Customizing the Sumatra Double Booking cmdlet

There are a simple ways to customize the Sumatra Double Booking cmdlet, and most of them involve a text editor.

Let's look at the messages.txt file to see what we can modify there.

The entire point is to separate out the text sent to meeting organizers to inform them of conflicts.

Separating this from the application gives you the ability to easily customize it for your workplace social environment or to translate it into a different language.

Any text editor will do, and note that there are specified place holders, such as "(1)" for Conference Room Name that are reserved for the cmdlet.

The text in comments tells you the circumstances that generate the message.  For example:

#Message to notify One organizer (the one that came in after the booking was made  -or- trumped by a VIP)

The vips.txt file is the list of the primary SMTP addresses of VIPs who get automatic preference when you invoke the VIPsGetBookingPreference flag.

As you can see from this example, Janis Joplin will get preference over all other users in that scenario.

Finally there is license.txt, the domain-specific license that allows you to execute the cmdlet in your environment.  Copy the license key you got from Sumatra into this file:

Multiple Conflicts and the Sumatra Double-Booked cmdlet

Sure -- you think USUALLY there's only going to be TWO meetings in conflict.

Our data says otherwise.

So let's look at this tortured yet realistic example:

Get-suDoubleBookedMeetings -ExchangeVersion 2013 `

-EWSurl "https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.ASMX" `

-PrimarySMTPAddress "room222@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `

-DeclineConflicts `

-VIPfile "c:\users\Zyg\Desktop\suDoubleBook\vips.txt" `

-VIPsGetBookingPreference `

-ImpersonationAccount "zyg-furmaniuk@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `

-Credential $LiveCred `

-bw 180 `

-licensefile "c:\users\Zyg\Desktop\suDoubleBook\license.txt"

Will result in this:

We've set Janis as the VIP who gets SOLE access to the resource during the time.

Note that in this scenario the cmdlet also removed a direct-booked appointment some resource calendar human delegate put in there.

Download the Sumatra Double-Booking cmdlet

You can download the Sumatra Double-Booking cmdlet for Exchange / Office 365 in a .ZIP file from here.  The ZIP file also includes the documentation as a PDF.

You will need to contact us for a key if you want to try it out.

You can just report on double-bookings using our previously-released script.

Three Basic Ways of Dealing with Double-Booked Resources in the Sumatra cmdlet

There are three basic ways of automatically dealing with double-booked resources in the Sumatra cmdlet suDoubleBookedMeetings.

1. You guys work it out. aka Alert both (all) parties
2. The early bird gets the room.  aka First one who booked wins
3. Rank has its privileges.  aka VIPs win.  (Unless there's two of them then see 1.)

Let's look at the cases for each of those with this real-world double-booked meeting in Room 222 which both Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix have booked.

You guys work it out
You could think of this as the kinder-gentler "We're going to inform you but not enforce any changes" option.

Using this command:
Get-suDoubleBookedMeetings -ExchangeVersion 2013 -EWSurl "https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.ASMX" `
-PrimarySMTPAddress "room222@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-EmailOrganizers `
-ImpersonationAccount "ADMIN@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-Credential $LiveCred `
-bw 18 `
-licensefile "c:\users\ADMIN\Desktop\suDoubleBook\license.txt"

Each of them receives this notification and nothing is removed from the conference calendar.

The early bird gets the room:
using this command:

Get-suDoubleBookedMeetings -ExchangeVersion 2013 -EWSurl "https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.ASMX" `
-PrimarySMTPAddress "room222@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-DeclineConflicts `
-ImpersonationAccount "ADMIN@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-Credential $LiveCred `
-bw 10 `
-licensefile "c:\users\ADMIN\Desktop\suDoubleBook\license.txt"

Since Jimi Hendrix booked this slot in Room 222 before Janis Joplin did, under this scenario the room goes to Jimi and Janis is notified (Note that this notification comes directly from Microsoft Exchange):

Rank has its privileges
But let's say that Janis Joplin is a VIP and Jimi Hendrix is not.  Then, using this command:

Get-suDoubleBookedMeetings -ExchangeVersion 2013 `
-EWSurl "https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.ASMX" `
-PrimarySMTPAddress "room222@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-DeclineConflicts `
-VIPfile "c:\users\ADMIN\Desktop\suDoubleBook\vips.txt" `
-VIPsGetBookingPreference `
-ImpersonationAccount "ADMIN@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-Credential $LiveCred `
-bw 180 `
-licensefile "c:\users\ADMIN\Desktop\suDoubleBook\license.txt"

Janis gets the room and Jimi is declined by the conference room.  Note that this results in the exact OPPOSITE of the situation just described above.

We think this covers all the social hierarchy choices you should have to make with the conference room, but please feel free to let us know.

$LiveCred is a variable we've set up to store credentials to the Exchange server in PowerShell.  Check out our earlier postings if you're unsure how to do this.

How the Sumatra Double-Booking cmdlet works

October 2022: We just updated our cmdlet for Modern Authentication.

Free trial if you qualify and contact us.

First: you can always get help at the PowerShell prompt with:
get-help Get-suDoubleBookedMeetings

Let's say that we have the following calendar for Room 222:

Clearly there is some double-booking here.  

Keep in mind neither Jimi Hendrix not Janis Joplin have any way of knowing from their own calendars that a conflict is imminent.

If you execute the cmdlet in this way say a week before this is to unfold:
Get-suDoubleBookedMeetings -ExchangeVersion 2013 -EWSurl "https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.ASMX" `
-PrimarySMTPAddress "room222@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-VIPfile "c:\users\Admin\Desktop\suDoubleBook\vips.txt" `
-DeclineConflicts `
-EmailOrganizers `
-VIPsGetBookingPreference `
-ImpersonationAccount "ADMIN@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-Credential $LiveCred `
-bw 10 `
-Verbose -Debug `
-licensefile "c:\users\Admin\Desktop\suDoubleBook\license.txt"

You will generate notifications to Jimi Hendrix that look like this:

Note also that we cover the case of a managed conference room where a Delegate might be putting appointments into the room calendar.  In this case even though the time is listed as FREE, we notify both parties.  We have no way of knowing WHAT is there, but there is the potential for conflict and we need to alert users to it.

If you want to get a little more proactive, we could define Janis Joplin as a "VIP" so that her meetings take priority over everyone else's.  Look at her conflict with Jimi Hendrix here:

We execute this command:

Get-suDoubleBookedMeetings `
-writeHTML `
-HTMLFile "c:\users\Admin\Desktop\suDoubleBook\MyHtml.html" `
-ExchangeVersion 2013 `
-EWSurl "https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.ASMX" `
-PrimarySMTPAddress "room222@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" `
-ImpersonationAccount "ADMIN@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" -Credential $LiveCred -bw 16 `
-VIPFile ($myPath + "vips.txt") `
-VIPsGetBookingPreference `
-DeclineConflicts `
-licensefile "c:\users\Admin\Desktop\suDoubleBook\license.txt" 

And immediately the resource calendar looks like this:

And Jimi is notified that the resource has declined his request

We think this is a very elegant solution to the problem of managing double-booking in the real world.

Callable PowerShell script to report on double booked resources in Exchange 2016 / Office 365

Sumatra is recognized as the expert in Exchange Calendaring.  Even so, we were surprised at the sudden influx of requests for info on the problem of double booked conference rooms.

This subject is really trending on our blog.

We're taking a two-pronged approach that helps both Exchange end-users and Exchange Admins:

First, for the DIY crowd, we released a FREE PowerShell script to report on double bookings – open source, under the MIT license.  This blog post covers the script.

Second, for the enterprise, we will release a cmdlet that does everything the free version does, and a whole lot more:

• Reports double booked meetings.
• Sends email notification to each meeting organizer about those upcoming conflicts and ask them to resolve the conflict. 
• Removes conflicts by cancelling conflicting meeting occurrences that Exchange allowed (even though there was already an existing meeting booked for that room/date/time.)
• Preferentially keep conflicting bookings for company VIPs, and,
• Designed to receive piped input from Exchange PowerShell cmdlets.

This cmdlet will be a paid, licensed version.

So first, the script.

It's available for download here.  We call it the Sumatra Double Booked Resources Reporting Script.  It's a text file, you'll need to rename it as a .PS1.  We do this or else your anti-virus software will get huffy. 

Successfully generating your report will give you results like this:

which will tell you the room with conflicts (not surprising since you have specified it, see below), the organizers, start and end date of the conflict and the number of other parties involved?

Number of parties?  Yes.  Note that one of the meetings above is triple-booked.

The text file is meant to be self-documenting, but in case you need some examples, here you go.

To get a report for a single resource (with some specific examples):

To generate a report for ALL resources, piped in from Get-Mailbox:

To generate reports for multiple rooms from a file:

This generates reports to the Exchange Administrator.

These examples in more general form are in a text file here.

Those of you who know PowerShell know you only need to import the function once per PowerShell session and then can invoke just the command suDoubleBookedMeetings.  If you did not know this before, you do now.

Looking to pull your Exchange Admin out of the loop on what to do with the information next?  

So glad you asked.

Watch this space for news of our cmdlet that automatically informs meeting organizers.

Sumatra Holiday cmdlet for Microsoft Exchange - Download

Holidays.

Our server-side holiday cmdlet for Microsoft Exchange simply works and has more functionality than the client-side holiday capability Microsoft built into Outlook.  And of course an admin runs this server-side rather than hoping users run use Outlook to add holidays client-side.

When we offered it up as a "pay what you want" we got thousands of downloads, and a number of people who actually paid of the "use your fingers" magnitude.

But people keep asking for it, so we're going to let you download it under our advertising model meaning every item inserted will be stamped "Courtesy of Sumatra" in the agenda.

So you may download it here. 

If you want to suggest additions or modifications, contact us.

And check this blog or Follow @sumatra_dev to see what we'll support in the future. 

Western Australia Holidays with the cmdlet

We've had some requests from Western Australia lately, so here's the cmdlet working with holidays in OZ.

September 16, 2014 update.  Read this post to download the cmdlet.
February 23, 2015:  Folks, please leave us some feedback about what you like in the cmdlet and what you'd like changed.  We see how many of you are downloading it.  We'd love some feedback.

Server-side cmdlet for Holiday Insertion into Microsoft Exchange

Preliminary video of our server-side holiday insertion cmdlet.

It doesn't look good in full screen mode but you get the idea how it works.

Open Source Server-Side Lite Holiday cmdlet for Exchange

Holidays in Exchange.

The words send shivers down my spine.

We got our first request for a tool to insert holidays server-side after we did a migration for the folks at HMS (shout out to you guys!) for Exchange 2003.  That was CDO-based tech, with its positives and negatives.

After Exchange 2007 came out we re-wrote the tool for Exchange Web Services  (EWS), added a variety of features and found that folks really wanted it, but not at enterprise licensing levels.  Go figure.

But it's a good way of showing what we can do with calendars in migrations, so we've produced an open-sourced lite version of a holiday cmdlet.

Sample code where we build the holiday looks like this:

So you can find the CodePlex project at sumatra.codeplex.com.

We've also hard-coded a few things (like, it's picking up your credentials to authenticate against Exchange, so you ARE the service account!).

We think of this more as a mini-tutorial on how to do a calendar-centric cmdlet.

Why a lite version and not the full thing?

Mainly because the full version has a lot of expertise behind it that we're reticent to just give to those of you toiling out there on software knock-offs.  

Where from here?

We are market-driven.  We're keeping an eye on what we hear back.

Server-side Holidays for Microsoft Exchange cmdlet

OK, we'll let you use the cmdlet for server-side holidays.

It works with Exchange 2007, 2010, and 2013, as well as Office 365.

You will have to set permissions to be able to access calendars.

You can download it here.  

Update December 10, 2013: Link removed while we consider alternates for the holiday cmdlet.
Update December 17, 2013:  We created an open-source cmdlet project on CodePlex.

SuHoliday cmdlet and Exchange 2007

We've gotten a few inquiries about running the SuHoliday cmdlet on Exchange 2007 instead of Exchange 2010.

Short answer: Yes you can do it.  Nothing the the was we use the EWS API is specific to Exchange 2010 to the exclusion of Exchange 2007.

However, setting Permissions in Exchange 2007 IS VERY different from Exchange 2010, so you will have to adjust for that.  Taking all of the Exchange 2007 permissions stuff out of the documentation made it substantially shorter and clearer,

If you need help look at posts in this blog involving Permissions and Exchange 2007.

Retiring Meeting Maker Migrations December 20, 2013

Folks, it has been a great evening out but now the bartender is calling for last orders.

As of December 20, 2013 we will no longer be doing Meeting Maker migrations.  We of course continue to do both full state and faster-simpler migrations from Oracle Calendar to Exchange, and faster-simpler migrations from Zimbra to Exchange.  Our Holiday cmdlet continues to thrive and our custom calendar engineering is unparalleled.

To those of you who have been asking us about migrating in the last few years: we'd recommend starting your test cycles sooner rather than later.

We're sympathetic to your budget cycles, so if you need to discuss timing we're open to that.  But we do need to put a stake in the ground so we can all move on.

Exchange 2010 Permissions Debugging Protocol updated

It being a new year and we having found a few new ways that Permissions could be problematic in Exchange, we've modified the Debugging Protocol.

The latest is available at this link: Exchange_2010_Permissions_Debugging_Protocol.pdf and supersedes all earlier versions.

Changes mainly affect the holiday cmdlet.

Injecting Student Class Schedules into Exchange Online

At one site we've been injecting class schedules and recruiting events into individual student calendars for a few years now -- and we've just found out some others want to do it.

So here's a quick primer of what is possible.

We built a special-purpose tool for this particular client, but you can use our holiday cmdlet with the schedules in a CSV file.

Here is Zyg's daughter's Economics class in the syllabus and translated into a CSV.

Because her university probably won't give me credentials, I loaded it into my calendar (initially blank)

Then populated with her classes:

Opening one of them gives some more detail as well as seeing it tied to a useful Category.

We also have the capability to selectively REMOVE these classes, set them as Free or Busy, all the usual sorts of things you'd want to do.
Keep in mind - this is all going on server-side with no end user intervention.

Remove an "AutoMapped" Mailbox from Outlook 2010

My Outlook takes forever to open.  I've finally figured out why:  I have added too many shared mailboxes that Outlook has to open.  Only I don't remember adding them.  Time to to remove them.  I right-hand click on the shared calendar and "remove calendar."  Outlook throws this error message: ("The group of folders is associated with an e-mail account.  To remove the account, click the File Tab, and then the Info tab, click Account Settings.  Select the e-mail account and then click Remove.)

If the solution were only that easy.  This is a shared mailbox that I have FULLACCESS to;  there is NO EMAIL account in my profile. 

The contributor: (or "feature") is "automapping!! (Here is how to set automapping.)  The solution, for EXCHANGE 2010 Sp2, is to DISABLE AUTOMAPPING!  Here are the powershell commands taken from a Micosoft Technet forum:

Disable automapping between "shared mailbox" and "delegate":
Add-MailboxPermission "Shared Mailbox" -User -AccessRights FullAccess -AutoMapping:$false
  
If you want to set it on all the mailboxes:
$mailbox = Get-Mailbox
$test = $mailbox |
     Foreach {Add-mailboxPermission $_.Name –User ‘administrator’ –AccessRight FullAccess –Automapping $false}

That's it!
Russ

Get Time Zones for your users via PowerShell

We recently released a cmdlet that bulk-inserts holidays in Exchange 2010 (see the Sumatra website or the Sumatra Blog).

A holiday is a simple all day calendaring event in Outlook. Yet simple calendaring events can be tricky! Consider: when your end users work in different time zones! If you force an all day event into one time zones, all users who are not in that time zone will see their holidays span multiple days. Not a happy scenario. What's the solution?

We wrote a script that uses Exchange 2010 "get-mailboxRegionalConfiguration" cmdlet to find the timezones. If used in conjunction with get-mailbox, you can output a file that has the user information plus the timezone. Problem solved!

This script produces a file that outputs PrimarySMTPAddress + TimeZone:

#Define your 'default' timezone (if none is set)
$myDefaultTimezone="Eastern Standard Time"

#Define the output file
$myOutputFile="userlist.txt"

#Define the list of User Accounts to process
$myMailboxList = get-mailbox -Filter {RecipientTypeDetails -eq "UserMailbox"}  select-object Identity,PrimarySMTPAddress

#If file exists, delete the file
$fileExists=test-Path $myOutputFile
if ($fileExists -eq "True"){del $myOutputFile}


#Loop through list and get
foreach ($t in $myMailboxList) {
    $priSMTP=$t.PrimarySMTPAddress
    $xi=get-mailboxRegionalConfiguration -Identity $t.Identity
    if ($xi.TimeZone -eq $Null) {$tt=$myDefaultTimezone} Else {$tt=$xi.TimeZone}
    write-output "$priSMTP $tt" >> $myOutputFile
}

write-output "Done!  see the file $myOutputFile"

You can also download getUserTimezones.zip

If you have another way, please share!

-Russ

Holiday cmdlet for Exchange 2010

We've been inserting holidays server-side on Exchange for a while and after some feedback last year we started re-thinking how to accomplish this.

These are the files in the downloadable ZIP

We've written a PowerShell cmdlet we call suHoliday that inserts holidays server-side.  We've run it through our internal testing against on-premises Exchange 2010, Live @ Edu, and Office 365, so now we think it's time to let it out into the wild and see what you folks can do with it.

The sample CSV file for US holidays

 Your inserted holidays will look like this in a user's calendar:

If you want to download it and run it through its paces in your test lab, you may do so here.  We just ask you to answer a few questions so we can keep track of where it's going.  If it works for you consider making a donation of US$20 per instance.  It'll make it easier for us to consider updates and new features for next year.

What's it do now?

Insert server-specific or user-specific holidays through 2012 with NO user intervention.

Customize for different state or national holidays.

Define Free/Busy status.

Script adding holidays at user provisioning time (e.g., by piping in from get-mailbox).

Support for multiple time zones.

Define All-Day Events or appointments at specific times.

Support international holidays / date formats. For example: 2012 UK Bank Holidays

Try it out and tell your friends.


Limitations (or, what do you want for free / ultra low cost?)

• This only inserts holidays for the year 2012 (well, we give you a few weeks into 2013).
• All inserted events have "Inserted courtesy of the Exchange Calendaring experts: Sumatra Development" in the agenda. (yep, even if you license it)
• We support via electronic means, so keep an eye on our blog.