Outlook meeting request received as EMAIL with no Accept or Decline

[JoeZ430]

Hello all,

This one has me stumped, and I have searched this site as well as Google for the answer, but found nothing but a thread with no answer.

We sometimes get a meeting request in Outlook from another person in the office. The request shows as a regular email rather than a meeting request. The icon in the inbox is an email icon rather than a calendar item, and inside the request itself is just text with NO ACCEPT or DECLINE buttons of any kind.

Example text:

-----------
From: xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 2:16 PM
To: xxxxxxx'
Subject: xxxxxxxxxx

When: Thursday, August 21, 2008 3:00 PM-3:30 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).
Where: xxx Offices

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

-----------

This does not happen all the time, and it happens from different user mailboxes. We have mostly Outlook 2000 clients, but a few 2003 and 2007 mixed in. It can happen from any version to any version. The first time it happened (that was reported to me) it was from a 2000 client to a 2000 client. Just now I got one in my 2007 client from a 2003 client. The calendar appointment looks fine on the sender's side.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Joe

 

[xmsre]

The sending client doesn't understand IPM.message and IPM.Appointment items. Have them send meeting requests as an ICAL attachment.

 

[JoeZ430]

Hi, thank you for the quick reply. We have narrowed this down to a Exchange Server issue. I tried to send a request through OWA with the same results. Do you have any other ideas?

Thanks,

Joe

 

[JoeZ430]

We have just found out what the problem is. WE are using GFI Mail Essentials for Exchange and the Disclaimer is causing Outlook meeting request to lose the information.

----------------------------------------------------

We are running Exchange 2007 and we just discovered if we send meeting requests to external and internal users, the disclaimer is causing it to send as plain text which results in stripping out the ACCEPT/DECLINE function in the email. If we turn the disclaimer off, the meeting requests come in just fine. Does anybody know a solution to this issue?

 

[Zelandakh]

What version of GFI?

 

[JoeZ430]

We posted on the GFI forums and one of their teks came up with this solution. We are running version 12 build 20080326. Thank you for the reply.


1. This patch implements an update for an issue whereby Outlook appointment and meeting requests sent to a remote domain would be corrupted
at the receiving end when a disclaimer was added by GFI MailEssentials.


NOTE: With this update, GFI MailEssentials will not add a disclaimer to Outlook appointment and meeting requests.


How to apply the patch:


1. Stop the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service;

2. Make a backup of the following GFI MailEssentials files: - MailEssentials\ContentSecurity.ExchangeAgents.gfiasrtroutedagent.dll

3. Extract the files included in this patch to a temporary location (not the GFI MailEssentials folder);

4. Copy the following files from the temporary location to the MailEssentials folder: - ContentSecurity.ExchangeAgents.gfiasrtroutedagent.dll

5. Follow the instructions below to configure disclaimers for Outlook appointment and meeting requests;

6. Restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport Service.

Configuring disclaimer for Outlook appointment and meeting requests: (you have done this part)


1. Open MailEssentials\Data\product.config in a text editor;

2. Add the following line:
<add key="DisableOLMeetingDisclaimer" value="1"/> as the last key on the line before the closing </appSettings> tag.

A value of "1" means that disclaimers will not be added to Outlook appointment and meeting requests.

A value of "0" means that disclaimers will be added to Outlook appointment and meeting requests. Note that with a value of "0" these messages will be corrupted at the receiving end.

3. The Microsoft Exchange Transport Service must be restarted every time this value is changed.


NOTE: This issue happens on Exchange 2007 installations.


Patch can be downloaded from:

http://ftp.gfisoftware.com/patches/ME12/20080326/ME12_PATCH_20080414_01.zip