We use Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010/2007. We have 100s of resource mailboxes setup as conference rooms.

We have setup each resource mailbox conference room with direct booking settings by doing the following.

1.  We created a profile for each resource mailbox, logged on to Outlook 2007.

2. Open Options, Calendar Options, Resource Scheduling

3. Select Automatically accept meeting requests and process cancellationsand

4. Select Automatically decline conflicting meeting requests

5. Clikc [ok]

The resource works great. The users book the conference room and get a pop-up if their meeting is accepted or declined. The pop-up happens before the meeting is sent to everyone, so the user is happy to change the time or conference room if the time is not accepted by the conference room.

 The problem is that these direct booking settings do not stay set.  Every few weeks, we notice that the conference rooms start using the server side settings and ignore the settings we have setup in the Outlook profile.  We want the direct booking method and not the server side method because the server side settings do not warn the users if the conference room is not availalbe until AFTER the meeting is sent. Then the user has to cancel the meeting and reschedule it again.

Why do these resource mailboxes keep losing the Outlook settings? Is direct booking of resources supported in Exchange 2010? We have tried multiple things to force it to break and have not found a reason for the Outlook settings to start being ignored.