free/busy not showing up apparently due to Autocomplete bad email

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mbrownah - 14 Dec 2005 18:35 GMT

My company uses exchange for email and calendaring. When I got to schedule
a meeting with someone, Autocomplete sometimes offers multiple choices for
that person. Some apparently are in Exchange format and some will not be. I
have to select the one that I guess to be the exchange format to be able to
see free/busy information, otherwise I will get \\\\ for free/busy for that
person.

Some of my email arrives via IMAP, but I don't see any differences in the
"To:" address headers between Exchange and IMAP. I suspect that Autocomplete
is trolling emails and somehow collecting email and saving it without
connecting it to the exchange GAL format. When the format is 'exchange' it
seems to be in this form:
Firstname Lastname (userid)
When it is not in exchange format, it looks like this:
Firstname Lastname (userid) <userid.company.com>
Looking in the headers of emails I always see this format:
To: "Firstname Lastname \(userid\)" <userid@company.com>

Looks like a bug in handling the autocomplete list for Exchange. The
autocomplete list should recognize or assume there is already an exchange
match before adding a non-exchange formatted email address, esp from the same
IP domain name as the exchange server.

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Brian Tillman - 15 Dec 2005 18:25 GMT

> My company uses exchange for email and calendaring. When I got to
> schedule a meeting with someone, Autocomplete sometimes offers
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> the "To:" address headers between Exchange and IMAP. I suspect that
> Autocomplete is trolling emails

It's not.

> and somehow collecting email and
> saving it without connecting it to the exchange GAL format.

Autocompletion has nothing to do with either the GAL or your Contacts. It
caches and remembers the last 1,000 addresses you've entered and resolved
previously. If you don't want a particular address in the list, use the
arrow keys to select it and then press Delete.

> Looks like a bug in handling the autocomplete list for Exchange. The
> autocomplete list should recognize or assume there is already an
> exchange match before adding a non-exchange formatted email address,
> esp from the same IP domain name as the exchange server.

Not a bug at all. It just remembers resolved addresses with no judging
whether or not they're suitable for the purpose at hand. It will remember
the Exchange address when you send to an Exchange address and it will
remember the Internet address when you send to that style. It has no way of
determining if those addresses wind up at the same mailbox.

Sounds like you should use Autoresolution instead. Enter "checking
recipient names" in Outlook's Help search.

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Brian Tillman

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mbrownah - 16 Dec 2005 15:37 GMT

'Autoresolution' lookup is too slow in a large company. Using Autocomplete,
I can find most people I am sending mail to with just the first two letters
of their name.

'Autoresolution', which I think is enabled by default, has to have enough
info to match against the entire company GAL, which would essentially be
their entire userid for common names.

The issue seems to occur due to a Reply to an email that I have received
that has been converted to 'internet format'. If I check
<right-click>Options for emails received via Exchange and emails received via
IMAP, the 'Internet headers' sometimes look exactly the same - internet
format headers and no LDAP info /o=company.. /cn=userid info ). So it
appears that exchange sometimes keeps additional LDAP info (or whatever that
format is correctly called) in emails that come directly from the Exchange
server, but not always - maybe it is lost somewhere in the mail routing.
When this exchange/LDAP data isn't present, the autocomplete data is
incomplete, and therefore all the magic properties of exchange (like calendar
meeting scheduling integration) falls apart.

Basically, it looks to me that Exchange is a proprietary email system that
interacts with and emulates normal Internet mail amazingly well under normal
circumstances, but at times certain info is lost during the
translation/interaction, and then calendar integration 'user experience' is
sub-optimal. As a user and a test engineer at my company, I call it a
bug...:)

So, I guess this is an 'enhancement request' for smarter handling of
autocomplete. If your domain name appears in the email address and you are
repying to and email via exchange (I always send my email via exchange), then
Outlook should add the email address to the autocomplete cache AFTER looking
up the LDAP info on the exchange server, since normally it should assume that
the user is in the GAL. If no match, then it could be flagged and allow the
user to choose to send anyways. This could be a preference option that you
could turn off if the company normally had users that weren't listed in the
GAL.

-Mike

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Brian Tillman - 16 Dec 2005 16:46 GMT

> 'Autoresolution' lookup is too slow in a large company.

We have 10,000 entries in our GAL and autoresolution lookup is quick.

> 'Autoresolution', which I think is enabled by default, has to have
> enough info to match against the entire company GAL, which would
> essentially be their entire userid for common names.

It should present you with a selection with only three characters.

> So it appears that exchange sometimes keeps
> additional LDAP info (or whatever that format is correctly called) in
> emails that come directly from the Exchange server, but not always -
> maybe it is lost somewhere in the mail routing.

The autocompletion cache can contain either Internet addresses or the X.500
address format. It depends soley on the address to which you send, however,
not on the addresses received.

> Basically, it looks to me that Exchange is a proprietary email system
> that interacts with and emulates normal Internet mail amazingly well
> under normal circumstances, but at times certain info is lost during
> the translation/interaction, and then calendar integration 'user
> experience' is sub-optimal. As a user and a test engineer at my
> company, I call it a bug...:)

Naturally it's a proprietary mail system. "Proprietary" simply means
someone owns it, not that it doesn't work or interchange with open source
products.

> So, I guess this is an 'enhancement request' for smarter handling of
> autocomplete. If your domain name appears in the email address and
> you are repying to and email via exchange (I always send my email via
> exchange), then Outlook should add the email address to the
> autocomplete cache AFTER looking up the LDAP info on the exchange
> server, since normally it should assume that the user is in the GAL.

I'll disagree, but you're entitled to your opinion. I think autocomplete
should do exactly what it does: use the address you enter and remember it.

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Brian Tillman

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mbrownah - 16 Dec 2005 19:28 GMT

> We have 10,000 entries in our GAL and autoresolution lookup is quick.

We have several multiples higher number of entries in our GAL than you do.

Hitting control-K and getting a response is quick, but with three letters on
most names I get 100+ responses to scroll through and choose from, while
autocomplete normally hits with 2 letters based an its ability to use a much
better algorithm (people I send mail to instead of everyone in my company),
I tried autoresolution for a bit, just now, but it was just too painful.

I am not sure how much influence you have with usability enhancements to
Outlook, but it seems that you are uninterested in my problem. I can't/won't
sacrifice the email performance that autocomplete gives me, so autoresolution
is not a solution. I will continue to limp along with autocomplete with
calendaring and continue to delete bad autocomplete entries when I need to
schedule a meeting.

> It should present you with a selection with only three characters.

three characters, and a cntrl-K, then scroll for a while...., select a name,
then type the beginning of the next name and repeat...

> > So it appears that exchange sometimes keeps
> > additional LDAP info (or whatever that format is correctly called) in
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> someone owns it, not that it doesn't work or interchange with open source
> products.

You missed my point. I greatly enjoy the features that Exchange gives me
because it isn't bound by old standards and has the ability to innovate.
Proprietary solutions enable the value add of great features. The value of
Outlook 2003 (over previous versions and other Windows email apps) is why I
finally moved to a Windows-based email after years of highly functionaly
X-windows based email. Outlook 2003 finally caught up in stability, security
and ease-of-use that I had with a x-windows email app for 9 years. It also
went much further by integrating meeting scheduling via Exchange. I have
nothing against proprietary solutions.

My point was that the implementation of this particular feature
'Autocomplete' needed a small tweak due to one difficulty of interoperability
with 'legacy' internet standards.

> > So, I guess this is an 'enhancement request' for smarter handling of
> > autocomplete. If your domain name appears in the email address and
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> I'll disagree, but you're entitled to your opinion. I think autocomplete
> should do exactly what it does: use the address you enter and remember it.

Ok, I see the value of simplicity. But in this case autocomplete adds an
address _that_I_didn't_enter_ via the reply function. So, how about a simple
optional filter checkbox to not add items to the autocomplete list during a
'Reply', operation, and/or when the domain name matches your domain name
(when sending via Exchange). This would help autocomplete to not remember
certain addresses when it is counterproductive to do so. This doesn't burden
the autocomplete operation with a GAL lookup, and enables the corporate user
to accurately schedule meetings even though he/she doesn't understand RFC822
headers versus X.500 headers and how Outlook uses them.

Personally after searching the forums for "free/busy", I think this problem
is reported a lot and likely misdiagnosed. I found only 2 solutions that
are regularly provided - delegate scheduling and extending the number of
months that a calendar is viewable. I expect these accurately resolve some
of the issues, but perhaps not all. Since most users don't know the
difference between address formats, they likely chalk it up to an 'unknown
Outlook behavior'.

-Mike

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Brian Tillman - 19 Dec 2005 16:08 GMT

> I am not sure how much influence you have with usability enhancements
> to Outlook,

Zero.

> but it seems that you are uninterested in my problem.

I'm interested, but have no other suggestion.

> I will continue to limp
> along with autocomplete with calendaring and continue to delete bad
> autocomplete entries when I need to schedule a meeting.

Theis tool may make handling the autocompletion cache handier:
http://www.ingressor.com/

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Brian Tillman

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