Meeting Maker to Exchange

From Provider Notes

For more information about ISC's Exchange Service, visit the Provider Web at [1].

There are a few ways to migrate most Meeting Maker data to an Exchange environment. The first section describes a process suitable for either Windows or Mac OS platforms, while the next section is for Mac OS only.

Important note: neither of these methods provide a complete migration of all calendar data. They do not import Meeting Maker's list of invitees and attendees for meetings and do not include live links to those invitees and attendees for changing a meeting date, time, resource, or location once within the Exchange environment. See the Pitfalls & Workarounds section below for more details.

Contents 1 Windows or Mac OS 1.1 Using a Palm OS Device (with USB connectivity) 2 Mac OS 2.1 Using AppleScript & iCal 2.0.x 3 Pitfalls With & Workarounds For These Migration Techniques 3.1 Pitfalls 3.2 Workarounds 3.2.1 Meetings, Rooms, Or Resources Owned by the User 3.2.2 Meetings for which the user is an Invitee Or Attendee 4 Exporting Less Than The Full Calendar

Windows or Mac OS

Using a Palm OS Device (with USB connectivity)

This is the preferred method of migration, even for Mac OS users - it is the most complete of the available client-side migrations

This method uses a Palm OS device with USB connectivity as the data intermediary. The method detailed here requires using Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, or Entourage 2004 as the Exchange client and assumes that you already have the correct version of the Palm HotSync manager installed:

1. Sync the Palm OS device with the Meeting Maker account (detailed instructions on configuring the Meeting Maker HotSync are available here).
2. If you have not already installed and run all available updates on Outlook or Entourage, do so now.
3. Configure Outlook or Entourage to connect to ISC's Exchange server as detailed here.
4. Mac OS Only: Run the Handheld Sync Installer located in /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Additional Tools/Handheld Sync Installer
5. Mac OS Only: You may get an error message indicating that conflicting conduits need to be disabled. This needs to happen in order for Entourage to synchronize with your Palm OS device, so disable and conflicting conduits identified.
6. Depending on the type of Palm device you have, there may be different conduits to synchronize with Outlook. Please see this Palm document for instructions on configuring your device to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007.
   • NOTE: Please be aware that you may need the original CD that came with your device to configure it to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook.
7. Once configured, synchronize your device with Outlook or Entourage, and your data should populate to the Exchange server.

Mac OS

Using AppleScript & iCal 2.0.x

This is a fairly workable solution for Mac OS users (and users with temporary access to a Mac) to get their Meeting Maker calendar data into POBOX Exchange. Here's the path:

1. Export the desired date range from the Meeting Maker 8.5.3 client as text.
2. Run the MM to iCal 0.8f AppleScript (freeware developed by an Apple engineer and available here) which translates the text export and moves it into iCal, creating and populating a calendar called "Meetingmaker" (drop the exported text file onto the script icon to execute).
3. From Microsoft Entourage 2004's Preferences menu, check the Synchronize Events and Tasks checkbox in the Sync Services section. This creates a calendar called "Entourage" in iCal.
4. Export the "Meetingmaker" calendar from iCal to the local hard drive and re-import it into the "Entourage" calendar in iCal.
5. Watch as Sync Services populates the Entourage 2004 calendar and, by extension, POBOX Exchange. This may take a while, depending on the size of the calendar.
6. Uncheck the Synchronize Events and Tasks checkbox in the Sync Services section of Entourage 2004.

This process worked as expected on a MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.4.9 - about 1650 events were moved in about 15 minutes.

Pitfalls With & Workarounds For These Migration Techniques

Pitfalls

With few exceptions this process does an excellent job of insuring that for every item scheduled within your Meeting Maker calendar a corresponding "event" is created in the Exchange calendar for the same date and time and with the same title. Unfortunately, the other invitees/attendees that were associated with meetings in Meeting Maker are not still associated with the corresponding events in Exchange, and so changes to these events in your calendar will not be seen by other invitees/attendees. See "workarounds" below for a suggested strategy for addressing this issue.

Items that do not come across cleanly from Meeting Maker to Exchange include:

• Meeting invitees and attendees
• Labels
  • Meeting Maker supports 15 customizable colored labels. Outlook 2003 only supports 10, but Outlook 2007 calls them categories and allows for an unlimited number of customized colors and labels.

Items that may not come across cleanly from Meeting Maker to Exchange include:

• Repeating banner events
  • These may be broken into individual, non-repeating events
• Repeating appointments/meetings that occur specific weeks of each month, such as the last Monday or the 3rd Tuesday. Note that appointments/meetings that occur weekly or every other week or the 1st of each month or the same date each year do come across successfully.

Workarounds

ISC suggests that users migrating calendar items from Meeting Maker to Exchange adopt the following process for events that occur after the calendar "cutover" date:

Meetings, Rooms, Or Resources Owned by the User

For meetings, rooms, and resources that a user owns all of the calendar data should be migrated from Meeting Maker to Exchange. Once within the Exchange environment, the user should then recreate the invitations for events they own that occur after the calendar "cutover" date, adding all invitees/attendees and reserving rooms or resources needed.

Meetings for which the user is an Invitee Or Attendee

After making a backup of their full calendar, invitees or attendees of meetings (i.e. meetings not created by themselves) that occur after the calendar "cutover" date should delete these meetings prior to migrating and then should wait to receive the re-proposals from the owners of these meetings.

For more information on general strategies, please see the document on working in a two calendar environment.

Exporting Less Than The Full Calendar

Individual events or selected small groups of events can be exported from Meeting Maker and imported into Outlook or Entourage. Obviously this is not a good solution for an initial migration, but can be useful if you are trying to keep small numbers of meetings in sync between the two calendars.

1. In Meeting Maker, select the view type you would like to work with (Daily, Weekly, Monthly)
2. Select an individual event, or control-click to select several events
3. Go to File-->Export as iCal event. Select the location where you would like to save the file, and name it appropriately.
4. In Outlook or Entourage, go to File-->Import and Export
5. Select Import from an iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file (.vcs)
6. Navigate to where you saved the iCal file and click OK

The exported Meeting Maker events should now populate into your Exchange calendar.