Setting up Room Mailbox (Resource Mailbox) in Exchange 2007 & 2010
**Issue: **Time zone mismatch in the room mailbox.
Please Note: By design, the room mailbox that is being created will take the Time zone of whatever the server is set to.
Scenario: My Data Centre is in EST (US Time zone) and we got a delivery centre in Kolkata India UTC+05:30. User A books a room called A and its accepted for Indian Time 5.30 PM-6.00 PM.
Now User B tries to book the same room in Kolkata delivery centre for the same time and he gets the following response: Your request was declined because there are conflicts.
The conflicts are:
Organizer and Time of Conflicting Meeting
John Smith - 10/02/2013 2:00:00 AM to 10/02/2013 3:00:00 AM
All times listed are in the following time zone: (EST) Time Zone
This causes confusion in getting to know when the room is free and results in total misunderstanding.
Here is how we can solve this.
Resolution for Exchange 2007:
- By default, the AD object of the room mailbox will be disabled (by design)
- It cannot be enabled without setting up a password and it will not carry a password by the time it's being created
- Reset the password and enable the account
- Login into the room mailbox using your mail.domain.com (Web mail)
- Here you need to set up the time zone on the first page if it was never set in the past
- If it is set already in the past then you need to log in and choose Options--Regional Settings--Time zone
Resolution for Exchange 2010:
- The above steps still work with Exchange Server 2010 but again there is an even easier way through EMS (Exchange Management Shell)
- Just run the given command with the right room mailbox address and it does the magic
- To get to know the current time zone:
Get-MailboxRegionalConfiguration -identity roommailboxname@domain.com
- To set a new time zone:
Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration -identity roommailboxname@domain.com -TimeZone "UTC+05:30"
Please Note: This feature is not in Exchange Server 2007.