hello i'm not sure how this happened, but previously, when a user would setup a meeting and invite a meeting room (resource scheduling), a dialog box would pop up and advise the user if the meeting room had been booked successfully (or otherwise). now for some reason, the resource mailbox emails the user a confirmation email instead. the meetings are being proccessed correctly, though, how can i change this back to the way it was?

I would ask you to visit below thread which has similar issue. first you need to see if you have configured AutomateProcessing to AutoAccept. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvrgeneral/thread/7546f0ed-a0c6-40ed-a4cf-8fe325731e06 No Confirmation Received That a Resource Has Accepted an Invitation When You Schedule a Meeting Vinod |CCNA|MCSE 2003 +Messaging|MCTS|ITIL V3|

The popup message was a function of Outlook when the room was set up for "Direct Booking", an Outlook feature. Direct Booking has several drawbacks to it, although that popup was one of the positive features.It sounds like your resources have been changed over to server-side handling. You don't say what version of Exchange you are on though. For Exchange 2007, resource mailboxes are a built-in feature of the product and once configured, the server will handle accepting or declining meeting requests based on availability. The accept/decline decision is made /after/ the meeting invitation is sent to the recipients though, so it doesn't offer a pop-up to the users. The server-side processing means that OWA, Activesync and other users can participate in resource booking in addition to Outlook users. It also works better with cached mode users who may be offline or loosely connected to the server. Further it offers more configuration parameters for controlling who can book a room, how much time they can book, etc.In Exchange 2010 some client visibility is returned through the ToolTips feature of Outlook and OWA to let users know more directly whether a resource is available before hitting "send".

Environment consists of Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007.Am I able to restore the pop up message, or "Direct Booking" if that is what it is called?

I did some research and worked out that when the mailboxes where re-created in E2007, they were "upgraded" and lost the pop-up feature. I would really like to revert that feature, even if it means restoring the mailbox back to 2003-type. Would I be able to recreate the room with an outlook 2003 client and NOT upgrade it but still have it function as a resource?

Refer the info here you will get the answer http://msexchangeanswers.blogspot.com/(Do you still want the outlook pop-up feature stating that the meeting is successfully booked or declined (due to conflict or no permission)

Thanks Rakesh, that was it. One question though, I know with Direct Booking, there are features you miss out on, though I can't really tell what they are as booking a room seems the same. Are there any "big deal" features that you miss out on or not really??

You are missing the below features:Enabling Bookinpolicy to control who all can book the resource room. This can be configured thrugh OWA.Enabling RequestinPolicy to specify who all can send request to this meeting room, the request will be sitting on the resource mailbox and delegate needs to approve that.Restricitng the maximum time duration for which the Resource room can be booked (it will be subject to approval by a delegate). Lets say if it is set to 30 minutes, then any request which has duration more than 30 minutes will automatically be declined Enabling Requestoutofpolicy which will give the ability to the specified user to submit a request even if it is out of polciy i.e. even they specify the time duration more than 30 minutes the meeting will be accepted (will be subject to approval by a delegate).. Note: InPolicy and OutOfPolicy simply mean whether or not the meeting invitation matches any restrictions enabled on the resource mailbox. We need to have the Delegate for the Resource room if we want to have RequestinPolicy and RequestoutofPolicy feature.

Great Post. This is exactly the information I was trying to find. One question. I am now 2007 and I want to create a new room resource and still use the Direct booking feature instead of the 2007 default of AutoAccept. I have read through Rakesh's blog but it seems that this will only work if I am still migrating resources/mailboxes from 2003. Is that correct? If not, then I found the following statement a bit vague;"Now, once you have ensured the above setting, open the resource mailbox using outlook and configure it to auto accept the meetings in order to set it for Outlook direct booking."How exactly do you "configure it to auto accept the meetings"Thank you,-B

This will even work for newroom mailboxes created in E2k7. You need to configure outlook profile for each of these rooms and then configure these rooms to "automatically accept meeting requests and process cancellatinos". Open Outlook, Click on Tools => Options=> Calendar Options =>Resorce Scheduling => now check the box for "automatically accept meeting requests and process cancellatinos" and "Automatically decline Conflicting meeting Requests".

Rakesh,Great post. It clarified the problems with room mailboxes. I have a similar situation. Old room mailbox was created and migrated from EX2003 -> EX2007. This mailbox got corrupted, so I deleted it and re-created it in EX2007. I no longer have EX2003 in my environment and require the old pop-ups to appear for all users. Conflict: I made the changes to Resource Scheduling using OWA. I checked mailbox using Outlook 2007 and no settings for resource scheduling appeared. Flipped back over to OWA and the settings are still there. I can receive the email confirmaiton but no pop-up. It did not work for me when using Outlook 2007 to make resource scheduling changes. I followed KB299590 for setup. Am I missing something here? Thanx,HB

What's the exact requirement. You want the pop-up (outlook direct booking) or email notificaitons. For outlook direct booking you will have to configure it the way I have posted it in my previous reply.If you want email notificaitons and not the pop-ups then you need to create the mailboxes as room mailbox and then run the below power shell command:Set-MailboxCalendarSettings Resource1 -AutomateProcessing:Autoaccept

Rakesh, I posted this on your blog as well, but will repeat here too: We want to go back to direct booking for our Exchange 2007 resource mailboxes to get the popup back. Unfortunately, it sounds like your procedure to do this is to set the mailbox to 'autoupdate' rather than 'autoaccept' using set-mailboxcalendarsettings -automateprocessing autoupdate, then open the mailbox in Outlook and use the Resource Scheduling button in Calendar options to turn on auto accept for meetings. The trouble with this is that the Resource Scheduling button is not active when run against a 2007 mailbox. If I click it, I get a 'This folder cannot be opened because there is a configuration problem on the server' error message. Any other suggestions? Thanks again for the post, Ian

Hi Rakesh, thanks for all these valuable information however, if you created room mailboxes in E2k7 the account is in disabled state and cant be enabled in AD too.. Hence how can you configure this ID in outlook???

Why do you want to login to the room mailbox ? to enable the resource/conference room mailbox. Set a valid password and then enable the account. you can now use this account as any other account. lasse at humandata dot se, http://anewmessagehasarrived.blogspot.com