Outlook Meeting Updates Going Directly to Deleted Items

Iron Contributor

Microsoft made in change in how meeting updates are handled and smaller updates are now going directly to the Deleted items folder. This caused people to miss important updates to agenda items. I am wondering if other people also receive complaints about this?


To me it seems strange that such a setting cannot be controlled by individual Outlook settings as there are settings for this already in place. Is Microsoft considering to allow this behavior to be controlled by the Outlook/Outlook on the web settings as an improvement over the current situation?

 

Background information:

15 Replies

I too would like to know what the thinking is here on this one.  Thanks Joost for posting.  @Joost Koopmans 

@Joost Koopmans I spoke to the Microsoft folks about this issue and considered what they had to say. I've written what I discovered and my views up in this article. Feel free to disagree:

 

Exchange Online Calendar Auto-Processing Vexes Some Users

A recent change made to the way that Exchange Online processes notifications for calendar meetings has upset some Office 365 users because they don't see the email. Instead of leaving the notification email in the Inbox, Exchange processes the update in the calendar and moves the notification to the Deleted Items folder, meaning that it might be missed. Which makes some people mad.

 

https://www.petri.com/exchange-online-calendar-auto-processing-vexes-some-users

Hi @Tony Redmond , well written article as always. There is not much to disagree for me in your article but I do disagree with the change Microsoft made to put the control with the admins instead of the users. Especially because the settings are already there in Outlook and Outlook on the Web and as you indicated the desired behavior can be different from person to person.
I also like the fact that these updates are automatically deleted but there are many other users who really do not like this and are impacted by the change.


The good thing is that I now can send out a calendar invite with no agenda and directly after that send out an update asking a lot of preparation for the meeting and then get angry in the meeting nobody prepared for the meeting :cryingwithlaughter:.

@Joost Koopmans I believe that Microsoft wants to move the controls for stuff like this to the service rather than keeping them in clients on the basis that it's more efficient to control in one place than to try to have settings spread over different clients and different versions of clients, including those not created by Microsoft. I see the sense of this approach.

Hi @Tony Redmond , it really depends on the setting and if individual users have different requirements. Let's take the very useful feature of Quiet Hours in the Outlook mobile client. What if we would apply the same principal and have the service decide if and what hours will be applied?

It would be much more efficient from a Microsoft perspective but for most users becomes useless at best.

@Joost Koopmans Quiet hours in the mobile client is an excellent example of a setting that must be client-side. In this case, it's because of the interaction between the client and the notification service (iOS or Android) to enforce quiet hours. Exchange Online has nothing to do with these notifications. 

@Joost Koopmans 

 

 See below for what might be the solution:


Fix provided by Microsoft:

Note: Update that caused the change, see "Outlook calendar - automatic processing of small changes in meeting details"

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=meeting%2Cupdates

 

Workaround via Powershell:

- Connect to company O365 environment via PS session.

- Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell

- Type get-organizationConfig

- Type Set-OrganizationConfig -VisibleMeetingUpdateProperties "AllProperties"

- Type get-organizationConfig again to verify change has been made.

24c76ba2-060e-4f14-ad68-c5b05765ade2.png

- Test meeting invite update again, no longer gets deleted from inbox.

 

Thanks,

 

AB

 

Or not so 'directly after that'... I put something on the calendar months out to save the date then update it with agenda and attachments, which are now missed. Hate this "feature" - again Microsoft thinks it knows best. What I'll do now is wait until the last update to add the meeting details like room/call-in info since those will still go to recipients' inbox.

@Joost Koopmans 

Difficult to understand why using these available settings via Outlook Web do not work. I figured maybe it would take a day for the settings to take but still - no change in behavior.

 

KjirstenTuohy_0-1648660271545.png

 

Thanks @kajay2e. Unchecking these options seemed to reduce the number of updated meeting invites that went directly to my Deleted Items folder. However, it did not eliminate all of them.

@Joost Koopmansgreat job documenting this change in behavior and bringing attention to the issue! Thank you!

I was able to force all updated meeting invites (even "smaller updates") to be placed in my Inbox by using a Rule. Under "Rules and Alerts" I created the following rule:

Apply this rule after the message arrives
uses the 'Conferencing Request' or 'Meeting Cancellation' or 'Meeting Request' form
display MeetingInvite in the New Item Alert window
and display a Desktop Alert
and stop processing more rules

Unfortunately this also has the side effect that each incoming meeting invite will now appear in my "New Item Alert" pop up window.

I hope this might be helpful to other users who really do want all the updated meeting invites to appear in their Inbox!

After some additional testing, I able to remove the pop-up alert window from the rule, and still achieve the desired behavior (updated meeting invites with "smaller updates" are delivered to my Inbox).  Here's the updated rule:

 

Apply this rule after the message arrives
uses the 'Conferencing Request' or 'Meeting Cancellation' or 'Meeting Request' form
display a Desktop Alert
and stop processing more rules

So how can I make it that my updates go to my inbox instead?


Hello dear,

Let me try to help you today.

If you’re using the Outlook desktop client, you can try the following:

Click File > Options > Mail.
In the Tracking section, uncheck “Automatically process meeting requests and responses to meeting requests and polls” and “After updating tracking, and then delete responses that don’t contain comments”.

Source: https://vafreelancers.com/question/steps-to-prevent-meeting-updates-from-going-to-deleted-items-in-o...