Exchange Server 2007 Resource Mailboxes Part 2 – Equipment Mailboxes
Written by Paul Cunningham on May 25, 2009
In my last post I explained the concept of resource mailboxes in Exchange Server 2007, and demonstrated the creation of a Room Mailbox for managing meeting room bookings. In this post I will discuss the other type of resource mailbox – Equipment Mailboxes.
Equipment Mailboxes
Many businesses have tools or equipment that is provided by the company for staff to share and use for work related activities. For example, a company might have a portable projector that sales staff can carry to client offices for demonstrations, or a pool car that is used by field technicians to get to remote locations.
In order to manage the allocation of these resources to staff an Equipment Mailbox with a calendar is created so that staff can book the resource using Outlook.To create an Equipment Mailbox launch the New Mailbox wizard in the Exchange Management Console.
After choosing Equipment Mailbox I then choose to create the mailbox with a new user account.
Fill out the user information fields. Although you must choose a password here you are not likely to ever need to use it, so just make it something secure.
Choose a mailbox database to store the Equipment Mailbox.
Complete the New Mailbox wizard. You can now see the newly created Equipment Mailbox in the recipient list for the organisation.
As with the Room Mailbox created in the last post, the Exchange server has automatically disabled the user account associated with the Equipment Mailbox and set the password to never expire.
Equipment Mailboxes also have the “Resource Information” tab the same as Room Mailboxes. Although the “Resource Capacity” field makes little sense for something like a portable projector, it can still be relevant to other uses of the Equipment Mailbox. For example a company car might have the seat capacity listed here.
To automate the booking process you can set the mailbox calendar to automatically accept new bookings.
Set-MailboxCalendarSettings portableprojector
-AutomateProcessing AutoAccept
This will set the Equipment Mailbox to automatically accept any new bookings provided they do not conflict with an existing booking.
Users within the organisation can now add the Equipment Mailbox as a Resource to meeting requests.
In a practical sense the portable projector is invited as an attendee and automatically accepts the booking because there are no prior bookings that conflict with it.
By creating Equipment Mailboxes for shared items within the business it makes it fast and simple for staff to book the items they need when they need them, without incurring any administrative overhead for IT administrators or other staff who might normally manage such resources.
ref: http://www.theemailadmin.com/2009/05/exchange-server-2007-resource-mailboxes-part-2-equipment-mailboxes/
