Responses from external meeting attendees do not appear in Outlook tracking

Applies to: Exchange Server 2013 EnterpriseExchange Server 2013 Standard EditionExchange Server 2010 Enterprise More

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario. You create an Outlook meeting, and you invite one or more attendees who are external to your Exchange organization. Later, you notice that the Tracking page in the Outlook meeting does not show the meeting responses from the external attendees. Additionally, if you view the meeting in Exchange Server 2007 Outlook Web Access (OWA) or in Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Server 2013 Outlook Web App (OWA), the tracking information does not show attendee responses from external attendees.

Cause

By default, Exchange Server are not configured to process external meeting requests or meeting responses. 

Resolution

Your mailbox can be configured to process external meeting requests and meeting responses. You can enable this feature by using OWA, or an Exchange administrator can enable it for you by using the Exchange Management Shell.

Use OWA to enable the processing of external meeting responses


Outlook Web Access
  1. Log on to OWA, and then click Options.
  2. Click Calendar Options, and then click to select the Automatically process requests and responses from external senders check box under Automatic Calendar Processing.
  3. Click Save to apply the changes.
Outlook Web App
  1. Log on to OWA, click Options, and then click See All Options.
  2. Click Settings, and then click Calendar.
  3. Under Automatic Processing, click to enable the Automatically process requests and responses from external senders check box.
  4. Click Save to apply the changes.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to enable the processing of external meeting responses

The Exchange Server administrator must start the Exchange Management Shell on the Exchange mailbox server and then run the following command in the Exchange Management Shell.

Exchange Server 2007:

Set-mailboxcalendarsettingsusername -ProcessExternalMeetingMessages $true

Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Server 2013:

Set-CalendarProcessing username -ProcessExternalMeetingMessages $true

Note "Username" is the affected user's alias.