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Posts Tagged ‘ms-outlook’

Room and Equipment handling using MS-Exchange Resource Mailboxes: To train in Outlook Desktop or in OWA ?

2011/08/30 2 comments
  1. While Outlook desktop is a more powerful calendaring tool than OWA (cf. viewing calendars in overlay mode), we decided to first focus on getting everybody to be functional with meeting requests in OWA, since
    1. faculty will want to use this system from their home computers where the outlook desktop configuration, if it exists at all , is probably even more lacking. Students could, but are not likely to have outlook desktop either
    2. both faculty and students (both for rooms and for equipment) will walk up to the LRC reception desk needing help, and then only OWA is available
    3. it is actually part of both equipment check-out and check-in procedure (if not for rooms, then for equipment) that I am designing that faculty and students open up from OWA (on the web browser that the lab assistant is not using: internet explorer, Firefox, Safari should gives us always 2 options on either operating system) that the meeting that they have made (or if not made, make one on the fly), and that the lab assistant enters a code (generated on the PC at the reception desk) into their appointment and sends the update for them to see them through;
    4. we can also serve as backup on our office computers for the reception desk (unstaffed or understaffed), if clients use OWA
  2. Essentially, it is not a PC Environment anymore (although it could be if our Remote Desktop infrastructure were much stronger).
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, training Tags: , , , ,

Room and Equipment handling using MS-Exchange Resource Mailboxes with Autoprocessing: AutoAccept and ForwardtoDelegates

2011/08/17 Leave a comment
  1. Autoprocessing: AutoAccept automates managing (blocking, sharing information on the block, unblocking) resources for users (those that can BookInPolicy, or AllBookInPolicy).
    1. At least as long as the policies that resource mailboxes allow you to define and the user groups that can be and have been set up in your MS-Exchange environment.
    2. AdditionalResponse can aid in avoiding some of the problems, if the requesters collaborate.
    3. Here is an example of an automated autoaccept message with an additional response:
    4. room434-autoresponse-working
  2. Forwardtodelegates
    1. forwards requests, saving delegates the effort to monitor the resource mailbox and calendar, like so: meeting-request-resource-inbox-tentative
    2. Not only that, it seems to also forward accepted requests, useful for creating a paper-trail, e.g. for future reporting needs (Q:can the entire history of a request, including all changes be monitored this way?).
    3. room434-delegateforward-for-inpolicyrequest-working
    4. This forwardtodelegates seems to work reliably, and you can filter notifications with a rule into the “digital paper-trail” folder:
    5. meeting-request-delegateforward-rules-when-missing
    6. I notice a few gotchas with forwardtodelegates , however:
      1. Not all requesters will have their requests forwarded: If your requester is a delegate, or her account even only linked to that of a delegate, it seems no notification message is forwarded to delegates (at least for in-policy requests).
      2. As you can see in the above screenshots, the forwardtodelegates seems to omit  meeting time requested (bug?) which you can track down by opening the calendar of the resource and search for the the meeting title, both of which are included in the notification message.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager Tags: , , , ,

Renaming Outlook Calendars

2010/01/06 5 comments

Calendaring is still an underutilized data source, but sharing of and collaboration on calendars are picking up.

If you find yourself juggling more and more calendars of your own and others that are shared with you, you will want to organize your calendars by naming them.

In MS-Outlook, however, you may find that the renaming option is grayed out and disabled when trying to rename your Calendar:  .

To work around this issue, do this:

  1. Download the Exchange 2003 Information Store Viewer to your computer.http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3D1C7482-4C6E-4EC5-983E-127100D71376&displaylang=en, unpack Mdbvu32.exe (CAUTION: THIS IS A POWERFUL UTILIITY THAT CAN ALTER YOUR DATA IN MANY WAYS, INCLUDING DELETING IT. HANDLE WITH CARE!).
  2. Create an Outlook profile that can connect to the problem mailbox.[If you work on your own mailbox, you can skip this].
  3. Run Mdbvu32.exe. Select the following three options and click OK: MAPI_FORCE_DOWNLOAD, MAPI_EXPLICIT_PROFILE, MAPI_NEW_SESSION
  4. Make sure that the profile you have created in Step 2 [or your default profile] is selected. Click OK.
  5. Click MDB -> OpenMessageStore.
  6. Make sure the problem mailbox is selected and click Open.
  7. Click MDB -> Open Root Folder.
  8. Double-click “IPM_SUBTREE” in the left list (if for some reason you don’t see this double click each entry in the top/left until you get a folder list.)
  9. Double-click the Calendar.
  10. Click the “Call Function” button.
  11. Click the “SetProps” button.
  12. Make sure the “PR_Display_Name” is selected from the PropID list. Change its name to <whatever> in the textbox below and click the ”Add” button. You will see that the change action is added to the list. Click the “Call” button on the right-top corner to apply the change.
  13. 4. Click Close until you drop out of the windows, then close the MDBVU utility and OK to the logoff. From: To:
  14. You may need to close and reopen Outlook to refresh the folder name.
  15. And voilà:

I just verified this to work on MS-Outlook 2007 against MS-Exchange 2007 (and assume it to work on stand-alone PST files also), and added the screenshots to clarify this. My thanks go to user traval and MS for the heavy lifting (although I wish MS would make my lifting still easier).

Categories: e-infrastructure, office-software Tags: , , , , ,

View the departmental calendar with your Outlook calendar

2009/12/02 1 comment

If you are looking for a more convenient way to coordinate your personal calendar (and in the future: –s) with the departmental calendar, you can do what is called “Connect to Outlook” a Sharepoint Teamsite Calendar.

Go to “Inside Loyola”, go to your Modern Languages & Literatures team site,

click in the left menu: “Calendar”, click from the calendar top menu: “Actions”/ “Connect to Outlook”, like here:

Click “Yes”here: , or “Advanced”,

But there is not much to configure here:

In the resulting view (in “Overlay mode”, like 2 overlaid transparencies), events are much easier to coordinate:like so:

Incidentally: If, after “Connect to Outlook” a Sharepoint Teamsite Calendar, this password dialogue keeps popping up, like so: , instead of [your usual username], put [your usual username]@loyola.edu, plus remove the prefix “portal.loyola.edu/”.

Categories: e-infrastructure, Institution-is-Loyola-University-Maryland Tags: , , , , ,