How to prevent recurring meeting room booking conflicts from using the same meeting room?

Dear Kamrul Ranu,

Good day!

Thank you for posting to the Microsoft Community. We are glad to assist.

Based on your post regarding "How to prevent recurring meeting room booking conflicts from using the same meeting room?". To understand the situation and be able to offer you relevant suggestions, we would need a little more information from you. Kindly help us in providing the following information.

• May I know your affected account type and subscription ? Is it Microsoft365 business or Microsoft Personal account (outlook.com/Hotmail.com/live.com) or any third party account ?
• Could you please provide us product and version details of your Outlook? About Office: What version of Office am I using? - Microsoft Support and What version of Outlook do I have? - Microsoft Support

In the meantime, please try the following steps:

1. Booking Settings in Exchange Admin:

• If you’re an admin or have access to Microsoft 365 Admin Center, navigate to Resources > Rooms & Equipment.
• Select the room, go to Booking Options, and check if “Allow conflicting meeting requests” is disabled.
• Make sure "Automatically decline conflicting meeting requests" is enabled. This setting helps the room calendar identify and reject overlapping bookings.

2. Allow Conflicts:

• Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell .
• Run the below command for one Room calendar for testing:

Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity "Room Name" -AllowConflicts $true -MaximumConflictInstances 30

REF: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/mailboxes/set-calendarprocessing?view=exchange-ps

3. SET Allow conflict:

• Sign in to the Office 365 portal https://outlook.office.com/ with an account that have full access permission on the resource mailbox
• Use the Open another mailbox feature to open the resource mailbox.
• Go to the calendar settings -> resource scheduling section -> enable Allow Conflicts -> enter your values for allow conflict
• Screenshot for your reference:

4. Use Outlook to Confirm Settings for Recurring Meetings:

• Open the recurring meeting in Outlook, then verify that it is set to use the correct room.
• You may need to adjust settings for each recurring series to prevent conflicts.

If you still need further help, then please kindly share with me the above feedback after you tried it, and I will do my best to do more research and testing to help you further, thank you.

Thank you in advance for your understanding. Your patience and cooperation will be greatly appreciated. I hope for all the best!

Hello Eleni,

Thank you for getting back to me swiftly.

The affected accout type is Microsoft 365 Business, it is a meeting room resource account which is affected, it has Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro and Microsoft Teams Shared Devices licences assigned to it.

We are running the latest version of Outlook on Windows 10, I cannot check on the device yet as I have to wait for the user to be back in the office and they are based in the US.

1. Booking Settings in Exchange Admin:

• I am admin and have access to Microsoft 365 Admin Center, I have navigated to Resources > Rooms & Equipment.
• Selected the room, gone to Booking Options, and checked that “Allow conflicting meeting requests” is disabled.
• Also, "Automatically decline conflicting meeting requests" is enabled.

2. Allow Conflicts:

• Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell .
• Run the below command for one Room calendar for testing:

Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity "Room Name" -AllowConflicts $true -MaximumConflictInstances 30

REF: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/mailboxes/set-calendarprocessing?view=exchange-ps

I will try and implement this fix to see if it works and get back to you.

SET Allow conflict:

• Sign in to the Office 365 portal https://outlook.office.com/ with an account that have full access permission on the resource mailbox
• Use the Open another mailbox feature to open the resource mailbox.
• Go to the calendar settings -> resource scheduling section -> enable Allow Conflicts -> enter your values for allow conflict
• Screenshot for your reference:

I will try this fix as well and get back to you, as I know a user that has full access to the resource account.

4. Use Outlook to Confirm Settings for Recurring Meetings:

• I have opened the recurring meeting in Outlook and verified that it is set to use the correct room, but the host of both of the meetings are external party that booked the same meeting room with the same time slot.
• You may need to adjust settings for each recurring series to prevent conflicts - Can you please guide me on this.