'End appointments and meetings early' feature now broken in Office Cloud Policy Service

[Joe Savage]

Originally the option to in Outlook to 'End appointments and meetings early' was a simple on/off option and was reflected in the registry with a DWORD 'endeventsearly' in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar

Now a recent update now allows users to select 'End early' or 'Start Late' and the DWORD has been replaced with String Value ShortenEvents that can have the value 'End_Early', 'Start_Late', or 'None'.

However the Office Cloud Policy Service still only shows the previous settings which applies only the DWORD which now has no effect.  Can you please update the Office Policy Service to reflect the new setting in Outlook so we can push this out to our users?

Thanks!

[#2]

Anyone have any updates or luck with getting this working again?

[#3]

Sadly no.. Have tried reg keys and everything, but no luck..
Still havent seen an officel acknowledgement from Microsoft on this issue

[#4]

Microsoft just released an updated set of AMDX templates: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030. This should resolve the issue, as the GPO policy now uses the updated values.

[#5]

This policy setting allows you to shorten the default duration of appointments and meetings by a specified number of minutes. If you enable this policy setting, you can choose between the following options: End Early, Start Late, None. If you select End Early, meetings and appointments will end early by the specified number of minutes. If you select Start Late, meetings and appointments will start late by the specified number of minutes. If you select None, the default meeting duration will not be shortened. In all cases, the settings for this feature will be disabled in the Outlook Options dialog. If you don’t configure this policy setting, users can modify these settings by going to File > Options > Calendar. Note: This policy setting only applies to subscription versions of Office, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.
Microsoft Outlook 2016\Outlook Options\Preferences\Calendar Options
HKCU\software\policies\microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\options\calendar!endeventsearly
[None, None] [End_Early, End Early] [Start_Late, Start Late]

This policy setting allows you to specify how many minutes to reduce the end time of a short appointment or meeting by when a user creates an appointment or meeting. A short appointment or meeting is one that lasts for less than one hour. If you enable this policy setting, you specify the number of minutes to reduce the end time of a short appointment or meeting by when a user creates an appointment or meeting. The user can’t change this value by going to File > Options > Calendar. Note: You should also enable the “End appointments and meetings early” policy setting. If you disable or don’t configure this policy setting, the default value of 5 minutes is used or whatever the user specifies by going to File > Options > Calendar. Note: This policy setting only applies to subscription versions of Office, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.
HKCU\software\policies\microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\options\calendar!shortenevents

[#6]

Oh man - spent two hours troubleshooting on this until I found this forum.

Why doesn´t Microsoft just fix their Template profile in Intune?

[#7]

Any update on this?
We enabled this through Intune but not working? is there any fix for us that are using cloud only?

[#8]

@Roiit 

I managed to get it working by using Policies for Office apps. 

I had tried that earlier, but it seems that Microsoft have done some updates

/ Torsten

[#9]

@Dynamitten2212 

I'm wondering if you know how to verify if the policy is pushed out to the user's system without contacting the system? 

Thanks again for sharing this with us

Tuan

[#10]

@Tuan-123 

You are right, there are no reporting or status with that kind of policy - strange. I just pushed the policy to some specific devices and waited to see the result.  

[#11]

Correct, not able to see reporting if it pushed or not.
Did you get it working using policy for 365 apps?

[#12]

Yes End appointments and meetings early are working from Policies for Office apps

[#13]

Well I applied the setting today for 3 users. IF i check under applied policies cannot see that the setting applied..

[#14]

@Roiit  @Dynamitten2212 - Yeah i applied this to 3 test users yesterday. Today it's not checked either

How did you verify it? Checked on the user's system like I have? Did you do anything different after enabling that policy under the Policies for Office app?

Thank you for your time

[#15]

FYI, I tested and got it working, but had to force the office apps to sync the latest policy using this method:

Policy service check-in activity is stored in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\CloudPolicy. Deleting this key and restarting the Office apps will trigger the policy service to check in the next time an Office app is launched.

Link:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-office-cloud-policy-service

[#16]

Joe
Thank you for that. Just saw the last few posts and will myself give this a go today and see what happens over the weekend.

[#17]

@BarryBuchanan 

I got mine working without removing the registry. First I have to make sure my Office is up to date and the "shorten meetings and appointment" is available under the Calendar option. Attached is the policy that i created for the Office 365 apps Enterprise version. It does take up to 90 mins or 24 hours. 

[#18]

Tuan
That is awesome 🙂 thank you so much.

[#19]

@taun-123
I checked and noted this was already applied to our policies.... then realised this only takes affect for M365 apps for enterprise... we currently only have small amount of staff using M365 for enterprise. The majority of our office installs are OEM Office 2016 Home & Business locally installed, therefore I need the local AD policy to apply to these. 😞 back to the drawing board for me.

[#20]

If those systems r connected/enrolled on intune you can push it out with the registry update. Or have them run the registey key update that u can send them if there are no other options

[#21]

not registered to intune. 😞 can you explain a little more on the reg key update process?