Request for participation: MS OL2001 Booking Feature Impact Survey
[When someone yells, "Get a room!", do you reply, "I Can't!"?]
March 15, 2002

Many of you know me from my online ramblings, but this time I'd like to direct your attention to my 'day job'. We are a Microsoft Exchange shop, which is to say that we live & die by the functionality (or not) of Microsoft's messaging and scheduling solution. All in all, not a bad tool once the users get past the learning curve.

HOWEVER, we are fighting with fallout from the following issue:

OL2001: Direct Booking of Resources Is Not Supported (Q296145)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q296145
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The information in this article applies to:
* Microsoft Outlook 2001 for Mac
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SUMMARY
Outlook for Mac 2001 does not support direct booking of resources like previous versions of Microsoft Outlook for Windows.

MORE INFORMATION
Microsoft Outlook 2000 and Microsoft Outlook 2002 for Windows have the capability to directly book resources without the account designated for the resource being logged on.


What this means is that as a Mac user, I can create a meeting and invite others to attend; but my attempts to reserve a conference room (or A/V equipment, lecterns, etc.) are unanswered by the resource accounts -- letting my preferred room get booked by... you guessed it... the next Windows user who comes along.

Today, we spoke with a very helpful person at MS tech support (who, by the way, made a point of mentioning that all his computers at home are Macs) who noted that although there have been no public releases of bug fixes, updates, or patches for Outlook 2001 for the Mac, that there have been several instances in which other changes have been made (and distributed) to fix specific issues or shortcomings where the Mac client is concerned. But our issue has apparently not garnered enough complaints from Mac-using corporate customers for Microsoft to invest the necessary time to resolve this particular failing. Nevertheless, he is submitting our request that such approval, after we create and forward to him an appropriate 'business impact statement'.

The recommended 'work-around' is to have the Mac users book (and make changes to) meetings using the web-based Exchange client instead of Outlook 2001. This requires that our users know the names of all the resource accounts, since there is no pull-down list of all those available.

MacWindows.com has a couple of helpful notes about some shops having set up PCs to remain logged in to these resource accounts (like a user reading their mail) so that the 'auto-answer' feature will process the mal-formed incoming meeting requests that the Mac client issues:

http://www.macwindows.com/exchange2k.html#062501
http://www.macwindows.com/outlook.html

Because of the number of rooms involved, and practical limits to the number of delegates that can be added to an account before a mailbox fails, this won't work for us.

What I am looking for is the opportunity to pass along to Microsoft some real numbers and testimonials showing the impact this has on Microsoft-centric shops. If your company uses Exchange, and you have a real need to give your Mac users the ability to reserve rooms on an Exchange 2000 server, please fill out the form at: http://MacBigot.com/OL2001_Impact_Study/. Be aware that your name and other contact information will be required for this data to be considered legitimate; so if you can't provide a way for me/them to reach you, I must decline your input. We want to try to place an approximate dollar amount on how this missing feature impacts your bottom line.

Although there are not guarantees that this data will have the desired impact, I would at least like to remind Microsoft that the silence of the corporate-Mac-using community is not because we are satisfied with a reduced feature set -- but instead only because we are so used to hearing the phrase, "Is Not Supported".

-Dan Oblak



UPDATE: Microsoft responded with the following (before the survey results were published):

CASE_ID_NUM: SRX020314601354
"You had requested that this functionality be added in the current version of Outlook for the Mac. A design change request was submitted, and was not approved."

SURVEY RESULTS
How many total users (any platform)? How many are Mac users?

52 respondents represented approximately 126095 PC Users, and 13745 Mac Users.

Which best describes you? ("Make Outlook 2001 work","Waiting for Outlook X", "Not concerned", "Interested - would use Outlook more if features available")

An overwhelming majority of companies which use Outlook 2001 for Macintosh have plans to move to MacOS X, and hope that this platform will be supported with a full-featured Outlook client.

Have you called Microsoft Technical Support?

Microsoft maintains there haven't been sufficient complaints; but customers say:
  1. There is already a TechNET article.

  2. Reduced feature-set common Microsoft MacOS products.

  3. Customers decided to not utilized scheduling.
How many person-hours per month do you estimate your technical staff loses due to this issue? Your user base? (Duplication of effort, accidentally double-booked rooms, efforts of support staff to resolve conflicts)

TECH HOURS/Month = 984
USER HOURS/Month = 1972

Microsoft argues that customers are not expending enough time and/or money to justify the dedication of Microsoft programmers to the resolution of this issue.


FURTHER MICROSOFT CUSTOMER COMMENTS
"No great time loss - we know it doesn't work on a Mac - should be seamless with PC users.

(An) X version of Outlook would obviate the need for running Classic Outlook which is now almost the only application required for normal office use."
"Our Mac users should have the same functionality as our PC users. Also, please make Outlook OS X native. In June 2002, Outlook will be the only app we need to run Classic for."
"Really need to match all the features of the PC platform. Also definitely need an OSX native client of the Outlook application."
"We have implemented the always-logged-in delegate approach. This seems to work ok, however Outlook occasionally needs to be restarted on this Windows NT box. I fully support any efforts MS can make to bring Outlook to Mac OS X and to bring its functionality more in-line with the Windows clients."
"C'mon Microsoft. You already know how important the Office suite is to Mac users. Let's get Outlook up to par. This is totally ridiculous. You say you're commited to the Mac; let's see you put your money (and development time) where your mouth is."
"I cannot say how many person-hours. We have not been able to implement the feature since it is not available on both platforms.

We are in need, however, of the feature."
"For now we are sending all booking requests to the receptionist in each office and having her manage the calendar. It takes about 45 hours of time monthly per/receptionist. So appx. 25% of her job has been dropped for calendaring duties."
"We've been very happy with Outlook for the Mac in general. The lack of direct-booking of conference rooms is one of two or three annoying issues that exist and we've learned to live with it. Nevertheless we would love to see a solution to this."
"We have an alternate method of booking rooms which has only basic functionality for scheduling. We have each room in each office as a Calendar in a location folder in Public Folders. There's no permissions leaving it up to the users to stake claim. The resource scheduling feature could be a real asset to our current scheduling issues."
"We schedule a lot of meetings around our research and booking meeting rooms is all important to our average person."
"The Mac client should have equal and FULL functionality with its Windows counterpart."
"We were told by a Microsoft support technician that there have been other changes made to the Outlook client for other, larger customers -- and that the revised version was provided only to those specific customers who had a substantial enough need to justify the allocation of MS's resources.

We have also been told that "no one else complains about this, so it must not be a very high priority with most of our users." But from everyone I've spoken to, a support call doesn't usually get placed with Microsoft if we already found (in the TechNet archives) that the company doesn't have any plans to correct this oversight. It's a slick marketing tactic; tell your customers that A) it's not broken, and follow it up with B) that's the way we designed it 'on purpose'."
"One of the most frustrating aspects about this issue is that it required hours of troubleshooting to define its true nature, and then a lengthy and indirect communication with Microsoft via our Exchange Administrator to finally be told "Oh, that is not supported."

There was nothing in the release notes to indicate this lack of funtionality might present a problem for Outlook 2001 Mac clients. In my opinion this is a core function for the Calendar and should be added back in."
"We have a dedicated Mac auto-answering meeting requests for the only meeting rooms on our Mac-only floor."
"We need full funcionality for Outlook. We are a cross platform department, and need to have consistency. As well as the ability to be able to book rooms and gear, we need to be able to have Palm syncing. Thank you for a great product."
"Due to the fact that this is not supported in our PC-centric company, the Mac users in my department must constantly update/review their calendars and schedules in a more manual fashion. As well, since we cannot view the PC user's calendars, scheduling meetings requires more work. Not to mention the inability to schedule rooms, which have to be done by a sympathetic PC user. Thanks!"
"Because we have Mac-user base, we are required to figure out how to integrate Microsoft into our environment in order to maintain communication with the rest of the corporation. It is extremely important that we be able to have all the same features as any PC user of Microsoft products. We are an integral part of our company and no matter how hard Microsoft is to integrate, we are not changing to a Windows platform. We'll continue spending time and effort finding work-arounds to every new release of Microsoft products even if it means dropping those products and finding a different solution."
"We have over 23,000 users, of which roughly 15000 are Exchange clients and the others are in the process of migrating. Resources, or even real Calendar use is not widely used... but we'd like it to, however without cross platform equality, it'll never happen."
"Outlook parity between platforms is critical for us as we have an even mix of Macs and Windows computers."
"We run lots of Win2K SERVERS, and I have users with Win2K Pro on the desktop.

I *VERY MUCH WANT* to run an exchange server. I have Win users who use Outlook right now to access our 3rd party email server. We use a competing cross-platform calendaring program (Meeting Maker).

Three things keep me from deploying Exchange Server:
1) Direct Booking of Resources not supported (and generally, a lack of feature parity with the Win version)
2) No Palm sync
3) No OS X client

If Microsoft just fixed the first two, and had a client that works in classic, even that would be okay. I'd defintely move to Exchange."
"This issue has come to the forefront as we try to streamline communications in our department. This shortcoming was a rude awakening to our Mac users who were excited about using this feature only to be shafted again. They also clamor for html rendering in Outlook 2001."
"An OS X version will all of the features that the Windows version has is a must, and soon. Outlook for Mac is the only thing holding us back from upgrading to OS X. And when we upgrade to OS X, we'll need to upgrade our version of MS Office for Mac (and for our pc's as well since we'll go with a site license)."
"It never ceases to amaze me that people would have anything at all to do with Microsoft. My advise is to just say no. Deposit anything with the M$ name in the trash can and flush. That's what I did. I have never looked back, I have no regrets, and most of all, I don't whine about M$."
"We are new to Exchange/Outlook so the impact of this is hard to quantify; however, it is very important that we be able to use a native OS X outlook that has the same capabilities as a Windows client."
"It's not the end of the world, but it's one of the things that makes me not like using Outlook. I wouldn't use it if I didn't have to and prefer Entourage."
"Our company totally relies on Outlook for booking dozens and dozens of conference rooms. Users shouldn't have to learn two interfaces (Outlook and Web) to book conference rooms. We would be interested in a near-term solution for OS9 and a full-featured OS X client for the future."
"I can only reliably respond for our particular facility, but our organisation employs approx. 45,000 people, and whilst it is a heavily Microsoft focused site, I know that the Mac platform is in use and expected to integrate well with the infrastructure.

Our particular division (Research) naturally also has investments in Unix systems, so OS X is facing increased acceptance, especially laptops (most significantly home office work, hooking into the corporate VPN.)"
"This has been an ongoing issue with out MAC users trying to book a resource from within Outlook. Any immediate help or a solution would be wonderful."
"Another thing that Outlook 2001 for Mac does not do is recognize and display html, however that may be a good thing."
"Mac users have to send an e-mail to tech support to book classrooms for us. This defeats the purpose of using Outlook Exchange."
"You might want to add this question to your survey:
For non-outlook users, would you buy Exchange Server if the Mac client had feature parity with the Windows version?

For me, the answer would be YES!

I'm the IT mgr at my office. We have a mix of about 20 Mac & Windows users, and a mix of Mac, Windows & Unix servers. I would deploy Exchange Server / Outlook in a heartbeat if the Mac version supported these two features:

1) Palm Sync and
2) Reserving resources

Instead of Outlook, I've deployed MeetingMaker, which is cross-platform, and supports both Palm sync and reserving resources. It's just a calendaring program, so we also use Outlook Express for email, and Palm Desktop for features not covered by MM and OE.

If Outlook worked on the Mac, I'd deploy Outlook instead of the combination of MM/OE/PD. It would make my life easier (which I like), and incidentally generate more revenue for Microsoft (which i don't care about one way or the other)."
"I use the web-based access to Outlook because I find it too buggy and adds too many extensions to the OS for the few features that actually work. Many of the gee-wiz market features have been turned off on the PC version anyway due to security concerns. On win ME, I found that outlook locked up my computer, but now on win2k it is fairly stable. If I use outlook, it's on my PC laptop instead of my mac... but many others in the department who are Mac only have little functionality other than email that actually works (and yes, we have all the patches and competent IT). I am waiting for a good OS X free app to replace it (though exchange does a good job of NOT working with other apps). Please give us a reason to move to Outlook 2001, or I'll start showing the company how sendmail could save them a bundle."
"FirstClass has just released a version 7. It's OS X native, unlike the Exchange client. Maybe if people start moving to that platform, MS will take notice."
"If the resource (such as a room) has a shared Calendar of its own, you can use Outlook : Mac 2001 to reserve time with [Open Other User's Folder] (Command+Option+O).

You type in the name of the resource, or you pick it from the Global Address List. Then you edit its Calendar just as if it were your own.

After the first access, the resource's Calendar gets added to a picklist on the File/Open menu.

This method works for Macs or PCs.

I do this IMMEDIATELY AFTER inviting people to a meeting. Reserving the resource BEFORE you schedule people to use it could result in errors due to Exchange's realization that the resource had already been booked (by you, to be sure, but nevertheless...)"