Article ID: 813268 - Last Review: February 27, 2007 - Revision: 1.4

XCCC: Description of the Command to Retrieve Free/Busy Information From a Calendar Public Folder

This article describes the command that you can use with Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) to access the Free/Busy information in an Exchange 2000 Server Calendar public folder. You can use this information to develop a Web service that you can use to check the Free/Busy information for various users or resources in Exchange 2000 Server.

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Note The following command sights ISO8160 in the start time and end time placeholders. International Standard ISO 8601 specifies numeric representations of date and time.

The international standard date notation is YYYY-MM-DD where:

YYYY is the year in the Gregorian calendar.
MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December).
DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31.

Note that the letter T appears in the string, to indicate the beginning of the time element, as specified in ISO 8601.

The international standard notation for the time of day is hh:mm:ss where:

hh is the number of complete hours that have passed since midnight (00-24). If the hour value is 24, the minute and second values must be zero.
mm is the number of complete minutes that have passed since the start of the hour (00-59).
ss is the number of complete seconds since the start of the minute (00-59).
-hh:mm is the time zone designator. Times are expressed in local time, together with a time-zone offset in hours and minutes. A time zone offset of +hh:mm indicates that the date/time uses a local time zone that is hh hours and mm minutes ahead of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). A time zone offset of -hh:mm indicates that the date/time uses a local time zone that is hh hours and mm minutes behind UTC.

To return the Free/ Busy information that is contained in a Exchange 2000 Calendar, use the following command:

http://Server_Name/public/?cmd=freebusy & start=ISO8601 start time&end=ISO8601 end time&interval=interval block in minutes&u=SMTP address of organizer/attendee[&u=user2&u=user3]

This command returns a response that is similar to the following:

<a:response xmlns:a="WM">
	<a:recipients>
		<a:item>
			<a:displayname>{"All Attendees" - string changes based on Accept-Language sent}</a:displayname> 
			<a:type>1</a:type> 
			<a:fbdata>{series of 0..4 for interval with one number representing the block of time specified by the &interval querystring parameter.  0 = Free, 1=Busy, 2=Tentative, 3=Out of Office, 4=Data not available}</a:fbdata> 
		</a:item>
		<a:item>
			<a:displayname>User Display Name</a:displayname> 
			<a:email type="SMTP">email@example.com</a:email> 
			<a:type>1</a:type> 
			<a:fbdata>{series of 0..4 for interval with one number representing the block of time specified by the &interval querystring parameter.  0 = Free, 1=Busy, 2=Tentative, 3=Out of Office, 4=Data not available}</a:fbdata> 
		</a:item>
		<a:item>
		      ...
		</a:item>
	</a:recipients>
</a:response>

For example, the following command

http://df-fetch/public/?Cmd=freebusy&start=2002-07-17T00:00:00-07:00&end=2002-07-18T00:00:00-07:00&interval=30&u=SMTP:user name 1@exchange.examle.com[&u=SMTP:user name 2@exchange.example.com]

returns the following response:

<a:response xmlns:a="WM">
	<a:recipients>
		<a:item>
			<a:displayname>All Attendees</a:displayname> 
			<a:type>1</a:type> 
			<a:fbdata>000000000000000000020222002222222222200000000000</a:fbdata> 
		</a:item>
		<a:item>
			<a:displayname><display name1></a:displayname> 
			<a:email type="SMTP"><user name1>@exchange.example.com</a:email> 
			<a:type>1</a:type> 
			<a:fbdata>000000000000000000000022002200222222200000000000</a:fbdata> 
		</a:item>
		<a:item>
			  <a:displayname><display name2></a:displayname> 
			  <a:email type="SMTP"><user name2>@exchange.example.com</a:email> 
			  <a:type>1</a:type> 
			  <a:fbdata>000000000000000000020222000222222200000000000000</a:fbdata> 
		</a:item>
	  </a:recipients>
  </a:response>