Booking Resources using Outlook and OWA

[amatruco]

Hi

We're a new Exchange/Outlook shop, and I am having a little trouble
setting up our shared resources to be able to be booked (scheduled) by
users. I have read a lot of documentation on the Web, including the
very helpful info at slipstick.com:
http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/skedresource.htm

Following the instructions outlined on this website, I setup the
resources as users in Active Directory, and assigned Author permissions
on the calendar to users who need to schedule the resource. For Direct
Booking to work properly, all the documentation strongly emphasizes
that the user MUST enter the scheduled resource as a RESOURCE, and not
a Required Attendee or an Optional Attendee. Further, the
documentation mentioned the following tip to handle when a user forgets
to enter the shared resource as a RESOURCE. I did this too.

"TIP: Using your Exchange Server administration tool, set the mailbox
to not accept messages from anyone. (A distribution list or security
group is good for this.) That way, if users forget and add the resource
as a required or optional attendee, the request will bounce back to
them from the resource mailbox."

And so, fine. I did all of this. Using the Outlook client, everything
is working properly, and users seem to be able to Direct Book the
resource. When a user does not indicate the resource as a RESOURCE,
the appropriate email message bounces back to the user, indicating that
he does not have permission to send to this recipient.

Question 1:
Since users have Author access to the resource's calendar (so as to
permit them to book the resource), what's to prevent a user from
opening the shared calendar and manually adding an appointment that
conflicts with another existing appointment? From what I can see, the
answer is nothing. One of the documents I read suggests that this will
be addressed in the next version of Exchange/Outlook. Can anyone
comment on this, or confirm what I read?

Question 2:
Like I said ... everything seems to work fine when a user books the
resource using the Outlook client, by creating a Meeting Request.
However, when I tried to schedule a resource by creating a Meeting
Request using Outlook Web Access (OWA), even though I properly added
the shared resource as a RESOURCE, I received back an email from the
System Administrator saying "You do not have permission to send to this
recipient." Am I doing something wrong? How am I supposed to allow
users to be able to book resources through OWA?

Any thoughts or assistance that can be provided will be greatly
appreciated.

Thank You.
JA

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Q1: No technical obstacle prevents users with Author access from creating an appointment directly on a resource calendar, but I imagine your internal management policies might have something to say about that.

Resource booking changes substantially in Exchange 2007 + Outlook 2007 to prevent such situations.

Q2: Since OWA does not support directly booking, you should not block OWA users from sending messages to the resource mailbox. Such blocking is appropriate only for desktop Outlook users.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[amatruco]

Thanks! Your reply is much appreciated.

JA