Sunday, January 25, 2009

Unresponded meeting invitations and your migration

We get this question often enough (at least three separate times from a recent client) that we thought we'd blog on it. They put the statement better than we do:

Will meetings that you have received proposals for, but not responded to
migrate? In other words, if I have been invited to a meeting in Meeting Maker but
not accepted or declined yet will that meeting be migrated?

Short answer: yes.

For completeness, I’ll describe all of the permutations.

If you are a guest, MM records your response.

There are four possible responses to meeting proposals: Accept, Decline, Decide Later, or do nothing.

  • If you accept, the meeting WILL appear in your calendar. The meeting request will be removed from your inbox.
  • If you decline, the meeting WILL NOT appear in your calendar. The meeting request will be removed from your inbox.
  • If you decide later, the meeting WILL appear in your calendar as tentative, and the meeting request WILL remain in your inbox.
  • If you do not decide (do nothing), the meeting MAY appear in your calendar as tentative, and the meeting request WILL remain in your inbox. The Sumatra tool does not apply ANY response to the proposal (the tool does not know what your intention was!) However, once you read a meeting proposal, MS Exchange actually forces the meeting to appear in your calendar as tentatively accepted. SO yes, it ‘migrates’.

    By the way, there could be instances were the MM exports reports an invalid guest response!! In that case, Sumatra assumes that you have ‘not decided’, and thus leaves the meeting request in the inbox.

    The Sumatra rule: Preserve as much information possible. It’s easier for the user to delete something after the migration, than it is to create it.

All of this is for meetings from today forward. In the interests of keeping sanity any unresponded invitations from BEFORE the date of your migration are dropped. If you haven't responded for past meetings by the time of your migration you probably don't want to take it along.

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