OL97: Current Owner Status of a Task May Not Get Updated (171460)

SYMPTOMS

When assigning and reassigning tasks in Outlook, the current owner of the task may not be updated in the task lists of all previous owners of the task.

RESOLUTION

To work around this issue, each time a new owner accepts the task, the new owner must open the task, and then save and close it. All owners of a task must use the following steps to ensure that all previous owners of a task are updated with the new owner status:

When you receive a new task request in your Inbox, open it, click Accept, and then Click OK.
Click the Task button on the Outlook bar.
Double-click the task that you just accepted in step 1.
Click Save, and then Close.

Now if this task is reassigned to someone else, all of the previous owners of the task will be updated with the new owner, assuming all previous owners have followed these same steps.

MORE INFORMATION

The following scenario further describes the issue:

User A assigns a task request to user B. After sending the request, if user A opens the task, the owner will be listed as user B.
User B accepts the task request. Now the task lists of both user A and user B lists will have user B listed as the owner.
User B reassigns the task to user C. Now the task lists of both user B and user C will list user C as the owner; however, user A will still have user B listed as the current owner.

This chain of events can keep reoccurring with any number of users with the only updates occurring for the last person reassigning the task and the person accepting the task. All previous users are not updated with current owner status.