Exchange: Accept and Cancel Meeting Request with WebDav

Mladen Prajdić — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:27:57 GMT

In a lengthy article about WebDAV i've written a long while ago I've explained how and what WebDAV is and what are the problems you might encounter.

Suggesting by the comments (over 200) it's a pretty popular topic but there's no help on the net for anything more complex than simple operations because

MSDN suggest that WebDAV is totally unsupported. So anything you do with it you're on your own.

Having said that let's see how to do those 2 things from the title:

Cancel a Meeting Request

1. get the Meeting Request URI from the inbox

2. get the associated appointment for that Meeting Request

explained how in previous article under

Development problems and bugs - 3. Getting associated appointment from a meeting request reply

3. modify (PROPPATCH) it with the setting the appointments stampdate to now

4. modify (PROPPATCH) the appointment like this (change the dtstamp property to now):

<?xml version=\"1.0\" ?>
<a:propertyupdate 
        xmlns:a=\"DAV:\" 
        xmlns:n0=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/\" 
        xmlns:n1=\"urn:schemas:calendar:\">
    <a:set>
        <a:prop>
            <n0:outlookmessageclass>IPM.Schedule.Meeting.Canceled</n0:outlookmessageclass>
            <a:contentclass>urn:content-classes:calendarmessage</a:contentclass>
            <n1:dtstamp>2007-08-22T15:36:52.696Z</n1:dtstamp>
            <n1:method>CANCEL</n1:method>
        </a:prop>
    </a:set>
</a:propertyupdate>

5. move the appointment to ##DavMailSubmissionURI##

Accept a Meeting Request

1. get the meeting request URI from the inbox

2. get it's from and to properties (FROM property will be set to TO, and TO property will be set to FROM in the reply)

3. copy the meeting request to the Calendar folder (now you have 2 identical meeting requests - one in inbox and one in calendar)

4. move the meeting request from inbox to drafts folder

5. modify (PROPPATCH) the meeting request in the Calendar folder like this (change the dtstamp property to now):

<?xml version=\"1.0\" ?>
<a:propertyupdate 
        xmlns:a=\"DAV:\" 
        xmlns:n0=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/\" 
        xmlns:n1=\"urn:schemas:calendar:\" 
        xmlns:n2=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/\" >
    <a:set>
        <a:prop>
            <n0:outlookmessageclass>IPM.Appointment</n0:outlookmessageclass>
            <a:contentclass>urn:content-classes:appointment</a:contentclass>
            <n1:dtstamp>2007-08-22T16:14:30.492Z</n1:dtstamp>
            <n1:meetingstatus>CONFIRMED</n1:meetingstatus>
            <n1:method>REQUEST</n1:method>
            <n2:responsestatus>3</n2:responsestatus>
        </a:prop>
    </a:set>
</a:propertyupdate>

6. modify (PROPPATCH) the meeting request in the Drafts folder like this (change the dtstamp property to now):

<?xml version=\"1.0\" ?>
<a:propertyupdate 
        xmlns:a=\"DAV:\" 
        xmlns:n0=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/\" 
        xmlns:n1=\"urn:schemas:calendar:\" 
        xmlns:n2=\"urn:schemas:httpmail:\" 
        xmlns:n3=\"urn:schemas:mailheader:\" 
        xmlns:n4=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/\" >
    <a:set>
        <a:prop>
            <n0:outlookmessageclass>IPM.Schedule.Meeting.Resp.Pos</n0:outlookmessageclass>
            <a:contentclass>urn:content-classes:calendarmessage</a:contentclass>
            <n1:dtstamp>2007-08-22T16:18:07.532Z</n1:dtstamp>
            <n1:meetingstatus>CONFIRMED</n1:meetingstatus>
            <n1:method>REPLY</n1:method>
            <n2:subject>Accepted: yourOriginalSubjectHere</n2:subject>
            <n3:to>to_Email@this_is_the_from_property_value_of_the_received_meeting_request</n3:to>
            <n4:responsestatus>3</n4:responsestatus>
        </a:prop>
    </a:set>
</a:propertyupdate>

7. move the item from Drafts to ##DavMailSubmissionURI##

That should be it. Enjoy!

PFDavAdmin Tool - Exchange 2000 and 2003 DAV-based Administration Tool

Mladen Prajdic — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 17:50:13 GMT

Lately i've been doing quite an amount of work with Exchange and WebDAV access to it.

Documentation on WebDAV and Exchange server is ok for simple tasks but if you want anything concrete done examples are impossible to come by.

That's why I posted a lengthy article about WebDAV and my experience with it.

Two tools are indespensible when doing any kind of Exchange access development:

Outlook Spy and Exchange Explorer that comes with the Exchange SDK.

But neither of those help in any way with forming correct WebDAV XML requests. OK, they give you the name and namespace of the properites but that's it.

Well PFDavAdmin Tool to the rescue.

It is an Exchange administration tool that works by using WebDAV requests. So everything it can do (read the word document that comes with it)

can be seen by capturng the request with a network protocol analyzer and see how it's formed. I use WireShark and it's great.

Anyone who does any kind of WebDAV development will appreciate this tool.

Of course it's also great for doing real world Exchange administration :)

For doing that you have to meet these conditions:

- The computer running the tool must have .NET Framework 1.1 installed and running Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows 2003.

I've read that PFDavAdmin is not supported but since it appears on the Microsofts dowload page i don't know if that's still true. Probably not.