Free/Busy Not Working Exchange 2007

Here we go again with another Microsoft Exchange 2007 piece. Luckily I am finished with my Exchange 2007 project, so I can get back to wrting a little. Since Exchange 2007 took some getting used to, I thought I would share with you some of the stuff I discovered along the way.

One problem we had was that after doing our setup, users could not access Free/Busy information from Outlook 2007. If they logged into OWA (Outlook Web Access) they could see it fine. For this type of issue there are two things you can check. I will start with the easiest.

If your Outlook 2007 users cannot view Free/Busy information, try the following on your Microsoft Exchange 2007 server:

1. Go to Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
2. Expand your way down to Default Web Site and locate EWS
3. Click on EWS, then double click on Authentication. The default setting should be Windows Authentication Enabled
4. Expand EWS, and click on BIN. Now click on Authentication. The default setting should be Windows Authentication Enabled
5. If you had to enable with any of these settings, run the command prompt as Administrator and run iisreset /noforce

Now close out of Outlook on your client workstation, and run Outlook /cleanfreebusy. Open/create a new calendar entry and add a user to it. Look at the Scheduling assistant to see if you can see free/busy information. If you can’t, there is one more thing you can check.

If you migrated users from an Exchange 2003 server, chances might be good that you did not migrate over the Free/Busy public folder information correctly. To check open the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) as administrator and run the following command:

Get-PublicFolder -server CASSERVER "\non_ipm_subtree\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY" -recurse | Format-List

You will see a bunch of information, but what you are looking for is two Public folder groups:

• \NON_IPM_SUBTREE\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY\EX:/o=Company/ou=First Administrative Group - AND
• \NON_IPM_SUBTREE\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY\EX:/o=Company/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)

In my case, we were missing the First Administrative Group. To add it I ran the following from EMS:

Set-PublicFolder –Identity “\NON_IPM_SUBTREE\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY\EX:/o=Company/ou=First Administrative Group” –Replicas “CASSERVER\Public Folder Database”

Let that simmer (replicate) through your domain for a while, then go back and try your Outlook /freebusy fix again. You should be good to go.

Did this solution work for you? Did you have to do something else? Have anything to add? Hit me up in the comments.

Technorati Tags: exchange 2007,outlook 2007,free/busy,Error updating public folder with free/busy information on virtual machine,0x80004005