Does Entourage 2008 Support Resource Booking? (conference rooms)

[ye...@officeformac.com]

This isn't supported in 2004, but is a key feature for me to upgrade. That is, seeing resource availability, and booking that room so that it is reserved (and no one else can book it during that time).

[William Smith]

Entourage 2004 does support resource booking so long as you can look up
the mailbox name of the resource in the Global Address List and your
Exchange Server has the Microsoft Exchange Server Auto Accept Agent
running to respond to requests
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3D0884E6-C603-491D-BF57-ACF03E046BFE&displaylang=en>.

Entourage 2008 supports this as well.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

[Unknown]

In Outlook you can review resources' availability, which is really important BEFORE you send out an invite.

Surely you can understand why you'd want to be sure the conference room is available before inviting 15 people to your meeting with the "Place" field set to "Room 5," only to get a rejection back from the server shortly after and have to re-send the entire meeting with a new location. Repeat process until a room is found.

It really is a disappointment that in 4 years we don't have proper resources or server-side rules in this client :(

[Allerton@discussions.microsoft.com Mark Allerton]

Gotta admit, I am pretty steamed that 2008 still does not do this properly.
Microsoft charges $250 more for the version of 2008 that supports Exchange.
That and automator support are pretty much the only reasons not to buy the
"Home and Student Edition. I think for $250 we could reasonably expect
something that talks to Exchange really, really well. Not something that just
about gets you by.

I think anyone who suggests that this can be made to work by asking the
Exchange Admin to change settings at the server has precisely zero experience
of working in an organization that uses Exchange.

Sorry, just my $0.02.

..Mark..

[Unknown]

I am also in desperate need of this feature. I am sick of running Parallels just so I can run Outlook just so I can book resources to a meeting. How can this be an oversight? It has GOT to be in there.

At my company, when we invite a conference room to a meeting in Outlook we have to change it from a person to a resource. I don't see that option in Entourage 2008.

[Gino]

Bill, this is pretty disappointing.

Rather than complain, I'd love to know why this huge disconnect exists. Is
it technical? It surely can't be an oversight.

Please knock this feature up to the top of the list in terms of product
updates. It's just embarrassing not to have this feature available.

Gino

[mandebooks]

Resource reservation with the Auto Accept agent works just fine in
Entourage 2008 - also if your Exchange environment is setup correctly
you can view the Free/Busy time of the resource just like you can any
other user. The other option is to allow for reviewer access to the
resources calendar - since it is just another exchange mailbox.

We have not had any issues using Resource Reservation in Entourage
2004 or 2008.

Randy Rowles
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

[Unknown]

This is EXTREMELY important for the viability of Entourage as a client in an Exchange shop. I cannot understand why this can't just be made to work with an out-of-the-box Exchange setup. Getting IT to change anything about an Exchange server in support of non-Windows users is a big pain. Most IT managers would sooner demand the use of Outlook from Windows rather than muck around with their Exchange server.

For that matter why doesn't Entourage just use MAPI-based mechanisms that Outlook on Windows does? All of this is in your power Microsoft! I am so disappointed that Entourage 2008 is apparently nearly just as weak as 2004 was. What a waste.

[Unknown]

Hi there,

I tried sending along your recommendation, but received this response from my IT department:

"Thanks for your input. We currently have setup conference rooms to responded in recommend method from Microsoft and overall the best method for the environment. This would require adding event syncs to the environment which can posses issue to server stability. "

I hope that the Mac BU folks realize that currently, Entourage users in an Exchange environment are considered by IT to be an annoying edge case that they don't want to deal with, so if Entourage doesn't work with the system as it is set up out of the box then the user is up-the-creek.

What am I supposed to do now?

What really bugs me is that all you had to do was to add this ONE feature and I would have dished out the $250 to upgrade. Instead, you've focused on features like "my-day" which is just eye-candy and doesn't get at the heart of what real users' problems are.

[Justin]

Unfortunately I am finding this discussion somewhat postmortem. I am
beginning to start an Office 2008 pilot at a 50,000+ user company and still
running into very similar issues. Alas, perhaps someone could help me with
this???

I have a user who would like Entourage to work like Outlook when it comes to
tentatively accepting invites. If you will notice, once Outlook receives a
meeting request, it auto accepts tentativley and places it in your calendar
until you take action. So why isn't this feature inherent in Entourage, or
am i just missing the boat?

Myself and at least 3 other users experience this in a primarily Windows
shop. What alternatives are there?

THX,

Justin

"Corey" wrote:

> Hi there,<br>
> <br>
> I tried sending along your recommendation, but received this response from my IT department:<br>
> <br>
> "Thanks for your input. We currently have setup conference rooms to responded in recommend method from Microsoft and overall the best method for the environment. This would require adding event syncs to the environment which can posses issue to server stability. "<br>
> <br>
> I hope that the Mac BU folks realize that currently, Entourage users in an Exchange environment are considered by IT to be an annoying edge case that they don't want to deal with, so if Entourage doesn't work with the system as it is set up out of the box then the user is up-the-creek.<br>
> <br>
> What am I supposed to do now?<br>
> <br>

[Unknown]

This is EXTREMELY important for the viability of Entourage as a client
in an Exchange shop. I cannot understand why this can't just be made to
work with an out-of-the-box Exchange setup.

Surely I can't be the only one who thinks that this is _exactly_ the reason that this feature is missing; Microsoft _doesn't_ _want_ Entourage to be a viable client in an Exchange shop.

[Adam Bailey]

<> <> wrote:
> Surely I can't be the only one who thinks that this is _exactly_ the
> reason that this feature is missing; Microsoft _doesn't_ _want_ Entourage
> to be a viable client in an Exchange shop.

Yes, clearly that's it, you've uncovered their evil plan.

Microsoft went ahead and implemented Exchange email support, group
calendaring, Out Of Office, public folders, etc. - but it's all just a ruse
to distract from the fact that the single most useful Exchange feature is
missing - resource booking.

Or we could put away our tin foil hats and admit that it's *possible* that
many institutions don't *use* resource booking, or that the ones that do have
not communicated this as a priority to Microsoft.

Everyone thinks that their experience is routine, but we all need to step
back and admit that sometimes it's not. Microsoft adds features that are
highly requested. If this is one that you want, have every Mac user in your
company send feedback.

--
Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois
ad...@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP & S/MIME
ada...@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/

[luck...@officeformac.com]

I have to agree with Randy Rowles's post. If you have your resources properly set up you can easily book them using Entourage.

Despite William Smith's assertion, you don't need AutoAccept Agent to be running either as long as you have an attendant machine set up as a delegate, auto-responding to all resource booking requests. (Granted, AutoAccept Agent is way better!)

You can also see resource availability just like any other attendee's. The one thing you don't get is the resource auto-entered as the Location field. You still have to do this manually.

[luck...@officeformac.com]

Adam Bailey, I would offer that resource booking is standard operating procedure in any organization with an Exchange server, that this is not an uncommon scenario, and will only become more so.

For you to suggest the idea is some kind of niche demand or that thousands of us haven't been beseeching Microsoft since 2000 to properly implement this feature in Entourage suggests it's more likely you that should take your own advice to take a step back and admit their experience is not routine.

[Unknown]

Adam, some additional responses:

1. I have never been in an organization of any size that (a) used a calendar management system but (b) didn't use resource booking. This includes Exchange and non-Exchange systems, organizations ranging in size from 5 people to 10K+, and stretches back 15 years.

2. As far as I can tell, Microsoft's only "evil plan" is "make more money". I believe (and, apparently, so does MS) that said goal is best furthered by having Entourage _not_ be a viable Exchange client.

To add insult to injury, the Auto Accept Agent has a _50 page_ installation/administration manual. For a group of people that IT already considers to be an edge case, that fact alone is plenty to convince IT to do nothing.

[Adam Bailey]

<> <> wrote:
> Adam, some additional responses:
>
> 1. I have never been in an organization of any size that (a) used a
> calendar management system but (b) didn't use resource booking. This
> includes Exchange and non-Exchange systems, organizations ranging in size
> from 5 people to 10K+, and stretches back 15 years.

We can have anecdotal arguments back and forth all day, it doesn't prove
anything. Everyone who has this issue needs to report it to Microsoft. End
of discussion.

> 2. As far as I can tell, Microsoft's only "evil plan" is "make more
> money". I believe (and, apparently, so does MS) that said goal is best
> furthered by having Entourage _not_ be a viable Exchange client.

Then Microsoft wouldn't have Office or Entourage period. The MacBU has a
reputation of being one of MS' most profitable divisions. They don't have
the staff of other divisions, however, so they can't do everything. We have
to tell them what we want, and they get to what they can.

> To add insult to injury, the Auto Accept Agent has a _50 page_
> installation/administration manual. For a group of people that IT already
> considers to be an edge case, that fact alone is plenty to convince IT to
> do nothing.

Exchange is a complicated beast. If IT can't be expected to do their job,
they can't be expected to do much else.

[macusersunite]

We are having the same problem and the solutions provided don't seem to
really address the problem. Entourage 2008 should just have a Resources field
so conference rooms, etc. can be scheduled just like they are in Windows
Outlook 2003/2007.

-Joel

[Kid...@officeformac.com]

Whilst I completely agree that Microsoft are missing a trick there may be some light on the horizon.

The new iPhone licenses ActiveSync from Microsoft, hopefully Apple will look to incorporate this into iCal or MacMail to give us a true Exchange client.

In the meantime, my organisation have Outlook Web Access available from exchange. Its web based so sucks when it comes to performance, but you can book a resource through Safari.

[Harry Teasley]

> ye...@officeformac.com wrote:

> Entourage 2004 does support resource booking so long as you can look up
> the mailbox name of the resource in the Global Address List and your
> Exchange Server has the Microsoft Exchange Server Auto Accept Agent
> running to respond to requests
>

> Entourage 2008 supports this as well.

For values of "support" that include "woefully inadequately". We have meeting rooms that have addresses that respond to scheduling, but in our company, that's not enough: we also have an "all meeting rooms" group that you can add when creating an appointment, which will expand to show all meeting rooms, because half the scheduling battle is finding a meeting room that's open when you want it.

At least, you can do that in Outlook. Entourage just uses that group address as if it were a single resource: can't expand it to its constituent members, so I can't see individual room schedules.

The situation is pretty simple: when Office:Mac 2008 is still feature deficient compared to Office:2003 for Windows, there's cause for complaint. That Entourage 2008 can't do everything with an Exchange server that Outlook can is sort of annoying. Well, not sort of: really very annoying.