Introduction
When configuring the Synergy SKY platform for Microsoft Exchange, an Exchange service account is required. Additionally, there are some exchange commands that have to be executed in order to allow this behavior. These commands provide the service account that will be configured in Synergy SKY to read the room calendars' meeting invitations and process the meetings accordingly.
This guide will explain how to:
- Create a Service account that will be configured in Synergy SKY
- Provide Mailbox Access to the room(s) Calendar
- Amend Calendar Permissions for the room(s) Calendar
- Set the Calendar processing rules
Prerequisites
| Exchange Admin Center |
You will require access to the Exchange Admin Center to be able to create meeting rooms and use
|
| Exchange Management Shell |
To simplify tasks, it would be beneficial to have access to the Exchange Management Shell. More information on how to access the Exchange Management Shell can be found here |
Configuration Reference
Step-by-Step Guide
Configuring the On-Prem Service Account
The Synergy SKY service account is the account that will be used for operations performed by the software. This account will update users' calendars, and notify internal and external participants about a meeting status.
You are not required to create a new account. It is possible to use an existing service account that exists in your organization however if you would like to create a new service account, we have steps on how you can achieve this below:
Option 1
- Log In to Exchange Admin Center
- Go to Recipients > mailboxes and click New User mailbox
- Fill in the Display name, Name, Email address and a Password
- choose Save
Option 2
Alternatively, you can log on to the Exchange Management Shell and use the below command to create a service account that will be used with Synergy SKY.
Command (may vary depending on the version) :
New-Mailbox -Name "SynergySKY Meetings" -DisplayName "SynergySKY Meeting Manager" -Alias meetingroommanager@company.com
Now that you have created/selected the service account, copy this alias and paste this in as the EWS Username in your Synergy SKY configuration
Provide the Service Account with access to view the rooms Calendar
When the service account has been created, you have to provide the account with access to the room calendar as per the below instructions.
Option 1
- Log In to Exchange Admin Center
- Go to Recipients > Resources and select the room that you would like to provide access to
- Go to Mailbox Delegation and choose the + under Full Access
- Search for the recently created (or already existing) service account and add this to the Permitted list.
- Choose Save
Option 2
Alternatively, you can log on to the Exchange Management Shell and use the below command to provide the service account access to the resource calendar
Add-MailboxPermission -Identity room_australia@company.comm -User meetingroommanager@company.com -AccessRights FullAccess
Setting the Calendar Processing Rules
We recommend running the following scripts with the following processing rule on all of the rooms in Microsoft Exchange in order to unlock the full potential of the product:
Set-CalendarProcessing room_australia@company.com -DeleteComments $false -DeleteSubject $false -RemovePrivateProperty $false -AddOrganizerToSubject $false -ProcessExternalMeetingMessages $true
The embedded test tool when adding a room to the Synergy SKY configuration can be used to verify most of these properties, and suggests PowerShell commands to configure the rooms according to our recommendations.
Calendar Processing Properties
The function of the various Exchange resource properties mentioned in the 'Setting the Calendar Processing Rules' section is explained in the table below.
| Property name |
Function in Microsoft Exchange |
Function in Synergy JOIN |
Recommended Setting |
Required |
| DeleteComments |
The DeleteComments parameter specifies whether to remove or keep any text in the message body of incoming meeting requests.
Valid input for this parameter is $true or $false.
This parameter is used only on resource mailboxes where the AutomateProcessing parameter is set to AutoAccept |
When set to $true, Exchange deletes the body of the meeting invitation when booking rooms.
As the matching rules rely on reading content in the body of the email, this stops Regex and the Skype URI in Body rule from working in JOIN.
|
$false
|
Yes, so that your matching rules work correctly. |
| DeleteSubject |
Specifies whether to remove or keep the subject of incoming meeting requests.
Valid input for this parameter is $true or $false.
The default value is $true.
This parameter is used only on resource mailboxes where the AutomateProcessing parameter is set to AutoAccept |
When set to $true, Exchange deletes the subject of the meeting which means JOIN does not display a meeting title on the touch panel of the video system.
If you want the subject of the meeting to be hidden, you can select the Private flag when booking the meeting in Outlook, even if this property is set to $false.
See also RemovePrivateProperty. |
$false
|
Yes, if you want the meeting title to be displayed on the touch panel. |
| RemovePrivateProperty |
The RemovePrivateProperty parameter specifies whether to clear the private flag for incoming meeting requests.
Valid input for this parameter is $true or $false.
The default value is $true.
By default, the private flag for incoming meeting requests is cleared. To ensure the private flag that was sent by the organizer in the original request remains as specified, set this parameter to $false. |
When set to $true, Exchange removes the Private flag when a Room is booked as a resource in a meeting flagged as Private in Outlook. This means that the meeting title is visible to everyone for all meetings.
By setting this property to $false you can hide the title on meetings that are booked as Private in Outlook, while showing the title of all other meetings.
|
$false
|
No. |
| AddOrganizerToSubject |
The AddOrganizerToSubject parametors specifies whether to add the organizers name toe the subject line.
Valid input for this parameter is $true or $false.
The default value is $true. |
When set to $true, Exchange adds the organizers first name and last name to the subject line of the meeting.
If you do not want to display the meeting name, at minimum we recommend to set this field to
$true
|
$false
|
Yes, if you want to hide the meeting title on the touch panel. |
| ProcessExternalMeetingMessages |
The ProcessExternalMeetingMessages parameter specifies whether to process meeting requests that originate outside the Exchange organization.
Valid input for this parameter is $true or $false.
The default value is $false.
By default, meeting requests that originate outside of the organization are rejected. |
However, a room is booked on behalf of the organizer if a user forwards an invite into a room. This setting must therefore be set to $true to allow internal users to forward invitations to external Skype meetings into their meeting rooms, so that they can benefit from easy calling into external Skype meetings.
Note: Administrators can still avoid external users booking their rooms directly by using an internal domain in the room's alias (e.g. meetingroom@synergysky.local)
|
$true
|
Yes, so that forwarding invites from external users works correctly. |
| AutomateProcessing |
The AutomateProcessing parameter enables or disables calendar processing on the mailbox.
This parameter takes the following values:
- None Both the resource booking attendant and the Calendar Attendant are disabled on the mailbox.
- AutoUpdate Only the Calendar Attendant processes meeting requests and responses
- AutoAccept Both the Calendar Attendant and resource booking attendant are enabled on the mailbox. This means that the Calendar Attendant updates the calendar, and then the resource booking assistant accepts the meeting based upon the policies.
The default value on a resource mailbox is AutoAccept.
The default value on a user mailbox is AutoUpdate, but you can't change the value on a user mailbox. |
Meetings that are booked in Room resources are stored as Tentative unless this setting is set to AutoAccept.
Tentative meetings are not processed by JOIN, as you can book multiple tentative meetings within the same time interval in one resource. |
AutoAccept |
Yes. |
AllRequestInPolicy
AllRequestOutOfPolicy
RequestInPolicy
RequestOutOfPolicy |
These parameters specify whether to allow users to submit policy requests.
Valid input for these parameters are $true or $false.
The default value is $false. |
Meetings booked in Room resources that are configured with either of these properties that require meetings to be approved by a delegate, will not be processed by JOIN until they are approved.
This will lead to a significant delay for the meeting organizers, and is therefore not recommended. |
$false |
Recommended: configure so that approval is not required. |
Enabling forwarding of external meeting invitations
Microsoft will only process meeting requests for meetings booked by external users if the settings ProcessExternalMeetingMessages is set to “$true”. Enabling this setting potentially exposes your meeting rooms from being booked directly by external users, but can be mitigated in one of two ways:
- Either stop direct emails from external users from ever reaching the room mailboxes; which can be done by a transport rule in the Hub Transport server in Microsoft Exchange. The rule can be set to stop emails from external users from reaching the mailboxes in a specific distribution list like the list of meeting rooms
- Alternatively, you can change the alias of the rooms to a domain that is only available internally in the Exchange environment; i.e. changing boardroom@acme.com to boardroom@acme.local. The acme.local domain should not be reachable from the outside, but will be available for internal users.
Either of these changes will enable users to forward invitations they receive from the outside to their meetings rooms, while hindering any external users from booking their meeting rooms directly.
NOTE. Enabling ProcessExternalMeetingMessages does not in any way expose the information of existing meetings to external users.
