I am testing the deployment of two Exchange 2007 servers, coexisting with Exchange 2000 in a lab environment. One problem I noticed is that after deploying the Exchange 2007 servers, the free/busy information comes up as "no-info" (the ////// graphic when scheduling with an Outlook 2007 client) for all users, until two particular users send and accept appointments to each other. After doing that, the free/busy information is visible to both users, but not to others. This issue seems to persist for all users, regardless of the location of the mailbox and regardless of the type of client used (OWA 2000, OWA 2007, Outlook 2002, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007). Once the two users send and accept meeting requests to each other in both directions, then they are able to see each others schedules indefinitely...i.e sending and accepting the requests seems to be the fix. But this seems like very odd behavior and I am wondering if there is a global fix for it, without having to recreate the Exchange System Folders. And it would be a pain to have to ask users to send meeting invitations to each other to get their free/busy information visible. When I try to view the properties of the free/busy system public folder on the Exchange 2007 server with the public folder store, I get an error: "The properties on 'Schedule+ Free Busy Information - First Administrative Group' have invalid Data......the following values have invalid data: Alias" or "Schedule+ Free Busy Information - First Administrative Group" is not valid for an Alias" The free/busy system public folder no longer appears to be kept or replicated on the original Exchange 2000 server, the way it is in our production environment. Our lab is setup as follows: 2 Exchange 2000 servers running on Windows 2000 server. One is a front end server with no mailboxes or public folders. 2 Exchange 2007 Standard Edition servers running on Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition. One has a public store and both have private stores 2 Domain Controllers running Windows Server 2003 R2 1 Windows XP Client running Outlook 2002 1 Windows XP Client running Outlook 2003 1 Windows XP Client running Outlook 2007 The Forest was in Native 2003 mode prior to the Exchange 2007 AD Schema updates All of the servers are in the same Exchange Site, same forest and domain. The first two servers are images of older ones in production. Prior to Exchange 2007 installation, we upgraded the AD Schema, switched Domain Controllers into Native 2003 Mode, forest into Native 2003 mode, and then installed new Exchange 2007 servers. We jumped through all of the hoops necessary to get the Exchange 2007 servers humming. Most everything else seems to be working fine in this lab. Message transport, mailbox access, address book, etc all work fine. I searched this problem a bit, but I didn't find a fix Any advice or links to other articles is much appreciated. thanks

Hi, Please understand that for Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007 users, the Outlook retrieve others Free/Busy information through Availability service. For Outlook 2003 or Exchange 2003 users, the Outlook retrieve others Free/Busy information through Public Folder. For your reference: What does Exchange 2007 Availability Service do? http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/10/23/429296.aspx Therefore, we need to troubleshoot the issue based on different situations. I suggest we focus on following situation firstly: Client Logged in Mailbox Target Mailbox Outlook 2007 Exchange 2007 Exchange 2007 Please have userA create a meeting in his calendar folder. Have userB logging in Outlook 2007 and attempt to retrieve Free/Busy information of UserA. The UserA and UserBs mailboxes are on the Exchange Server. If UserB is not able to retrieve Free/Busy information successfully, please attempt the following method to troubleshoot the issue: 1). on the client, launch Outlook 2). Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and click the Outlook icon in the notification area of the Windows taskbar, also known as the notification area. 3). In the menu that appears, click Test E-mail AutoConfiguration. 4). Enter your E-mail Address and Password (if not logged into the domain) in the respective edit boxes. 5). Choose the desired auto configuration methods with Use Autodiscover, clear other selection. 6). Click Test. Please check whether the Outlook client is able to connect to Autodiscover service to obtain Availability service URL correctly. If the Outlook is not able to connect to Autodiscover service to obtain Availability service URL, please capture screenshot to me (v-mishen@microsoft.com)of the Results tab and Log tab. Note: The Protocol: Exchange RPC is for internal client. The Protocol: Exchange HTTP is for Outlook Anywhere client. Mike

Thanks so much for the response and info I tested with Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 for two separate user accounts, and the problem did not occur. It seems that I never did test this scenario. And it appears that the Availability service is working fine. Which is good news, because Outlook 2007 with Mailboxes on Exchange 2007 is the direction we are eventually going with all clients. The scenarios I tested, which were producing the results I described, were primarily with two different clients, one Outlook 2002 / one Outlook 2003, or Outlook Web Access on Exchange 2000, with mailboxes kept on the Exchange 2000 servers (or one Mailbox on Exchange 2000 and another mailbox on Exchange 2007) I did test Outlook 2007, but I think that the mailboxes were on Exchange 2000, and not Exchange 2007. For simplicity lets look at this specific case, which illustrates a good portion of our users in the production environment: Two users have mailboxes on the Exchange 2000 server, they are connecting with Outlook 2003 using MAPI (and / or Outlook Web Access 2000 on the Exchange 2000 server). Prior to deploying the Exchange 2007 server, they could see each other's schedules. But after adding Exchange 2007, they can no longer see each other's schedules until they send and accept meeting requests to each other. What steps would I use to troubleshoot that specific problem scenario? Any additional help is much appreciated

Hi Brian, Thanks for your response. I understand that the users are able to retrieve Free/Busy information correctly if their mailboxes are on the Exchange 2007 Server. At this time, let us go ahead and troubleshoot the issue when both the users mailboxes are on the Exchange 2000 server. I would like to explain that in this situation, the Outlook retrieves others Free/Busy information through Public Folder. In addition, Outlook is responsible for publish the Free/Busy information of the user. I would like to explain that the issue may occur if: 1. The attendees Free/Busy information is not published 2. Incorrect permission setting on the Public Folder 3. The related Public Folder has invalid data 4. Public Folder replication issue Therefore, I suggest we attempt the following method to troubleshoot the issue: 1. Use PFDavAdmin tool to check the permission setting of the public folder: a. Download the tool from following URL http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=635BE792-D8AD-49E3-ADA4-E2422C0AB424&displaylang=en b. Run the Tool on the Exchange 2000 mailbox server and connect to the Public Folder store on the Exchange 2000 server c. Expand System Folders->SCHEDULE + Free Busy folder d. Right click the subfolder like EX:/o=org/ou=Administrative Group Name and click Folder Permission e. The Everyone group should has Editor permission in order to read and modify Free/Busy message f. The DACL state should be Good. If not, please right click folder EX:/o=org/ou=Administrative Group Name and click Fix folder DACLs Note: The ou=Administrative Group Name represent the Admin Group which the Exchange 2000 server belongs. 2. Remove the Free/Busy message and republish the message to check whether the issue persists a. Have problem user logon mailbox by using Outlook 2003 and create a meeting his calendar, then close Outlook b. On the Exchange 2000 mailbox server, access following URL: http://exchange2000mailboxservername/public/no_ipm_subtree c. Logon by using admin account d. Expand SCHEDULL + FREE BUSY folder and locate the EX:/o=org/ou=Administrative Group Name folder e. Remove all the Free/Busy messages in the folder f. Have problem user logon mailbox by using Outlook 2003 with switch /cleanfreebusy g. Please access the previous URL to ensure the Free/Busy message for the user is regenerated. Please have another user whose mailbox is on Exchange 2000 logon Outlook and check the Free/Busy status of the previous user again. Mike

Hello Brian,We can use updateFB tool to publish the freebusy data for all the users in the entire infrastructure.How to use Updatefb.exe to republish absent free/busy datahttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/294282Arun Kumar | MCSE - 2K3 + Messaging | ITIL-F V3

Thanks again for the additional info When running the PFDavAdmin tool on the Public Folders on our Exchange 2000 server, there was a DACL problem : "missing anonymous" Executing the "Fix Folder DACLs" command returned the DACL state to "good" I should also mention that there are two folders under SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY in the public folder tree. There is one for each administrative group, one for our legacy "First Administrative Group" and one for the new "Exchange Administrative Group" that got created when we installed our first Exchange2007 in this Exchange site. Both of these public folders had "missing anonymous" reported in PFDavAdmin and I "Fixed Folder DACLs" for both, returning their DACL state to "good" I tested clients after making this change, but the problem persists. I tried to access that URL you mentioned, http://exchangedb/public/no_ipm_subtree (server is called ExchangeDB)but I get "page cannot be found" Webmail is functioning properly otherwise. I could also successfully access http://exchangedb/public , which brings up the public folder tree. But when I add /no_ipm_subtree to that URL I get "page cannot be found" How can I troubleshoot this? Or other thoughts on how I can troubleshoot/ thanks for all of the help Brian

Any update on this Brian?Arun Kumar | MCSE - 2K3 + Messaging | ITIL-F V3

Thanks so much for the info and the suggestion to use updateFB.exe. That tool solved the problem, and we'll be preparing to use it as a step in our production deployment of Exchange 2007. It took some time to get the tool working properly, though. Just to obtain the tool, we had to create a free Microsoft Support Case by contacting Microsoft paid Support, and we let them know that we needed the free updateFB.exe tool. They got it to us the next day. Next step was to create a .csv text file that contains a list of mailnickname,msexchhomeservername for all of the mailboxes to be fixed. We ran this command, as directed in the support article: csvde -f updatefb.txt -d "CN=organizational unit ,DC=domain name ,DC=com " -r (mailnickname =*) -l mailnickname ,msexchhomeservername -p subtree Then we edited the .txt file with Microsoft Excel, importing it as .csv, removing the first colum, and changing the third column from ldap to a list of unqualified mailbox server names where each mailbox resides. The tool failed initially with "permission denied" errors, even when running as an exchange super-user account. You need to grant additional "send-as, receive-as" permissions to the user account in Exchange 2000 System Manager for each Server and Mail Store containing the mailboxes to be fixed. The tool must be run on a machine that has CDO components installed. This means that you need Outlook with the optional component "CDO" installed. I found that we were able to get all of the mailboxes updated by running the tool once from a computer with Outlook 2000 and once from a computer with Outlook 2002. Oddly, the tool succeeded for Exchange 2007 mailboxes and failed for Exchange 2000 mailboxes when run from Outlook 2000. And when we ran the tool from Outlook 2002, the reverse was true, which is that it failed for the Exchange 2007 mailboxes, succeeded for the Exchange 2000 mailboxes. Between the two runs we got all of the mailboxes updated. When tool runs sucessfully there will be entries in the log stating "created appointment" for each user's mailbox that was fixed. Apparently what this tool does is automatically creates appointments for each mailbox. These appointments update the Free+Busy Info Public Folder, which then enables users to see each other's schedules. This is the same thing that I discovered by hand fixes the problem: users creating appointments and inviting each other. But its very helpful because we can fix our entire system without having to do this one-by-one. thanks a lot for the attention paid to our issue. We really appreciate it! best regards Brian Vandemark

No problem Brian, Glad to help :)Arun Kumar | MCSE - 2K3 + Messaging | ITIL-F V3