Our company is on the verge of implementing Outlook as our calendaring and
scheduling tool. The free/busy data does not work as I expect it would for
invite requests. Ideally, all attendees invited would show as tentative on
the free/busy views until they actually viewed their meeting request in their
mailbox. What I'm finding is only the attendees that have the Outlook client
running are getting updated as tentative (or if they act on the meeting
request then a status of accept/decline/etc shows up). The problem this
poses, is that if someone is out of the office on vacation and their Outlook
client isn't running, their requested meeting times are NOT blocked as
tentative for free/busy searches. Some of our executives are traveling a lot
and when they are on the floor, they are booked into meetings. The
knowledgebase help I've found so far reinforces my findings.
Is there a way to have everyone's meeting requests processed as tentative
automatically for free/busy search purposes until they can act on the meeting
request in their inbox whether they are running the client or not?
We are also using an auto accept agent running as a service on our exchange
server for resources. It will accept meeting requests automatically for
resources such as conference rooms and AV equipment. Our resources are setup
using a CAL. Anyone know of an equivalent agent that would process meeting
requests in all users mailboxes as 'tentative' automatically? This would keep
the Free Busy map updated at all times.

Thanks