Hi there folks,
I recently performed an upgrade of our RnR database to the 8.5.1 template. As luck would have it, our naming convention for rooms had square brackets (eg “Board Room [12]/Company” ) and these characters are no longer supported.
I renamed all of the rooms, and in most cases existing bookings were ‘cleaned up’. I also ensured that all users’ preferred rooms were changed.
However, I’m having two problems that I’d love some help with.
- I’m finding a couple of things haven’t quite updated perfectly. A couple of users have found existing meetings in their calendars where the room name has not been updated. This may be because the chair did not update when prompted, but I’m not sure.
Is there a way to re-apply the name change to a particular mail database?
- Also, one user showed me today that sometimes he can get the old format when typing the first few characters of a room name into the field in a new meeting, despite the fact that he does not have the room in his preferred rooms list.
Where would this be coming from and how can I ensure that does not happen?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-Brendan
Subject: Response
For #1
When a room is renamed, it sends an “update my meetings” button to the chair for bookings via the Calendar. we do not send room rename information to the invitees. The users you are referring to , are they chairs of meetings which still shows a old room name? Also you can try reapplying the room name in the RR db for the particular room and the Chair will receive an email with an “update my meetings” button.
For #2
Looks like the names.nsf is still having the old room name for some reason and change probably didn’t get replicated. Are you seeing the new name as well the old name? If this is the case, then am sure the old name is probably in the NAB and not in the RR sytem. Simply delete it in the NAB after making sure the new name is infact up there and able to book.
Subject: More questions
Hi Madhu, thanks for the response.
For #1:
Yes, I remember receiving the update emails and it is quite possible that one or two users didn’t bother to do anything about them (staff regularly ignore emails we send them. :).
I’m thinking of re-applying the room name, but wouldn’t that just do a rename from the current name to the current name? I would think that I’d have to change it back to the old name and then rename it again - and I don’t want to do that because a lot of people have accepted the change.
Or does the system store all old names and look for all of them?
Is there some code floating around that would invoke the same actions with a given set of old and new names?
For #2
Actually, I think it is more sinister than that. The NAB doesn’t seem to have the old name anywhere, and it doesn’t appear in any lookups. However, occasionally the user was able to get the old name by typing the first three letters and hitting enter. I’m assuming that this might be similar to the type-ahead lookup in mail that checks through all addresses that you have used in the past?
Cheers,
Brendan
Subject: Could be
that the answer to your #2 is the Recent Contacts feature kicking in. The old name may be stored in the users PNAB. Simply have them remove their Recent Contacts contents and that should kick it loose.
Bruce
IBM
Subject: One down, one to go?
Thanks Bruce, it looks like that is the issue with the rooms popping up in the search. I just noticed that the old name is in my “Recent Contacts” list, so there’s a fair chance it is in other lists as well.
Now to find a way of cleaning up existing appointments. I think my best be will be to write something that searches everybody’s calendar for future meetings that they chair that have the old name. I must say that I’m a bit disappointed that AdminP couldn’t clean this up automatically as part of the rename.
Subject: AdminP improvements
for dealing with renames on C&S entries is something we are looking at for an upcoming release. Not sure if it will handle renaming all possible old names to the new name or not though.
For now you may want to create a button with some code on it to do the cleanup which you can send out and let your users click on.
Bruce
IBM
Subject: Thanks Bruce, much appreciated!