OL2002: An Appointment May Not Be Deleted from a Resource When You Use the Direct Booking Feature (323222)

CAUSE

If you open a recurring meeting that has exceptions, and then click the Add/Remove Attendees button to make a change to the recurring meeting, and one of the attendees is a resource, the master recurring meeting (the original item) may not update as expected. This behavior occurs because of the way that Outlook 2002 handles the Add/Remove Attendees function on a recurring meeting exception item.

The following example explains how Outlook 2002 handles the Add/Remove Attendees function on a recurring meeting exception item:

1. A user creates a recurring series of the following three instances: Instance1, Instance2, and Instance3, with User1 and Resource1 as attendees on the master recurring meeting (the original item) recipient collection.
2. A user creates an exception by moving Instance2 to a different time slot. At this moment, the recurring meeting exception item is created with its recipient collection inherited from the master recurring meeting, with User1 and Resource1 as attendees.
3. A user opens the series, and then replaces the Resource1 attendee as Resource2. For the master recurring meeting, Resource1 is now in the RemovedAttendee list, and a cancellation is sent out for the Resource1 attendee.
4. When Outlook 2002 detects that there are exceptions on this recurring meeting, it sends out the exception updates. The recurring meeting exception item loads the exception recipient collection first and treats them as the exception item's own recipients.
5. Outlook 2002 verifies if there are any attendees currently on the master list, but does not verify this on the recurring meeting exception item recipient list. If there are any attendees currently on the master list, they are added into the exception item recipient list.
6. At this point, the recurring meeting exception item has the following information as invited attendees
   • User1
   • Resource1
   • Resource2
   
   instead of User1 and Resource2 as the invited attendees, and there is not any knowledge of the removed attendees.
   
   The recurring meeting exception item does not have logic built in to notify it when some recipients are actually exceptional attendees and when some are from the master list. This would allow those attendees to be changed when the master list changes. The recurring meeting exception items treats every attendee in the item as an exceptional attendee after a recurring meeting exception item is created.
   
   Therefore, the only way to remove an attendee from the recurring meeting exception item is to open the recurring meeting exception item and use the Add/Remove Attendees function.