calendar inconsistencies company wide

[todd5574]

Hi,
I recently upgraded my Exchange organization from several servers running
Exchange 2000 to an Exchange 2003 SP2 Cluster with an Exchange 2003 front-end
server which handles OWA, pop, and IMAP. Most of my Outlook clients are
Outlook XP (2002). I am in the process of upgrading everyone to Outlook
2007. Currently I have about 50 out of 300 users on Outlook 2007. The
exchange servers are located in California, but we have offices throughout
the U.S., Asia, Japan, Europe, etc.

The issue I am having is with meeting requests and outlook calendars in
general. The problem is very inconsistent and happens mainly to people who
are delegates of others calendars. Here is a list of things that happen:

1. free/busy status is sometimes greyed out for some people. this makes it
difficult to book meetings when you can't see others availability.
--- I tried 'outlook /cleanfreebusy' and verified the schedule/free busy
public folders have all been replicated.

2. meetings that get updated stay on the calendar, but also show up on the
calendar at the newly updated time. this causes confusion since the same
meeting shows up twice at different times

3. Time Zone issues. When a meeting is booked in California at 1pm and
someone from New York is an invitee it doesn't always show up at the proper
time on the New York persons calendar. Sometimes it will be an hour off,
sometimes 4 or 5 hours off.
----I verified with the people having the issue that their time zone was set
correctly on their workstations.

4. Making changes to an existing meeting. When a delegate removes someone
from an existing meeting and the meeting update is sent out, the entire
meeting often gets canceled.

5. When adding someone to an existing meeting, then sending out the update
and choosing to 'only send to added or deleted attendees' the update is sent
out to everyone in the meeting.

Please note that this does not happen all the time and it mostly happens
when the admins are updating others calendars. This also happens on previous
meetings that were booked when we had Exchange 2000. Unfortunately in my
case this is happening to the CEO, CFO, COO, and their assistants.

I have sent out at least 50 meeting requests, updates, changes in the past
couple of days and I cannot duplicate what the admins are seeing. However,
it continues to happen to them.

Of course they all want a quick fix, but I am out of ideas. Any suggestions
would be greatly appreciated.

 

[todd5574]

The issue seems to be getting worse. Now calendar items are disappearing for
no rhyme or reason.

Since I just moved everyone to the new cluster, would an offline defrag of
the databases help things in any way?

I have 4 storage groups with 1 database each, average size is 15GB per
database.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Try posting this to an Exchange group - they may have a suggestion.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, todd5574 asked:

| Hi,
| I recently upgraded my Exchange organization from several servers
| running Exchange 2000 to an Exchange 2003 SP2 Cluster with an
| Exchange 2003 front-end server which handles OWA, pop, and IMAP.
| Most of my Outlook clients are Outlook XP (2002). I am in the
| process of upgrading everyone to Outlook 2007. Currently I have
| about 50 out of 300 users on Outlook 2007. The exchange servers are
| located in California, but we have offices throughout the U.S., Asia,
| Japan, Europe, etc.
|
| The issue I am having is with meeting requests and outlook calendars
| in general. The problem is very inconsistent and happens mainly to
| people who are delegates of others calendars. Here is a list of
| things that happen:
|
| 1. free/busy status is sometimes greyed out for some people. this
| makes it difficult to book meetings when you can't see others
| availability. --- I tried 'outlook /cleanfreebusy' and verified the
| schedule/free busy public folders have all been replicated.
|
| 2. meetings that get updated stay on the calendar, but also show up
| on the calendar at the newly updated time. this causes confusion
| since the same meeting shows up twice at different times
|
| 3. Time Zone issues. When a meeting is booked in California at 1pm
| and someone from New York is an invitee it doesn't always show up at
| the proper time on the New York persons calendar. Sometimes it will
| be an hour off, sometimes 4 or 5 hours off.
| ----I verified with the people having the issue that their time zone
| was set correctly on their workstations.
|
| 4. Making changes to an existing meeting. When a delegate removes
| someone from an existing meeting and the meeting update is sent out,
| the entire meeting often gets canceled.
|
| 5. When adding someone to an existing meeting, then sending out the
| update and choosing to 'only send to added or deleted attendees' the
| update is sent out to everyone in the meeting.
|
| Please note that this does not happen all the time and it mostly
| happens when the admins are updating others calendars. This also
| happens on previous meetings that were booked when we had Exchange
| 2000. Unfortunately in my case this is happening to the CEO, CFO,
| COO, and their assistants.
|
| I have sent out at least 50 meeting requests, updates, changes in the
| past couple of days and I cannot duplicate what the admins are
| seeing. However, it continues to happen to them.
|
| Of course they all want a quick fix, but I am out of ideas. Any
| suggestions would be greatly appreciated.