Working with Calendar

This topic describes several things you can do to optimize your experience when working with calendar entries in Microsoft™ Outlook.

Best practices

Important: Before working with Calendar, be sure to set required preferences. For information, see Client requirements.

Get the best experience from your Outlook calendar by following these tips:

  • For meeting organizers:
    • Avoid creating infinitely repeating meetings.
    • When editing repeating meetings, select the Just this one option, rather than The entire series, wherever possible, as explained in the Entire series modification section of this Help topic.
    • Include links to file attachments; for instance, put the file in IBM® Connections Files and link to it, rather than including the file in the meeting description. Outlook does not allow the attachment to be sent directly.
  • For meeting participants:
    • Click the Scheduling tab to view other meeting participants; this is a native Outlook behavior, that may not seem intuitive to IBM® Notes® users.
    • To remove cancellation notices from the Notes/iNotes calendar, open them in iNotes rather than Outlook. If you remove from Outlook, they can remain showing in Notes as canceled.
  • For Notes® users who work with Outlook users (or for Executives and Administrative Assistants who use different clients):
    • Avoid embedded images or file attachments in a meeting notice.

    • An encrypted meeting invitation sent from Notes® currently appears as unactionable MIME in Outlook. The workaround for this limitation is to accept the encrypted invitation using iNotes. Click the Open in iNotes icon from Outlook:

Advanced properties

Some properties of a calendar entry may not be able to be represented the same way for Outlook as they are for Notes®. This is generally only applicable in mixed-client environments, since IBM® mail support for Microsoft™ Outlook users cannot create meetings with the following advanced properties:

  • Embedded images
    • Embedded images in the Description field are removed and replaced with text indicating such
    • If a meeting or appointment is modified from Outlook, any rich text is also lost when viewed in Notes®, or in updates sent to participants.
  • File attachments
    • File attachments are replaced with an HTTP URL link that can be clicked to open the attachment from the server;
    • File attachments are preserved even if an event is modified from Outlook, other than an Entire series time modification, as described in the following section of this Help topic.
  • Online meetings
    • Online meeting information is copied into the calendar Description field, and does not display separately on the form, as it does in Notes®.
    • Online meeting information is preserved even if an event is modified from Outlook, other than an Entire series time modification, as described in the following section of this Help topic.
  • Rooms
    • Rooms are preserved even if an event is modified from Outlook.
Note: These advanced properties are placed in the calendar Description field. For the creator of the calendar event, they are encapsulated in comments that say Do not edit this block. While Outlook allows the creator to edit the entire Description text, the creator should avoid modifying the Do not edit this block lines or text between them, as any changes within those lines will be lost.

Entire series modification

Due to underlying differences between Outlook and Domino® implementations of repeating meetings, there is some confusing behavior that may result from updating repeating meetings and selecting the The entire series option from Outlook; none of this is an issue if selecting the Just this one option when updating repeating meetings.

  • Rescheduling a series
    • Changing the Recurrence properties in Outlook will prompt a dialog that says If you changed specific appointments in the series, your changes will be cancelled and those appointments will match the series again. This dialog is a native Outlook behavior, and is no different than when connected to Exchange.
    • The result of changing a repeating meeting series' recurrence pattern is that all instances of the repeating meeting will follow the recurrence pattern, and will not maintain any properties that may have been changed for a single instance. Unlike Exchange, when an IBM® mail series occurrence pattern is changed, the result is that the original meeting is canceled, and a new invitation is sent. This is the same end result as Exchange, except that meeting participants will get two notices (a cancellation and a new invitation), rather than a single reschedule notice.
    • In addition, if a meeting organizer also uses Notes®, there may be contents in the Do not edit this block area, such as file attachments or online meeting information, as described in the previous section of this Help topic; such contents will not be preserved when a series is rescheduled
  • Non-time changes to a series
    • For repeating meeting series that have been heavily modified, an excessive number of information updates may be sent out from a single action. It is expected that there may be an update or reschedule sent for every exception.
    • These issues are more apparent if a meeting participant has previously been removed from a single instance of a repeating meeting; once this happens, it can cause a large number of exceptions.
    • If participants were added or removed from repeating meeting instances previously, they may be sent several notices (cancellations and re-invitations), although they will end up with the correct meeting instances.