes that are synced from On-Prem via AAD Connect have to modified On-Prem like any other Attribute of a synced Accounts.

 

Regards

Andres

Brass Contributor

@Andres Bohren 

Sure, I also understand that but it doesn't say anywhere in the Microsoft Docs article about the command that for hybrid it works differently. But mainly I have issues with it cause it worked with Set-Place and it stopped at some point and there was no reference to this being the problem. I had a case with Microsoft Support and they could not figure it out for a while, after which they finally told me that and also said geo coordinates can be set using Exchange Powershell in on-prem :)

 

Regards,

Krzysztof Sienkiewicz 

Steel Contributor

@Krzysztof Sienkiewicz

I have created a GitHub Request to clarify and update the Documentation.

 

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/office-docs-powershell/issues/5705

Copper Contributor

@vrod29 

 

A feature which would be great would be to have a built-in Flag for Team Room Systems in our conference rooms, as well as integrating this with bookings.  

 

It would be great to have a feature included to automatically schedule a Teams meeting if the selected conference room is Teams enabled.

 

Also some additional AI logic would be nice If I Schedule a meeting with more than one person located in the same city / location different from the selected conf room, prompt me to include a conf room at their location.

 

A great deal of our meetings are conducted between 2 conference rooms over Teams.

 

And since I am on a roll...  If Teams had a "Mute all non-Room System participants" function that would be amazing ! ! ! 

 

A current need we experience is to schedule meetings with an available sales people in available conf. rooms and displaying time slots when a person and a room are available.  The mixing of multiple agents and multiple location possibilities can become a headache for our users.

 

Thanks for listening - Thank you for the new features - Hope you are safe and healthy

 

Dustin

Deleted
Not applicable

The old Room Finder won't let you pick up rooms from multiple locations, has it changed in the new version? The use case is quite common - a video meeting across several locations in an international company.

Microsoft

Thanks to everyone providing feedback. We did update our set-place cmdlet documentation to reflect what is needed for hybrid mailboxes.

 

The following properties must be set with set-user/set-mailbox cmdlet in on-prem environment for hybrid mailboxes.

StreetAddress, City, StateOrProvince, CountryOrRegion, PostalCode, Phone, GeoCoordinates, ResourceCapacity

 

The new room finder does allow for rooms to be selected from multiple locations. But it can not all happen under the same search you must search for a room list/city and select a room and then complete your next search. Multiple locations can not be selected at once.

Brass Contributor

Hi again,

@vrod29 I noticed a related problem. Previously when setting up GeoCoordinates through on-prem Exchange, it took few days until they were visible in Exchange Online when using Get-Place command. Currently they do not show at all, even after week of waiting, like it doesn't set it from on-prem anymore.

Any ideas?

Kind regards,

Krzysztof Sienkiewicz

Copper Contributor

Pleeeaasse Let us set the image / avatar of the room it would help identify the room. 

It's already there in AzureAD! Just mod a little code and have it retrieve that image! :smile:

@The_Exchange_Team  @vrod29 

 

See how much more fun this would be?!?

RogerMcCann_3-1593269984539.png

 

Brass Contributor

Hi... again,

I repeat my problem:

@vrod29 I noticed a related problem. Previously when setting up GeoCoordinates through on-prem Exchange, it took few days until they were visible in Exchange Online when using Get-Place command. Currently they do not show at all, even after week of waiting, like it doesn't set it from on-prem anymore.

Any ideas?

Besides that I noticed an addition to the Room Finder filters and actually 2 new attributes in get-place/set-place attributes that seem to be connected to those filters, any info on what exactly that is and how to use it?

Room Finder - new filter.pngSet-Get-Place.png

Kind regards,

Krzysztof Sienkiewicz

Brass Contributor

Hi,

@vrod29 , I cannot send PM (reached some limit I dunno why), so here is the Ticket number: Ticket #20752531

Microsoft

Awesome feature!
What is the status about this being integrated in Outlook client? Is this new feature as well planned through Teams?

For a better user experience, I think it would be nice to see those feature aligned between the different MS communication tools.

Brass Contributor

@NikoS68 

Hi, it is already available in outlook desktop if you are using office beta channel. Also you need Edge Beta installed. So probably within few months it will be available in Office production channel.

It looks awesome. I dunno about integration with Teams though.

Steel Contributor

Hi @Krzysztof Sienkiewicz and @NikoS68 

 

It is now on the Roadmap with ID 54517

 

OutlookRoomFinder_01.jpg

The Type in the OWA Roomfinder is new.

Anyone knows how to create the "Workspace" Room List?

 

OutlookRoomFinder_02.jpg

 

Regards

Andres

Brass Contributor

@Andres Bohren 

Yes, I saw the roadmap, as for the Workspace type of room, you can set it using Set-Place, I saw a new attribute was added to the command which apparently controls this specific settings, don't remember exactly the attribute name now.

Microsoft should update their MS Docs article about Set-Place command more often, as it did not provide any informaation on this new attribute :p

Steel Contributor

@The_Exchange_Team I'm wondering the same as @Andres Bohren ;

 

[-Label <String>]

Don't know where that is visible. But we have already Display Name, Floor, and FloorLabel. And now another Label. Who needs this?

Copper Contributor

We’ve spent quite some time working with this recently and found it quite confusing. For one thing, the new experience works fine on my Mac, so I hadn’t realised it’s some way off being released for Windows.

 

Also, we’re not getting the expected results from the AudioDeviceName and VideoDeviceName fields.

Brass Contributor

Hi,

Please notice and check if you have the same problem as we have now. For some time now, if a Room List/Building name has brackets in it, it won't show any available rooms (see below). It is happening for ALL room lists/buildings that have "(" and ")" brackets in name. It does not happen if i.e. "-" hyphens are used. Please explain and fix this.

Untitled.png

Brass Contributor

UPDATE: finally! After a month of checking with Microsoft support, they showed us this link Address book policies in Exchange Online | Microsoft Docs, and the culprit was that we used a Custom Address List for Room Lists on our ABP, and that Address List filter was not based on "RecipientDisplayType -eq 'ConferenceRoomMailbox' -or RecipientDisplayType -eq 'SyncedConferenceRoomMailbox'", but rather our owns CustomAttributes that we used OnPremise.

 

Replacing our "CustomAttribute2 -eq 'Room' (...)" filter by this one (which is present on the default list "All Rooms") made it work.

 

I can't believe checking all the Google pages never led us to this or anyone else with similar issue. @The_Exchange_Team might be worth indicating it in the article.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since this feature, nobody in our company can find the existing Rooms Lists anymore on WebMail. Everything works fine on Outlook.

  • We are in Hybrid
  • All Room Lists exists OnPremise, and are synced to Azure / Exchange Online
  • All Meeting Rooms are OnPremise, have the fields City, Country filled, and are synced to Azure / Exchange Online
  • They are all present in the Global Address List (Rooms + RoomLists)

What happens:

  • We see all the Cities in the Room Finder (so it detected correctly the City fields)
  • BUT every cities are empty, no Building / Room Lists appear
  • And because we cannot see all the Room Lists like it was before on OnPremise, people cannot select ANY room from the Room Finder

What we tried also:

  • Create Online only Room List
  • Create Online only Meeting Room (and add to this List)
  • Fill up that Room Set-Place data.
  • BUT its been 72h and the "new" City declared still doesn't appear in the Room Finder

What is causing Room Lists to not appear at all under Cities?

 

NoRooms.png

Brass Contributor

Adding the ability to filter is great, HOWEVER, please be careful not to break the typical existing use case! I found out about this change because my Outlook happened to update to the new room finder suddenly, and randomly only two of our room lists are now accessible, even under the two different cities.

I have since added city information to all the rooms and I assume this will fix the problem once the change filters through, however, this could have caused us a major problem for booking our car fleet (they are set up as room mailboxes) if it had happened to roll out to all our staff at the same time it rolled out to me. This would have had a real impact on the lives of vulnerable members of our community.

Whenever you're designing a change to a system, make sure that the typical use case works (i.e. the ability to see all room lists easily and select the rooms from within them) before rolling it out!

Deleted
Not applicable

Is there any chance to see the new room finder in the desktop version of Outlook? The feature has been introduced almost a year ago but in the desktop version we still have the old one. 

Steel Contributor

@Deleted 

Edge WebView2 will be deployed in April with Apps for Enterprise. That will bring the new Roomfinder Experience to Outlook for Windows

https://blog.icewolf.ch/archive/2021/02/20/new-outlook-roomfinder-on-desktop-with-ms-edge-webview2-runtime.aspx 

Deleted
Not applicable

@Andres Bohren Is it so that in April it will hit monthly update channel only?

Steel Contributor

@Deleted Office 365 Enterprise Apps 2101 or newer. Seems to be Monthly Channel

 

Edge_WebView02_01.jpg

Copper Contributor

I'm still a bit confused about the requirement to have a room list. I understand that rooms must be a member of a Room List for the Room Finder to work. So must I create a separate Room List for each City? Can I get away with one 'catch all' list which just contains all the rooms in an org (if there are less than 100 rooms).

Iron Contributor

@vrod29 @Andres Bohren 
We are trying to get this to work on our Exchange Online tenant, and since our Outlook clients are still not Webview2 enabled, have tried to:

  1. Created all of our Rooms including most properties shown here (-Building, -Floor, -Capacity, -DisplayDeviceName, -VideoDeviceName, -AudioDeviceName, -City)
  2. Created DistributionLists with the same names as the Building names

As of right now:

  1. In Outlook Clients, all Room-Lists are working properly (but no information on Floor, Capacity, etc.) available; as expected.
  2. Outlook Webapp can find any room we've built, including its properties, but nothing shows up on the Room Finder.

Could it be a matter of the room information not yet being available to Outlook?
How long it should take between the settings made by PowerShell and users being able to use those rooms?

Brass Contributor

@dgr4it I found that it took some time after changing the properties before it showed up in Outlook Online. I think it was working correctly the next day for us.

Steel Contributor

@dgr4it as @AnglicanFamilyCare mentions, it might take a day or so before it works. Also make sure you create the Distribution list with
New-Distributiongroup -Name 'Room List Name' -RoomList

 

Also, I've experienced exactly what you mentioned. I left it there for days and spent hours checking settings but nothing worked. I simply removed the Distribution List and created it again. I suspect it had something to do with the group naming policy added some strange prefix characters like # or ? so when I created the distribution group I made sure to do it with -IgnoreNamingPolicy.

 

Good luck!

Brass Contributor

Was there a reason that the availability heat map was removed from the Room Finder? Being one of the easiest way to choose the best date to schedule a meeting based on the availability of the Required attendees and the room (or you could leave the room black to see just the attendees). 

JustKJ_0-1619537478724.png

 

 

This feature was a huge improvement over the depreciated Autopick feature in 2003 that just jumped one potential time slot at a time. I did see that this depreciated feature has been added back on the ribbon.  I hope that was not the intended replacement.

 

Perhaps there is setting I have yet to find to re-enable the heat map. It would quite a step backwards to not have this feature.

 

 

Iron Contributor

@AnglicanFamilyCare 

@Jonas Back 

(Edited with the outcome) Thanks for your input; It took almost 4 days on our end, but ultimately the rooms (with the right cities & buildings) and room lists we had set up using PowerShell finally showed properly on Outlook for the Web.

Wish there was a way to force a faster refresh, the same way you can force Outlook Desktop app to download the latest info of the GAL.

 

@Andres Bohren @vrod29 
One more question.

Within a hybrid tenant, should I assume that it is impossible to use Set-Place cmdlet with the -city argument ?

Or would it work if I:

  1. Delete my existing rooms
  2. Create them again directly on Exchange Online
Steel Contributor

@dgr4it 

You can use the Set-Place but only certain values works on synchronized Accounts. City for example can be easy set on the OnPrem Account.

 

The following properties must be set with set-user/set-mailbox cmdlet in on-prem environment for hybrid mailboxes.

StreetAddress, City, StateOrProvince, CountryOrRegion, PostalCode, Phone, GeoCoordinates, ResourceCapacity

 

Set-Place can be usedon a CloudOnly Mailbox (even in a Exchange Hybrid Environement). But then you break the Rule of having all Emailadresses synchronized on both environements. If an Application will try to send a Mail/Appointment to your OnPrem Exchange it will fail to find that Mailbox.

 

Regards

Andres

Iron Contributor

@Andres Bohren 
Thanks a lot for your answer; That really help me with our strategy to get this done.

Daniel

Copper Contributor

Managers already complaining about this new room view - how do we get the previous view back. This is not functional in our Environment. There is no calendar to quickly change dates to find open meeting spots, We also have building not Cities, we need this changed back to Buildings. We use room lists, where is that now. No suggested times only Suggested conference rooms.

Conference rooms are now missing - does this require a complete reconfiguration of conference rooms in my Tenant? We have thousands.

This is a poor update without consideration for existing configurations.

Copper Contributor

Totally agree with @JustKJ. The suggested times feature missing is a huge loss. It takes much longer now to switch to the Schedule Assistant and click around to find dates. New Room Finder is fine, but bring back a right pane Selected Times finder.

 

Copper Contributor

Can we bring back the old room finder to get the suggested times heatmap back? It's a right nuisance to book meetings without this feature. 

Copper Contributor

Echoing everyone's comments from the end of March 2021 till now.  The most recent Outlook update has completely broken the room finder for us.  All our previous room lists are gone, save for 2 for some reason.  I've tried creating on-prem and syncing (we're hybrid), online only, nothing shows up in the Room Finder anymore.  Did Microsoft not test this out first?

Copper Contributor

I have to agree with everyone that the changes to the Room Finder, and removing the Suggested Time is going to be a HUGE problem in our environment. Are there any plans to roll this change back or have an opt out option? I'm all for improving the customer experience, but not at the expense of breaking core functionality.

Iron Contributor

@duswhit You may be facing the same issues I was having.

The rooms can take very long to show up on the RoomFinder (about 3 days on my tenant).

In our case, however, they always ended up showing properly; need to be patient.

 

PS: You can check that you've properly created the corresponding Room-Lists and their members through PowerShell, and the Room properties on the Exchange Online Admin Center (or obviously with PowerShell). If you got it right, they should show up.

Copper Contributor

I agree with @JustKJ and @KevinWalker99 on this. It was a great help to see suggested times.  The name was a bit confusing (Room Finder) and it would be awesome if that could come back but name it "Availability" or something that would be helpful as a quick glance of schedules?

 

 

 

Copper Contributor

I have a query about the "floor" attribute for room resources.

 

I've used the "set-place" powershell command to set the "floor" attribute values for ground floor rooms (value of 0), first floor rooms (value of 1) and second floor rooms (value of 2).

 

Only rooms on the first and second floor show up in the "Floor" filter in OWA Room Finder filter, it's like the filter won't allow a selection of lower than 1 !

 

FYI: I am in the UK so here ground floor is 0 (same in Europe)

 

And what about underground floors, as we have rooms on a minus 1 and minus 2 level, how should then be entered for the "Floor" attribute?

Brass Contributor

I agree with @Zoomer83 - please implement a solution for the Floor parameter/filter to support your European, Indian and Australasian customer base, who use 'G' or '0' to represent the ground floor (and '1' to represent the first floor above ground level).

 

As a short-term workaround, supporting Floor filtering via the integer '0' would be helpful, but please also consider there are plenty of use cases for non-integer floor designations such as mezzanine, basement, loft, rooftop, etc. Ultimately I think the best solution would be to support a short string (2-3 characters).

 

Though not ideal, the FloorLabel or perhaps Tags parameters could also be used for this purpose if they were made filterable via Room Finder.

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