XFOR: Troubleshooting Calendar Connector for Lotus Notes (222893)

MORE INFORMATION

The Free/Busy (F/B) process between Lotus Notes and Exchange Server is very different depending on the direction of the F/B request. This does mean that although an F/B transaction is successful in one direction, it does not correlate to the same result in the other direction.

General Troubleshooting Steps

• Run the Calendar Connector in console mode. For additional information, refer to the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  

  197372 XFOR: How to Run Calendar Connector in Console Mode

• Enable debug-level calendaring transactions on the Notes server. For additional information, refer to the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  

  199705 XFOR: How to Enable Detailed Logging for the Excalcon Task on Lotus Notes

F/B Query from Exchange Server to Lotus Notes

• Ensure that the Lotus Notes client can successfully open a connection to the Notes server. A good test is to start up the Notes client, and attempt to open the Name and Address book on the Notes server. If there are more than one Notes client workspaces on the server, make sure that the correct Notes.ini file is being used for the test.
• Make sure that Notes users do not explicitly exclude the user ID used by the Calendar Connector. This can be ascertained by opening each person's Calendar profile, and checking the Calendar Access option. Note that in some cases, this user ID will be the same one used by the Microsoft Exchange Lotus Notes Connector.
• If Notes users have not modified their Calendar profile or entered any Calendar data, there will be no F/B information returned by the Notes server.

F/B Query from Lotus Notes to Exchange Server

• Several changes have to be made to the mapping files used in directory synchronization (dirsync) between Exchange Server and Lotus Notes. The Amap.tbl file specifies which directory attributes of Exchange Server are synchronized with the Lotus Notes directory. The Amap.tbl is located in the Exchsrvr\Connect\Exchconn\Dxanotes directory.
  1. Open the file with a text editor such as Notepad, and replace the tab stop between CALDOM and 32 with a space.
  2. Add the MailServer attribute to the end of the Amap.tbl file, and ensure that only spaces are used to separate words. The resulting Amap.tbl should look similar to the following:

     FULLNAME    220 FullName 1
     MAILDOMAIN  31  MailDomain 2
     COMPANY     64  CompanyName NULL
     DEPARTMENT  64  Department NULL
     FIRSTNAME   64  FirstName NULL
     LASTNAME    64  LastName NULL
     LOCATION    128 Location NULL
     SHORTNAME   64  ShortName NULL
     UNID        64  $$UNID NULL
     DN          256 $$DN NULL
     USNCreated  16  $$USN
     Initials    6   MiddleInitial NULL
     Title       32  JobTitle NULL
     Phone       20  OfficePhoneNumber
     MobilePhn   20  CellPhoneNumber
     Fax         20  OfficeFAXPhoneNumber
     Resource    20  ResourceFlag
     CALDOM      32  CalendarDomain
     MAILSRV     32  MailServer
     								

     There will be a delay after dirsync from Exchange Server to Notes while the Notes server reindexes some of the calendar information for Exchange Server users. An immediate Free/Busy query might still fail until this reindex process has completed.
• The Calendar Connector for Lotus Notes also requires that the Exchange Calendar Connector task be added to the Notes server. In general, this add-in server task should be included in the Notes server's Notes.ini file, otherwise this task will have to be started manually after a restart of the Notes server.
  
  You can check to see that the add-in has loaded properly by typing show task in the Notes Server Console. The task name is Excalcon, and the status line will provide the information in the following syntax:
  
  Exchange Cal conn <status> to <exchange server name> for <calendar system name>. Stats=<a> <b/c> <d>
  

  Status Line Field	Contents
  <status>	Connected or Not Connected, depending on whether or not the task is currently connected to the Calendar Connector.
  <exchange server name>	The name of the Exchange Server computer on which the Calendar Connector that this task is communicating with is installed.
  <calendar system name>	The name of the Calendar System, in most cases, Exchange.box.
  <a>	Total number of Exchange Server calendar requests made from Notes.
  <b/c>	Average number of invitees over the average response time, in seconds, for each Exchange Server calendar request made from Notes.
  <d>	Maximum response time for all calendar requests.

  
  Communication between this add-on task and Exchange Server is remote procedure call (RPC)-based. If there are network communication problems, this would also prevent the F/B information from reaching the Exchange Server computer. For more information on testing RPC connectivity, refer to the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  

  167260 XCLN: How to Use RPCPing to Test RPC Communication

• Make sure that the Calendar fields in the Notes document for the Foreign Domain for Exchange has been updated as well. In general, the information for the Calendar fields should match up with the existing information in the Mail fields.
• When performing an F/B query for an Exchange Server user, do not include the @EXCHANGE at the end of the address. This is contrary to how messaging works between Lotus Notes and Exchange Server. For example, the following might be used as a typical address for an Exchange Server user:
  
  John Smith/Central/Microsoft@EXCHANGE
  
  When entering the list of users to find F/B time, the address will be:
  
  John Smith/Central/Microsoft
• If multiple Notes users simultaneously request F/B information for Exchange Server users, it may cause corruption to the Exchange.box file.
• Notes users may also notice timeouts when attempting to query F/B information for Exchange Server users. Further investigation might show that the F/B transaction was sent successfully from Notes using the Exchange Calendar Connector Add-on task to the Calendar Connector, but the response will fail to come back to Notes. This might be due to a misconfiguration in the Calendar Connector for the Lotus Notes connection.