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We're rearranging our current office in order to save money on the lease. This will remove a dozen or so conference rooms from use at the end of this month.

I've been asked to configure these resource mailboxes so that they will not accept any requests after March 31st. I thought there was an option in the EMC to edit the resource policy to do something like this, but I might have just been confused about the Booking Window option. In any case, is there an easy way to accomplish this that doesn't require manually creating a "Not available" meeting in each of these calendars?

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  • Since the date is so soon.... If you are automatically accepting bookings, could you not just defer all bookings for that resource to your delegates??
    – john
    Mar 19, 2014 at 17:37
  • ... but I suppose a "hacky" way would be to update the booking window on a daily basis, decreasing the value by one each day. This could be automated.
    – john
    Mar 19, 2014 at 17:40
  • @john We aren't using delegates, all in-policy requests are automatically accepted and out-of-policy requests are denied. I considered adding a delegate, but that just means more work for an over-worked person. I was considering a PS script to decrement the booking window, but I don't think this kind of situation is that unusual that there is no built-in way to handle it.
    – Thomas
    Mar 19, 2014 at 17:42
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    what is it about putting an event in the calendar that you don't like? That would be the most sensible option.
    – john
    Mar 19, 2014 at 17:44
  • @john, that is what I was thinking. Just create events that reserve those rooms so no new events can be scheduled.
    – Zoredache
    Mar 19, 2014 at 18:53

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From the comments: I would suggest that your best option is to block-book the rooms, and decline any existing meetings that have already been created past those dates. If you changed the booking window, I believe you would have to change it every day to reflect the number of days remaining.

If you want, something like this should do it:

@("Mailbox 1","Mailbox 2","Mailbox 3") | `
% { Set-CalendarProcessing -BookingWindowInDays <num> -EnforceSchedulingHorizon:$true }

(where <num> is the number of days remaining)

As @TheCleaner suggested, you can do this in one go with an appointment that has all of the rooms invited.

What you're asking for is technically possible with something like EWS, but it would be a lot of work and would probably be complete after the deadline!

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  • 2 points for that cmdlet. I know I could invite all of the rooms to an appointment I create, but then I also have that appointment on my calendar as well. I had planned to take full access to the resource mailbox and create the appointment on its own calendar as itself. What I don't know is if a resource mailbox can invite other resources to its own meeting - I simply have never tried it. But I have the list so it looks like I'll be trying it today.
    – Thomas
    Mar 20, 2014 at 14:34
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Change the booking window to 12 days today, then send out a global email that states what is going on.

This isn't as difficult as you might think...why? Because the conference rooms won't even be physically available after March 31st. Which means even if someone two weeks ago booked a recurring meeting that extends all the way to October, that organizer and the attendees should be bright enough to not try and physically use that space when the time comes and will realize (hence your global email heads up) that they should('ve) changed the meeting to a different resource/room.

If you really want to, you can catalog all the meetings past 3/31 and let the organizers know, but that's a PITA if there are a lot of meetings scheduled and the organizer can do their own legwork.

Finally, you could set a policy/delegate on the resource going forward for the next 2 weeks. Isn't that big of a deal and helps prevent silly people that don't read your global announcement.

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  • Never underestimate the ability of a corporate executive to ignore company comms notices and book a conference room they're not supposed to. Never underestimate the power of habit. Certainly never underestimate the power of end-user ignorance. There are 100 reasons why an admin might want to prevent scheduling in Exchange, not the least of which is because my boss told me to. My question is specifically if there is a hidden policy setting for this functionality. Adding a delegate adds workload to whoever has to manually approve requests.
    – Thomas
    Mar 19, 2014 at 20:49
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    True, but for the next week and a half...not so bad. There's not a hidden policy setting or PS cmdlet that allows a resource to deny anything past a certain date. There might be a 3rd party solution, but I haven't checked for one. I do like John's idea though of simply booking the rooms past 3/31 but it doesn't handle the existing bookings if any.
    – TheCleaner
    Mar 19, 2014 at 20:52
  • I concur that booking them is the next best option to a built-in deny feature. With everyone moving around and after several rounds of layoffs, everyone is already overworked. Otherwise I'd not mind taking the time to block of each calendar one at a time.
    – Thomas
    Mar 19, 2014 at 21:04
  • You can block them all at once. Just add multiple resources to a single calendar event. Should be a 5 minute fix if you want to go that route. Assuming they aren't already booked. You might have to allow them to be double booked in the EMC (allow conflicts) first.
    – TheCleaner
    Mar 19, 2014 at 21:19

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