iOS6, iDevices, and strange Outlook/Exchange Calendaring behavior

Question

Level 1

0 points

iOS6, iDevices, and strange Outlook/Exchange Calendaring behavior

Is anyone else seeing this issue???

About a week ago we started receiving reports from our executive assistants in regards to strange Outlook calendaring behavior where meeting cancellations were being sent out, but not from the meeting organizer, but one of the meeting attendees. A few details:

The meeting cancellations from the attendee (let's call this person User B) has confirmed they were not in their Outlook calendar, nor were they modifying any calendar related events from their PC or their iDevice(s).
User A (the original meeting organizer) does not receive the meeting cancellation notice, but all other attendees do.
When the cancellations are mistakenly sent out from User B, MULTIPLE cancellations are sent, meaning there are literally 10-20 cancellations sent for the same meeting.

We're running Exchange 2010 SP2 with Outlook 2010.

These reports seem to have started with the release date of the iOS6 update.

We have not patched Exchange/Outlook recently nor have made any other changes to the environment.

I have a case open with MS Support and am waiting for a call back.

Anyone else seeing this??? I searched the Apple Support forums but wasn't seeing this exact issue.

J

Posted on Sep 28, 2012 11:20 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Sep 29, 2012 4:54 PM in response to singebad

I am having the exact same issues as you decribe and it driving me nuts. We are still running Exchange 2003. The only thing that I have been able to conlude is that when these meeting cancellations come through it is coming from a recipient and so far all have had iPhone's with iOS 6 and they say the same thing that they didn't even accept or decline the meeting. This is causing great frustration from our executives and board members. We need some help with this issue very badly.

I worked on this issue all day Friday with our CEO because the meeting cancellations were coming from him. He did have his calendar syncing to iCloud along with exchange. I turned off syncing of just his calendar to iCloud and this seemed to help but it I am not 100% sure yet. But the problem is that we are seing cancellation coming from board members and other meeting recipients outside our orginazation. I look forward to others commenting on this issue.

Reply

Answer 2

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

230,678 points

Sep 29, 2012 5:17 PM in response to Higgins1776

While I cannot help with this issue, I have responded to another post I found earlier today and these two threads may be of help to each other. Try responding to one of the posters on this other thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4355582?answerId=19821576022#19821576022

Reply

Answer 3

Sep 29, 2012 7:32 PM in response to ChrisJ4203

Thank you. I found another thread here as well https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4351951 I think as more users upgrade to iOS 6 this is going to be a huge issue. Apple better get out in front of this and fast.

Reply

Answer 4

Sep 29, 2012 7:45 PM in response to singebad

I looked at the email headers of one of the canellations of one of the recipients of the meeting request. The email came back that he cancelled the meeting even though he was only a recipient. This was in the header:

Content-Type: text/calendar;

method=CANCEL;

name="meeting.ics"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

This may be a clue to what is going on. The iPhone is sending back a cancel reqest for whatever reason even though the end user had not even looked at the appointment.

Reply

Answer 5

singebad Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 1, 2012 9:27 AM in response to singebad

Update:

Per MS Support, we will be updating our E2007/E2010 environments to the latest Update Rollup package. They confirmed they have received some reports with IOS6 and calendaring and are able to re-produce the issue in their labs, although this issue doesn't relate to Windows Mobile or Android devices. Only iDevices appear to cause the issue.

Support linked me to this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2521063/EN-US

We will be updating systems tonight and then following up with support tomorrow AM. Hopefully this resolves the issue, as we are experiencing this behavior a few times a day and now have ~210 devices running iOS6.

J

Reply

Answer 6

Oct 1, 2012 11:17 AM in response to singebad

Thanks for the update. I am just not sure how this is a Microsoft problem since it all started with the iOS 6 upgrade.

Reply

Answer 7

singebad Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 1, 2012 11:18 AM in response to Higgins1776

Yeah, its not, but they are trying their best. Its not like Apple has a real support group. Keeping my fingers crossed that the latest/greatest Update Rollup does the trick. If not, this is going to get reaaaaaaaal interesting.

J

Reply

Answer 8

HVHC IT

Level 1

0 points

Oct 4, 2012 7:51 AM in response to singebad

Can I ask what the exact steps are to replicate the issue? I've been trying to reproduce it with no success.

Are you opening the invitation in Calendar or in Mail? Is it invitations sent to individuals or to distribution groups? What version of Exchange is everyone running?

Here is what I'm running:

Exchange 2010 SP2 RU3 (v14.2 Build 247.5)
iOS 6.0 for iPhone & iPad

Reply

Answer 9

singebad Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 4, 2012 8:33 AM in response to HVHC IT

I'm not able to reproduce the issue (although it was occurring with frightening regularity before patching Exchange). MS Support said they were able to re-produce the issue in mixed and stand-alone environments (but only with iDevices ... not with Windows Mobile or Android devices).

Most of the time, our users aren't even opening invitations ... this behavior occurs automatically. It is typically invitations to 10+ individuals. We were running these versions:

Exchange 2007 SP3 UR 3v2

Exchange 2010 SP2 UR 1

We then patched to the following levels, per MS Support:

E2007SP3 UR7

E2010SP2 UR4

Since applying the patch on 10/1, we've only had 1 instance where the meeting organizer changes to one of the attendees (which is supposedly addressed/fixed/resolved by E2007SP3 UR4, yet we were still experiencing it).

The other issue where meeting cancellations are mysteriously sent from individuals who claim they did not touch their calendar (all running iOS 6) ... those have not occurred. I'm still not 100% that we're out of the woods just yet.

J

Reply

Answer 10

singebad Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 8, 2012 8:56 AM in response to singebad

Anyone else out of the woods? We continue to experience this strange calendaring behavior ... although most of the impacted meetings appear to be those that were created before we put the patch in. I'm still trying to confirm if anyone has experienced this with meetings created AFTER I patched Exchange.

Has anyone talked to Apple directly about this? We don't have an Enterprise Support Plan with them at this time.

J

Reply

Answer 11

Oct 8, 2012 10:53 AM in response to singebad

We are seeing the same issue in our environment as well. Exchange 2010 Sp1 windows server 2008 R2

We have seen miscellaneous issues when users accept meetings or decline meetings on their IOS devices since we started using them.

If anyone has any suggestions, would really appreciate them.

Thanks

Reply

Answer 12

singebad Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 8, 2012 10:56 AM in response to Jessica Cochran

Jessica - I'm curious, what version of IOS are your devices running? In each reported issue, all devices have been running the new IOS 6.

J

Reply

Answer 13

Oct 8, 2012 10:57 AM in response to singebad

The ones that are reporting this issue with the decling meetings are running IO6. The large majority of our iPhone/iPad users updated to IOS 6 the day it was released.

Many of them already have iPhone 5's as well.

Reply

Answer 14

Turismon

Level 1

0 points

Oct 9, 2012 8:53 AM in response to singebad

Same issue here as well, I replied to the other post linked in this thread, what a mess.

Reply

Answer 15

mrben09

Level 1

0 points

Oct 11, 2012 10:55 AM in response to singebad

This a mess, and one of my main suppliers, who has several hundred devices on ios6, has sent me an email detailing that best practice from their support contacts in Apple and Microsoft, is to only use Outlook (on Mac or PC) to manage appointments, until a fix is issued.

However there has also been instances of cancelled meetings with no intervention on the behalf of the user at all ! This happen to me on Tuesday. Apparently I cancelled a meeting arranged by one of my collegues even though I had accepted the meeting about 4 weeks ago. I am on IOS 6.

Reply