Exchange 5.5 resources dropping events from calendar

[Dr Him]

We're running Exchange 5.5 SP4 on the server, and Outlook 2000 on the
clients.

We've got multiple resources set up to be reservable; meeting rooms
are the most used. They are configured to auto-accept meetings.

What we have seen over the years is that for recurring meetings, after
some amount of time, the resource's calendar will be missing the
meeting, even though that resource shows up in the organizer's
calendar (and usually all of the other attendees).

Because it take a long time for this to happen, and is not possible to
reproduce on any reasonable time-frame, I'm at a loss for why this
happens.

I've not found anything apparently relevant in the Microsoft KB. I'm
guessing that there is some bug in 5.5 causing this, but I don't know.

Is this a known issue? Is it fixed in Exchange 2000/2003?

thanks

 

[Doug]

Do you have users who add these resource
mailboxes/calendars to their Outlook profiles? If so,
they may have auto-archive settings that delete older
meetings. Just a thought; I haven't tested this theory.

 

[Dr Him]

Do you have users who add these resource
mailboxes/calendars to their Outlook profiles? If so,
they may have auto-archive settings that delete older
meetings. Just a thought; I haven't tested this theory.

Hmmm... interesting, but after investigation, it appears that this is
not the case. The only two people who have these meeting rooms in
their profiles are: the receptionist, and a guy in IT. Both of them
have auto-archiving disabled for their calendars in Outlook.

We looked at the Outlook settings for some of the meeting organizers
who have noticed this issue, and they do have auto-archive set for
items older than six months. It seems unlikely, however, that this is
the problem, because the symptoms are:

- The resource's calendar is missing the meeting.

and

- The meeting organizer's calendar shows that the resource is still
booked for the meeting.

If it was an issue with the meeting organizer's auto-archive settings,
I would instead expect that they *not* see the resource as still
booked.


What I find most puzzling is that this is something that no one else
has seen, from the fact that I'm not seeing anyone else post with a
similar problem. I had kind of hoped this was a known issue; then at
least we could know an upgrade would fix it.

And, of course, it is not reproducible, as far as we've been able to
find.