Communicator does not update the free/busy information as scheduled

Microsoft Office Communicator does not update the free/busy information as scheduled.
Consider the following scenario:

• You schedule a meeting for a Communicator user in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003.
• The Outlook 2003 calendar shows that the Communicator user is scheduled to be in a meeting.

In this scenario, the Communicator presence status does not show that the Communicator user is in a meeting. In other words, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 does not update the free/busy information as scheduled.

This issue occurs when the Outlook client is not Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and when the server is running a version of Microsoft Exchange Server that is not Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. This combination may cause the updates to the free/busy information to be delayed. This delay is by design for Outlook 2003 and for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

The updates to the free/busy information are delayed for the following reasons:

• By default, Outlook 2003 only updates the free/busy information every 45 minutes. Additionally, you cannot decrease this interval because of bandwidth issues and because of scalability issues.
• The replication of the public folder may cause delays.
• In cross-forest scenarios, delays occur when you use the Inter-Organization Replication tool to replicate the free/busy information across forests.

To resolve this issue, upgrade Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007. Additionally, upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010.

The Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 Availability service improves the calendaring of information. The Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 Availability service also improves the meeting scheduling by providing secure, consistent, and up-to-date free/busy information to computers that are running Outlook 2007. Outlook 2007 uses the Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 auto discover service to obtain the URL of the Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 Availability service. Essentially, the Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 auto discover service helps Outlook 2007 locate the various Exchange Web Services. For example, the Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 auto discover service helps Outlook 2007 locate the Exchange Unified Messaging (UM) service, the Offline Address Book (OAB) service, and the Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 Availability service.

For more information about the Exchange 2010 Availability service and cross version free/busy presence updating, visit the following Web site: