Declined Meetings Show Up in OWA and Monarch

Preserve Declined Meetings in Calendars to Retain Meeting Notices

Announced in message center notification MC684218 (26 October 2023, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 154056), the ability to enable the preservation of details for declined meetings is now available in the OWA and Outlook Monarch (the “New Outlook”) clients (Figure 1).

The setting is also controllable through the Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration cmdlet. This command enables saving of declined events for a mailbox:

Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration -Identity Kim.Akers -PreserveDeclinedMeetings:$true

There’s no organization-wide control to preserve declined meetings. Because it’s an individual choice to keep declined meetings in a calendar, the setting must be enabled for individual mailboxes. However, to enable the setting for all user mailboxes, it’s easy to do this with PowerShell:

[array]$Mbx = Get-ExoMailbox -RecipientTypeDetails UserMailbox -ResultSize Unlimited
ForEach ($M in $Mbx) {
   Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration -Identity $M.UserPrincipalName -PreserveDeclinedMeetings:$true
}

Enabling any calendar setting for a mailbox isn’t fast but it should be a one-time operation. On the other hand, the setting must be enabled for new mailboxes as they are created.

Why It’s a Good Idea to Preserve Declined Meetings

Ever since the first version of Outlook appeared in 1997, when people decline an incoming meeting, Outlook removes all details of the meeting to keep the calendar clear and not block time that might be needed for another event. This scheme works well but it means that once someone declines an inbound meeting, they have no further knowledge about the meeting even if they have no intention of attending the event. They can forward the meeting invitation to someone else (if meeting settings permit forwarding), review any attachments included with the invitation or access content created during a meeting such as the meeting chat or meeting recap (if it’s a Teams meeting). Alternatively, they can decide to attend the meeting if their schedule clears up.

Preserving declined meetings means that Outlook enters details of an event in an invitee’s calendar but does not block the event time in the user’s free/busy data. This means that the Outlook scheduling assistant regards the slot as available and can be used for other meetings.

As a Microsoft MVP, I receive many meetings organized by Microsoft engineering group to discuss new product details. Some of these events are interesting, but only if I can find time to attend. Having the calendar retain the event details allows me to go back to attend an event when I can.

No Declined Meetings for Outlook Desktop

Outlook desktop doesn’t obey the settings used by OWA and Monarch. Its settings are often implemented in values held in the system registry. Even if its implementation has caused some difficulties, roaming signatures are a good example of how Microsoft is moving Outlook desktop from its PC-centric heritage to cloud settings.

With this in mind, it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that meetings declined using Outlook desktop are not preserved. Meetings declined using the Outlook for Mac and Outlook mobile clients are preserved, even if their UI doesn’t include the ability to control the setting.

Declined meetings kept in the calendar are the same as any other calendar events (Figure 2). The sole difference is that the event doesn’t occupy a slot in the user’s free/busy data. Because the meetings are calendar events, they show up as normal in all clients and any other application that uses calendar data.

If the user changes their response and accepts the meeting, Outlook updates the calendar event and reserves the time in the user’s free/busy data.

A Change in Habit

Microsoft doesn’t make changes like this without some form of feedback that points out why a new approach is necessary. I don’t know if the input came from customers or from inside Microsoft, but I suspect that the driving factor is the increasing amount of information shared with meeting invitations and added to events during Teams calls. Being able to go direct to the event makes it a lot easier for meeting participants to access the information, even if they choose to decline the invitation to attend.

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