Hi,

I am wondering how people recommend implementing either an Exchange application (or anything simpler) that requires users to only have meetings during a certain time range (Either office hours or just a general time range). If someone tries to book outside the range, it auto sends a rejection email or something similar.

Ideally, it would be before the user even can see the meeting request but I could settle for best effort (Given it is reasonable).

I am thinking of using the EWS API or any other Exchange API if it will work. I'm wondering if this is realistic since I have no Exchange programming experience.

If so, how I would approach doing this?

How many users do you need to do this for ? one option would be to use a Transport Agent https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125012(v=exchg.150).aspx and capture the Invite while its in the Transport pipeline. The advantage of this would be you would be able to intercept the message before it reach the users Mailbox (or Room Mailboxes ).

You can do it also with EWS probably best using notifications https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn458791(v=exchg.150).aspx . In this case your EWS client will access the messages after they have arrived in the Mailbox. On disadvantage here is that other clients (Outlook, OWA, ActiveSync, BES etc) also connected to the Mailbox may process the message as well at the same time as your client (All clients are equal in this regard).

Cheers
Glen

• Edited by Glen ScalesMVP 7 hours 34 minutes ago

How many users do you need to do this for ? one option would be to use a Transport Agent https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125012(v=exchg.150).aspx and capture the Invite while its in the Transport pipeline. The advantage of this would be you would be able to intercept the message before it reach the users Mailbox (or Room Mailboxes ).

You can do it also with EWS probably best using notifications https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn458791(v=exchg.150).aspx . In this case your EWS client will access the messages after they have arrived in the Mailbox. On disadvantage here is that other clients (Outlook, OWA, ActiveSync, BES etc) also connected to the Mailbox may process the message as well at the same time as your client (All clients are equal in this regard).

Cheers
Glen

• Edited by Glen ScalesMVP Tuesday, July 07, 2015 11:53 PM

Thank you for your response Glen,

We are doing a migration very soon and I just realized we might not have much access to the Exchange Server after. Exchange will be all on the cloud. Is the Transport Agent still a feasible solution in this case? One thing I can't figure out is how would I get the rule to check the meeting time?

(e.g. If I schedule a meeting for 8:30 am at 5pm the day before, I want to reject that since it is before work hours)

Seems like the EWS method might run into issues with race conditions and syncing.

>> Exchange will be all on the cloud. Is the Transport Agent still a feasible solution in this case

What do you mean by in the cloud ? if you mean Office365 then no Transport Agents won't be an option if you mean a hosted server somewhere else then maybe depending on how its hosted.

>> One thing I can't figure out is how would I get the rule to check the meeting time?

So we are switching to talking about Transport Rules here which are different from Transport Agents and will work fine in the cloud (office365 etc). You won't be able to check the time in a Transport Rule but you should be able to check the message type eg Calendaring using the MessageType predicate and then just create something that will enabled and disable the Transport Rule at a specific time each day eg using a scheduled task (this should work fine in Office365). You could do something simular with Inbox Rules on particular Mailboxes but this would be less reliable then transport Agents as the Rules maybe overridden by users.

Cheers
Glen