Entourage does not identify conflicts withrecurring meetings and all day events

G

Gary_Eary

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: Exchange

I am a network administrator for 20|20 a Design and Strategy consultancy in London, England.

I have identified and can replicate an issue with Entourage 2008 SP2 (and subsequent versions) running on Mac OS Leopard 10.5.7 and 10.5.8 connecting to a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 server with all security and service packs applied.

This issue specifically relates to Entourage's inability to identify and report meeting conflicts for All-Day Events and Recurring Meetings. I have run several testes and here's what I have found:

Issue A: All-Day Events

1. A user creates an all-day event by checking the 'All-Day Event' checkbox in the 'New Event' dialogue box and invites someone else to that event.
2. The invitee accepts the request for the All-Day Event and it's added to their calendar.
3. Another person invites that same invitee to another meeting on the same day as their all-day event.
4. Entourage DOES NOT identify the new meeting invite as conflicting with the All-Day Event.

If the user manually creates an All-Day Event instead of accepting it as an invite then the conflict checking works.

issue B: Recurring Meetings.

1. A user either creates a string of recurring meetings either directly into their own calendar or by accepting a recurring meeting sent in a request.
2. Another user sends an invite to a recipient who has an event with 2nd, or subsequent generation recurrence. (e.g. the 2nd Friday of a recurring Friday meeting lasting 3 weeks)
3. When the request is opened Entourage DOES NOT identify the conflict with the recurring meeting.

If the invite request happened to be for the 1st iteration of a recurring series of meetings then Entourage DOES correctly identify the conflict. It only neglects to identify a conflict on the subsequent iterations of a recurrence.

Interestingly the Scheduling pane of the 'new event' dialogue DOES know about the recurring meeting, so the Free/busy connector has been updated. It seems as if the Entourage client doesn't 'see' the conflict because its using the date the event was initially created to identify it rather than the current iteration.

This can be proved by editing the series so that a subsequent event simply lasts a little longer. This breaks the series and then Entourage immediately reports a conflict.

I have tested both these issues several times and can replicate it every time. Please could someone let me know if they are experiencing this issue or if there is a solution. Especially if you have Exchange 2007 and/or Entourage Web Services Beta and aren't having this issue.

We used to use Outlook 2001 for Mac and never had this issue. I've tried this with meetings created a fresh in Entourage to remove the possibility that 'old' Outlook-created meetings might be at fault - no luck. This issue occurs on Entourage to Entourage clients.

Thank you for your help.

Gary Eary

IT Manager
20|20 Limited
[email protected]
 
C

Corentin Cras-Méneur

Hi Gary,
I have identified and can replicate an issue with Entourage 2008 SP2

You should use the Send Feendback command in the Help menu in Entourage
to let MS know.
This is a peer support group and there is not much we can do about it
:-\


Corentin
 

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