Outlook Plugin and licensing

The Outlook Plug- In will sign out a license in the following circumstances:

• whenever you use the Plugin to query rooms.
• each time an appointment (for which you are the organizer) is modified on the calendar. In this case, the Plugin connects to Web Central to verify whether the reservation matches the appointment. Be aware that calendar modifications can also include events not triggered by the organizing user’s actions, for example, when an invitee responds to the meeting request.

The license will stay signed out until it times out on the server. Sites typically set a ten minute timeout on the server that is designated for Archibus Reservation users

Note: You must have licenses for all users who need to receive notifications. This applies when using just the Outlook Plugin and also when using Exchange integration with the listener enabled. If a user cannot sign in due to a missing license, this user would not receive notifications, but the error would be logged.

When you install it, the Outlook Plugin is enabled by default. You can manually disable it using the Outlook COM Add-in Manager.

Exchange listener and licensing

The listener / room mailbox monitoring runs in a single thread and it does not check out any user license with a timeout. It only temporarily sets the user account in the context while processing the meeting update. No license is checked out.

This means that you need a valid user account and employee in Archibus, but booking a room or changing a reservation via Office 365 does not check out a license.

For processing meeting messages, the listener checks that the meeting organizer exists in the afm_users table; if the invitation requires changes in the database, the listener checks the user's security group restrictions against the constraints on the rooms and resources in the reservation. This check occurs without signing out a license.

When using room mailbox integration, if the meeting organizer does not exist in the Archibus database, the meeting request will be declined. This means meeting organizers are notified of the failure even if they do not have an Archibus license.

When not using room mailboxes, any incoming invitations from unknown email addresses are deleted without replying. Such failures are logged. Attendees never need an Archibus license; they can receive invitations without being defined as users in the Archibus database.