Exchange calendar sync issues... still

[Brett_x]

I would like to know if anyone else is STILL having calendaring issues
since 11.2.3. Please reply if you have had good luck since then as
well.

After being a MS Entourage / Exchange user supporting 130 Mac users for
over a year now, I am really starting to feel like Microsoft's Beta
tester. How many updates have there been in the last year? Why can't
calendars sync with the server properly still????

Here's my current sync situation: It almost always is due to an updated
meeting. I have a Mac user who has an administrative assistant on a PC.
I know, this spells trouble... But it shouldn't, and I had his admin
stay out of his calendar and it still got screwed up.
She normally views his calendar and watches for conflicts. She normally
accepts meeting updates and everything for him (especially when he is
out of the office). There were some inconsistencies in what she was
seeing and what he had on his calendar. It turns out that what she sees
on her Outlook is what is accurate on the Exchange server / webmail.
Since we found this problem again about a week ago, even after updating
him to 11.2.3 (which, of course, now displays the "time zone conflict"
issue), I asked her to stop accepting meetings for him so we could
track it a bit better. The meeting came in for 11Am on tuesday. It was
then updated to 1PM on the same day. He accepted the meeting in
Entourage and it showed up just fine on his machine. His admin still
saw it at the original time. He was connected to the network at the
time he accepted the meeting, and he hasn't had any problems
getting/sending email... it just didn't update the exchange server with
the new time.
I guess it is a step better than before the 11.2.3 patch, where updated
meetings would duplicate, stay the same or get completely deleted, but
this is still VERY frustrating for a core function to not work
absolutely flawlessly for so long. Important people rely on
calendaring. This isn't Outlook Express.

Has anyone gotten their calendaring straightened out?
Thanks,
_Brett

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I would like to know if anyone else is STILL having calendaring issues
since 11.2.3. Please reply if you have had good luck since then as
well.

I didn't notice anything wrong on any of the computers that we have
here.

After being a MS Entourage / Exchange user supporting 130 Mac users for
over a year now, I am really starting to feel like Microsoft's Beta
tester. How many updates have there been in the last year? Why can't
calendars sync with the server properly still????

No idea... Does the address book sync properly??
In Entourage 2004, syncronisation sis really smoother here. E-mails,
address book, calendar... all go through WebDAV. If one works, so do the
other ones (at least for use).

Here's my current sync situation: It almost always is due to an updated
meeting. I have a Mac user who has an administrative assistant on a PC.

I see... so it's not plain regular synching... It's delegation (which we
barely use here).

I know, this spells trouble... But it shouldn't, and I had his admin
stay out of his calendar and it still got screwed up.
She normally views his calendar and watches for conflicts. She normally
accepts meeting updates and everything for him (especially when he is
out of the office). There were some inconsistencies in what she was
seeing and what he had on his calendar. It turns out that what she sees
on her Outlook is what is accurate on the Exchange server / webmail.
Since we found this problem again about a week ago, even after updating
him to 11.2.3 (which, of course, now displays the "time zone conflict"
issue), I asked her to stop accepting meetings for him so we could
track it a bit better. The meeting came in for 11Am on tuesday. It was
then updated to 1PM on the same day. He accepted the meeting in
Entourage and it showed up just fine on his machine. His admin still
saw it at the original time. He was connected to the network at the
time he accepted the meeting, and he hasn't had any problems
getting/sending email... it just didn't update the exchange server with
the new time.

Is the Free/Busy address properly entered in his settings??

Corentin

 

[Jeremy Reichman]

I would like to know if anyone else is STILL having calendaring issues
since 11.2.3. Please reply if you have had good luck since then as
well.

After being a MS Entourage / Exchange user supporting 130 Mac users for
over a year now, I am really starting to feel like Microsoft's Beta
tester. How many updates have there been in the last year? Why can't
calendars sync with the server properly still????

Here's my current sync situation: It almost always is due to an updated
meeting. I have a Mac user who has an administrative assistant on a PC.
I know, this spells trouble... But it shouldn't, and I had his admin
stay out of his calendar and it still got screwed up.
She normally views his calendar and watches for conflicts. She normally
accepts meeting updates and everything for him (especially when he is
out of the office). There were some inconsistencies in what she was
seeing and what he had on his calendar. It turns out that what she sees
on her Outlook is what is accurate on the Exchange server / webmail.
Since we found this problem again about a week ago, even after updating
him to 11.2.3 (which, of course, now displays the "time zone conflict"
issue), I asked her to stop accepting meetings for him so we could
track it a bit better. The meeting came in for 11Am on tuesday. It was
then updated to 1PM on the same day. He accepted the meeting in
Entourage and it showed up just fine on his machine. His admin still
saw it at the original time. He was connected to the network at the
time he accepted the meeting, and he hasn't had any problems
getting/sending email... it just didn't update the exchange server with
the new time.
I guess it is a step better than before the 11.2.3 patch, where updated
meetings would duplicate, stay the same or get completely deleted, but
this is still VERY frustrating for a core function to not work
absolutely flawlessly for so long. Important people rely on
calendaring. This isn't Outlook Express.

Has anyone gotten their calendaring straightened out?

Besides the questions Corentin had, I wonder if you know whether the
assistant is using Outlook 2003 in cached mode?

So far, when we have seen instances of the kind of situation you describe --
and I have seen less than a handful -- it has involved one person on
Entourage who either a) also uses Outlook him/herself, and/or b) another
person has Sharing level (not Delegate level) access to that principal's
calendar. We're also trying to determine if Outlook's cached mode is a
factor.

We've actually seen a situation where Entourage alone works correctly, but
the Outlook in cached mode does not appear to sync data back up to the
Exchange mailbox/account. It's the opposite of what you are describing.

Overall, Entourage has gotten progressively better with each update but it
can also be hard to troubleshoot -- especially when you throw in SSL,
Outlook (cached mode or not), Sharing, Delegation, Sync Services, devices
with ActiveSync, BlackBerry devices, and everything else that could possibly
factor in. (If this text is vibrating it's because my mind is boggling.)

The best thing we can do is document whatever we come across. In the process
of documenting it, we may find our own solutions, and if not, I'm sure
Microsoft would be willing to have that data (here or via a support
request).

 

[Brett_x]

His Free/Busy server is set right.. and he his admin hasn't touched his
calendar (besides viewing)... So.. I am not sure why this is still a
problem. It seems to be a pure sync problem. I don't know about his
address book because we don't recommend that our users rely on it...
they just use the GAL for the most part.

I hate to say it, but sometimes I suspect that MS doesn't actually want
it to run as well as Outlook does.

 

[Brett_x]

No, his admin has not used Cached mode at all. She is a local user, so
she shouldn't need it. I agree that it hasn't gotten better, but
doesn't synching 2 devices with one master server seem like a
relatively simple concept? I hate to say it, but sometimes it seems
like maybe MS doesn't want it to work as well as Outlook.

 

[AMG674]

Brett/Jeremy -

We are also still seeing issues as well using delegation in Entourage.
Here are steps we've taken, but any suggestions you come across please
let me know. Our environment:

- Exchange 2000 with hotfix applied which allows Entourage read/write
to public folders
- Front End Exchange servers set up (won't require us to touch each
desktop to change the server in each user's Identity when Mail admins
move accounts to other servers)
- Entourage 2004, Outlook 2001, and OWA on builds - 3 tiered approach
- Office 2004 SP2 (we are not implementing 11.2.3)

Some solutions below have resolved issues, but they persist still even
after following these steps. Clients use Outlook 2001 as a backup for
when such sync issues are occurring, so clients may be running
Entourage and Outlook concurrently to manage their account:

- reduce size of mailbox to less than 1G (as a general guideline) by
deleting sent/received items, removing attachments, emptying deleted
items, etc
- reduce the size of calendar by removing old items, removing recurring
items as possible, etc.
- change Exchange server from "SERVERNAME" to be
"http://SERVERNAME/exchange/"
- Control click on a folder and 'Synchronize Now' and/or "Empty Cache"
- use Webmail and Outlook to compare account data - if items are not
the same, delete different items
- e-mail address in a contact in a shared public folder must not have
an apostrophe in string
- verify if accounts of delegator and delegatee are on the same
Exchange server, or different one. If different, there may be a sync
lag.

In one case, sync issues still are occurring:
- Occasionally, entries made in Entourage appear at first, for at least
1 day, but then at some point either disappear or changes made revert
to original. This is reflected in Outlook as well.
- Entering a large number of events around the same time resulted in
correct appearance in Entourage on delegate, but days later disappeared
from Entourage. They do appear correctly in Outlook on delegate's Mac,
and correctly on delegator's Entourage.

In this case, these are the details of the configuration:
- Delegate has Owner permissions on delegated Calendar
- Both delegate and delegator have accounts residing on the same E2K
server
- Both Exchange accounts are under 1G
- Delegator and delegatee are running Entourage 11.2.1
- Delegatee is running Outlook 2001 in Classic concurrently
- Both have FESERVER in Exchange server field, and FESERVER/public/ in
public folders field.
- Large mailbox (1G) and large number of calendar items in delegated
calendar (9000+)

Resolution:
The only choice at this time is to advise client to use Outlook 2001
for reliable calendaring, reduce mailbox/calendar sizes, and observe if
changes appear in Entourage (until we switch clients to Intel Macs).

- Will

 

[Brett_x]

Thanks for the Tips, Will

Most don't apply to us because we are using 11.2.3... which is supposed
to fix syncing issues. And we can't run OS 9 any more, so Outlook 2001
is out. I am writing this to warn people that the sync issues ARE NOT
fixed.
Today I finally reproduced a sync problem with my own account. There
was a multi-day meeting in my calendar that I deleted from Entourage,
and it stayed on the exchange server. I can still see it in webmail,
but not in Entourage.
This time it is not an obscured situation where someone is telling me
what they did to come up with a conflict. There is no delegation or "he
said" "She said". I did this all from within Entourage myself. I have
not used Outlook in the last 2 months. We do have Exchange running
with all of the patches, and I am running Tiger 10.4.6 and Office
11.2.3.

It is still broken. I am going to open a case with MS this week and
hopefully get it documented.

To Microsoft: How is it possible that it is 2006 and you can't even get
2 machines to sync with each other (or at the *very* least, show an
error when it doesn't work). It's not rocket science. I hate to say it,
because I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I generally like MS
applications... But it really seems like you don't want things to work
*quite* right on the Mac.

I don't know what other issues we might have had if we had picked a
different enterprise mail system a year ago, but if anyone reading this
is evaluating mail systems and you have Macs, think twice before
choosing Exchange.

_Brett