It happens wherever there are conference rooms. You’re sitting there watching the Powerpoint, scribbling on your notepad, trying hard to look interested, when suddenly someone swings the door open, startling everyone awake. They say whoa, hello, or just oops and quietly close the door. Maybe it happens twice. People start congregating in the hallway, whispering until finally the manager says, “Joe, can you go out there and find out what’s going on?” Joe sticks his head out the door and you half hear the conversation.

[Unintelligible mumbling.]

“Well, what time is your meeting over?”

[Unintelligible mumbling.]

“…have the room at … o’clock…”

It turns out that the room has been double booked. But, you object, that’s why we have the Rooms set up in Exchange!

It also turns out that double-booking rooms in Exchange is a common occurrence even if you have “Allow conflicting meeting requests” disabled. The most likely culprit is manual intervention by one of the room delegates.

Room delegates are able to schedule meetings in a room even if there is already a meeting scheduled for that time. They won’t get a “declined” notice back from the server. If everything is working smoothly, they will only see this small informational alert in the new meeting or new appointment window”Conflicts with another appointment.”

As far as I can tell, the only solution is for the room delegates to be careful, especially with recurring events.