Cisco TelePresence Manager 1.7 with EWS 2007, Timezone and Meeting Subject problems

[mguguvcevski]

After successfully configuring the CTMan 1.7 with MS EWS CAS 2007 I am stumbling upon two very subtle and annoying errors/bugs between these two servers.

1. The timezone in the confirmation email sent by CTS Manager to the meeting participants returns

501225

Summary

Unresolved time zone mapping

The problem lies in the information pushed to CTMan by EWS. Depending on the text in the timezone tags, CTMan maps the timezone accordingly or it does not. It is really incredibly annoying.

For example:

<t:TimeZone>Eastern Standard Time</t:TimeZone>  this gets mapped OK

<t:TimeZone>(UTC+02:00) Harare, Pretoria</t:TimeZone> this does not map OK

<t:TimeZone>(GMT+02:00) Harare, Pretoria</t:TimeZone> this does not map OK

<t:TimeZone>South Africa Standard Time</t:TimeZone> this gets mapped OK

Updating the timezonemap.xml file in TelePresence Manager would be nice move by Cisco to avoid these awful bugs.

2. The meeting Subject is always the same as the meeting organiser.

In other words, the Subject gets overwritten by the meeting organizer string for every scheduled meeting. I do not know how much of this is CTMan fault, because the XML received has the Subject in the tags already all wrong.

Anyone dealth with these issues in the community ?

Any thoughts ?

[Paul Anholt · Accepted solution]

Hello,

For issue #1. I verified that the timezone mapping file has the timezones you specified in version 1.8. Starting in 1.7.2 the timezone (GMT+02:00) Harare, Pretoria is present from the fix for CSCtj95619, but the timezone (UTC+02:00) Harare, Pretoria is missing.

For issue #2 This is due to a setting on the exchange end. The mailboxes for the room have the properties DeleteSubject and AddOrganizerToSubject set to true.  Follow step #7 in this guide to correct the issue:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/telepresence/cts_manager/1_7/admin/ctm_instalMS.html#wp1097531

 Step 7 Set the "DeleteSubject" and "AddOrganizerToSubject" properties in room mailbox calendar to False. This sets the parameters for the meeting to be displayed on the IP Phone. 
For Exchange 2007: a. Set-MailboxCalendarSettings -Identity TelepresenceRoom9 -DeleteSubject $false b. Set-MailboxCalendarSettings -Identity TelepresenceRoom9 -AddOrganizerToSubject $false 

Thanks,

Paul

[mguguvcevski]

Hello Paul,

Thank you very much for your input.

Upgrading to 1.7.5 helped with the timezone issues.

I also checked the actual timezonemap.xml files in

/usr/local/ctis/config/timezonemap.xml main and partB and here is what I found:

In 1.7.0

In 1.7.5

Due to the fact the UTC mapping is missing in 1.7.0 I had the problem described.

For the second issues, it was a problem on the Exchange side. After applying your hints, everything works fine.

Five stars for your input.

Best regards,

MG.