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Exchange Server 2010 Room Mailboxes Step by Step Guide
Exchange Server 2010 has several different types of mailboxes that can be created. In this tutorial we’ll explore the purpose of a Room Mailbox in Exchange Server 2010, how to create a Room Mailbox, and look at different ways to configure a Room Mailbox to suit different scenarios.
Exchange Server 2010 Room Mailbox Overview
A Room Mailbox is a special type of mailbox that is assigned to a fixed location such as a meeting space, conference room, or training facility.
Room Mailboxes are fundamentally the same as regular User Mailboxes. They consist of a user account in Active Directory and an associated mailbox in Exchange Server 2010. However when you create a Room Mailbox using Exchange Server 2010 the user account password is generated automatically by Exchange, and the user account is disabled by default so that it can’t be used for interactive logons.
In addition, the Room Mailbox has extra attributes exposed via the Exchange Management Console that can be used for automated processing of bookings and other configurations that suit this type of mailbox. We’ll look more closely at these later in this article.
Creating a New Room Mailbox in Exchange Server 2010
Open the Exchange Management Console and navigate to Recipient Configuration -> Mailboxes, and start the New Mailbox Wizard.
Select Room Mailbox as the mailbox type to create.
Select New User to create a new user account for the Room Mailbox.
Select an organizational unit and fill out the user information for the new Room Mailbox.
Change the alias if necessary and complete any of the other optional settings that are required in your environment.
When you are happy with the settings you’ve chosen click New to create the Room Mailbox.
Now that the new Room Mailbox has been created you might notice a few things about it. Firstly, it appears as a different type of mailbox in the Exchange Management Console.
You can also see that the associated user account is disabled.
And the Room Mailbox also appears in the Room Mailboxes address list.
Configuring Exchange Server 2010 Room Mailboxes
When you open the properties of a Room Mailbox you’ll notice some additional tabs that do not appear for normal User Mailboxes.
These additional options let you configure the Room Mailbox in different ways, such as:
- Whether meeting requests are automatically accepted by the Room Mailbox
- How the Room Mailbox handles conflicting appointments
- The maximum length of time a meeting can book out the room
- How far into the future a room booking can be made
These options make sense under different scenarios. For example:
- A small, general meeting room is suitable for auto-acceptance of meeting requests, but due to the number of people who may want to use the room only a maximum of 1 hour can be booked at a time
- An executive boardroom would not auto-accept room bookings, but instead be managed by an executive assistant to make sure it is always available for meeting with important visitors
- A training room would permit all day bookings to faciliate training classes
Lets take a closer look at how we would configure a Room Mailbox to automatically accept bookings.
Configure the Room Mailbox Auto-Attendant
On the Resource General tab of the Room Mailbox properties enable the Resource Booking Attendant option.
This can also be performed using the Exchange Management Shell.
[PS] C:\>Set-CalendarProcessing "Conference Room 1" -AutomateProcessing AutoAccept
When Alan Reid books the meeting room for an available time he receives an automatic acceptance from the Room Mailbox.
Configure the Room Mailbox Delegate
In this example a delegate is configured who can manage scheduling for the Room Mailbox. In the Resource Policy tab of the mailbox properties click Add and select the user who is to become a delegate of the Room Mailbox.
Delegates also need Editor access to the calendar and free/busy folder of the mailbox itself so that they can manage meeting requests. There are two ways to achieve this:
- Grant an administrator Full Access Permissions to the Room Mailbox, open it in Outlook, and edit the Calendar and Mailbox permissions.
- Grant the delegate Full Access Permissions to the Room Mailbox
In this example I will use option #2.
[PS] C:\>Add-MailboxPermission -Identity "Conference Room 1" -User Alex.Heyne -AccessRights FullAccess
The delegate Alex Heyne can now manage room bookings. In this example a meeting is still unconfirmed waiting for Alex to approve or reject it.
After Alex approves the meeting the organizer (Alan Reid) receives a message confirming acceptance.
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Show Full Free/Busy Details for Exchange Server 2010 Room and Resource Mailboxes
In the comments of my article about Exchange Server 2010 Room mailboxes some readers wanted to know how they can configure the Room mailbox to show more details about existing meetings in the free/busy information that is revealed to other users on the network.
Consider the scenario where a room is booked, and perhaps another person wants to contact existing meeting organizers to ask if they can remove a booking to make room for a more important one, but the free/busy information (as seen in the Outlook Scheduling Assistant) doesn’t indicate who made the bookings.
This is caused by the default permissions on the mailbox’s calendar. These default permissions are set to show only the availability information (eg free, busy, tentative) but not any other details.
In the calendar permissions (if you were modifying them via Outlook) it would look like this.
If viewed in the shell it with Get-MailboxFolderPermission it would appear like this.
[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxFolderPermission homeetingroom1:\Calendar
RunspaceId : 8706cde4-2cb5-4519-9a46-a46fcc0c450c
FolderName : Calendar
User : Default
AccessRights : {AvailabilityOnly}
Identity : Default
IsValid : True
If you modified the permissions using Outlook the new permission level of Reviewer would allow other users to see more details about existing meetings.
You can apply that same permission in the Exchange Management Shell using the Set-MailboxFolderPermission cmdlet (note: Set-MailboxFolderPermission modifies an existing entry, whereas Add-MailboxFolderPermission would be used to add a new entry to the permissions).
Set-MailboxFolderPermission homeetingroom1:\Calendar -User Default -AccessRights Reviewer
The results can be seen in the Get-MailboxFolderPermission output.
[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxFolderPermission homeetingroom1:\Calendar
RunspaceId : 8706cde4-2cb5-4519-9a46-a46fcc0c450c
FolderName : Calendar
User : Default
AccessRights : {Reviewer}
Identity : Default
IsValid : True
RunspaceId : 8706cde4-2cb5-4519-9a46-a46fcc0c450c
FolderName : Calendar
User : Anonymous
AccessRights : {None}
Identity : Anonymous
IsValid : True
When creating a new meeting request users are now able to see more details about the meeting organizer.
You can modify all the default permissions on Room mailboxes with the following commands in the Exchange Management Shell.
[PS] C:\>$rooms = Get-Mailbox -RecipientTypeDetails RoomMailbox
[PS] C:\>$rooms | %{Set-MailboxFolderPermission $_":\Calendar" -User Default -AccessRights Reviewer}
if user2 needs to access user1’s calendar Add-MailboxFolderPermission -identity "user1:\calendar" –user "user2" -AccessRights Reviewer the same can be done to give permission to a security group Add-MailboxFolderPermission -identity "user1:\calendar" –user "domain\secgroupname" -AccessRights owner Below is the list of access rights and explanation None FolderVisible PublishingEditor CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems Editor CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems PublishingAuthor CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, DeleteOwnedItems Author CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, DeleteOwnedItems NonEditingAuthor CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible Reviewer ReadItems, FolderVisible Contributor CreateItems, FolderVisible Owner CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderOwner, FolderContact, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems
Script set all mailboxes default calendar permissions to reviewer:
setcalenderpermissions.ps1
$mbxs = Get-Mailbox
foreach ($mbx in $mbxs) {
Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "$($mbx.Alias):\Calendar" -User USERABC -AccessRights Reviewer
}
Powershell commands:
Grant the delegate Full Access Permissions to the Room Mailbox
Add-MailboxPermission -Identity "ConfRoomA" -User USERNAME -AccessRights FullAccess
Auto Accept apointments
Set-CalendarProcessing –Identity ConfRoomA –AutomateProcessing AutoAccept
Auto Accept apointments for all roommailboxes
get-mailbox | where {$_.RecipientTypeDetails -eq "RoomMailbox"} | Set-MailboxCalendarSettings -AutomateProcessing AutoAccept
creating a Roomlist New-DistributionGroup command
New-DistributionGroup "Head Office Meeting Rooms" -RoomList
Calendar access rights Exchange 2010 SP1
If you want to view or set Calendar / Agenda acces rights in Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 you can do this very easy with powershell.
To view the access rights on a users calendar run the following command.
Get-MailboxFolderPermission –Identity **username@organisation.com**:\Agenda (or Calendar dependng on your language settings)
To set access rights for a specific user on another users Calendar run the following command.
Set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity **username@organisation.com**:\Agenda -AccessRights
Owner –User **Alias** –Confirm (or Calendar dependng on your language settings)
You can specify the parameter –AccessRights for the correct level of authentication.
The AccessRights parameter also specifies the permissions for the user with the following roles, which are a combination of the rights listed previously:
The following roles apply specifically to calendar folders:
|
Remove Cancelled Meeting Requests from Resource Calendar
Administrators can use RemoveOldMeetingMessages parameter to remove cancelled meetings from resource calendars on Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010, as the meetings are canceled.
Please note that this applies to meetings cancelled after setting RemoveOldMeetingMessages to true. It will not remove items cancelled previously; these will need to be removed manually, either using the macro or a filtered view that displays only canceled meetings. It also will not remove meetings created by Direct Booking (where the user opens the room calendar), the resource needs to be invited.
In Exchange 2007, use the Set-MailboxCalendarSettings cmdlet:
Set-MailboxCalendarSettings -Identity "room1" -RemoveOldMeetingMessages $true
In Exchange 2010, use the Set-CalendarProcessing cmdlet:
Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity "room1" -RemoveOldMeetingMessages $true
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