Calendar permissions and "LocalFreebusy" ("IPM.Microsoft.ScheduleData.FreeBusy") messages

Question

Hi,

With Outlook 2003 in cached mode, visualizing an event of another user is currently impossible due to the handling of folder permissions. The reason is that Outlook attempts to create a message in the subscribed calendar containing a "LocalFreebusy" message. Since message creation is, reserved to the folder owners, the creation of such a message is denied.

The actual sequence goes like this:

op1. RopCreateMessage

op2. SetProperties (PidTagMessageClass = "IPM.Microsoft.ScheduleData.FreeBusy", PidTagSubjectPrefix = "", PidTagNormalizedSubject = "LocalFreebusy")

op3. SaveChangesMessage

op3. GetPropertiesSpecific (PidTagChangeKey)

Resulting respectively in 0x80070005 (MAPI_E_NO_ACCESS) and 3 0x80040108 codes (MAPI_E_INVALID_OBJECT).

The problem is that Outlook 2003 seems sensible to this and only ends up displaying a "Can't open this item. Unable to open the free/busy information." dialog.

I cannot find anything pertaining to this in the documentation. What would be the right error codes or operation handling to let it at least display those events in read-only mode?

Thanks

Answer 1

Wolfgang,

TRhank you for your question.  An engineer from the Protocols team will contact you soon.

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Bryan S. Burgin Senior Escalation Engineer Microsoft Protocol Open Specifications Team

Answer 2

Hi Wolfgang,

I'll look into this and get back to you shortly.

Best regards,
Tom Jebo
Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Open Specifications

Answer 3

Thanks. Please note that the problem above occurs with OpenChange and that it's the one I am trying to understand so that I can fix OpenChange itself.

Answer 4

Understood, I'm checking on this. 

Tom

Answer 5

Hey Wolfgang,

Just to clarify, are you saying that you are able to do this same operation using Outlook and Exchange without error?  If so, which versions are you using?  And can you provide steps?

Tom

Answer 6

Hi Tom,

First, Exchange is not used at all here. Only Outlook 2003 and OpenChange.

How to reproduce this:

1) have an account A and B ready, none of which must share anything initially

2) account B gives read-only permission to account A on his calendar

3) account A subscribes to account B's calendar

4) after the events from account B are made visible, account A double-click on any of account B's events in order to open it

expected result: the event appears in a read-only window, notwithstanding the existence of the freebusy message

actual result: the event does not appear due to the inexistence of the freebusy message and to the failed attempt to create it. Instead an error dialogs pops up.

Answer 7

Thanks Wolfgang, I'm checking on this.

Tom

Answer 8

Hi Wolfgang,

would you be able to capture a netmon trace for both sides of the conversation in your scenario? I'd like to analyze the ROP traffic and compare with our Exchange traffic. If so, could you please send it to me at dochelp dot microsoft doc com, referencing my name and the URL for this thread?  It's important that you are able to use Netmon and not something else. 

Thanks,

Tom

Answer 9

Also, can you repro this in non-cached mode?

Tom

Answer 10

Also, can you repro this in non-cached mode?

Tom

Hi Tom,

No, in non-cached mode, this works very well!

Would you like another trace in order to compare it with the "cached" one ?

Answer 11

Also, can you repro this in non-cached mode?

Tom

Hi Tom,

No, in non-cached mode, this works very well!

Would you like another trace in order to compare it with the "cached" one ?

Well... I answered too fast. I noticed that the window that popped up did not actually contain the event informations (no title, etc, etc) and after a second attempt, the initial problem occurred too.

This makes sense because even in cached mode, Ol2003 makes use of the non-fxics methods for accessing shared data, unlike ol2010.

Answer 12

For the benefit of the readers on this forum, the discussion was taken offline in email.   Wolfgang resolved the issue by reworking his implementation.

Tom