To start out, we are going to create a user account and assign a mailbox to the account. To accomplish this task we will use the New-Mailbox cmdlet as follows:

New-Mailbox -Name Room13W -DisplayName “Conference Room 13 West” -UserPrincipalName Room13W@domain.com -Room

How it works

Running Set-Mailbox with the parameter Room or Equipment, a disable user account will be associated with the resource mailbox. A resource mailbox will not require a password to be specified. A resource mailbox, will have the RecipientType of UserMailbox, just like any mailbox-enable user account however, the RecipientTypeDetails will be set to RoomMailbox for room mailboxes and EquipmentMailbox for equipment mailboxes.. One way to get a list of all room mailbox is running this command:

Get-Mailbox -RecipientTypeDetails RoomMailbox

The processing of the meeting request to a resource mailbox can be set to automatically process calendaring requests. There is also the option to allow a delegate to accept or reject meetings requests on behalf of the resource mailbox.

To allow meeting requests to be processed automatically, use the Set-CalendarProcessing cmdlet  with the AutomateProcessing parameter:

Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity Room13W -AutomateProcessing AutoAccept

The AutoAccept value for AutomateProcessing, processes the meeting request on the resource mailbox and sends a auto reply if the scheduled time is available or not. The AutoProcessing accepts three values, None, AutoUpdate (default), and AutoAccept. The AutoUpdate and AutoAccept will automatically process the meeting request against the resource mailbox using the Calendar Assistant Process. Only the AutoAccept will also generate an acceptance email message if there are no conflicts.

In many cases there are times that you may want to provide additional information about the resource like, the size of the conference room before having the user send a meeting request to the resource mailbox.

On top of notifying the user before sending an email message, additional information can be added in the acceptance reply when AutoAccept  is set.

Get-Mailbox Room13w | Set-Mailbox -MailTip “Room 13 West has a capacity of 24 and a projector” | Set-CalendarProcessing -AddAdditionalResponse $True -AdditionalResponse ” Room 13 West has a capacity of 24 and a projector”[CC1]

Using Get-Mailbox  we are able to pipe the resource mailbox to Set-Mailbox to create a MailTip which will notify the sender  before sending the email message that the room has a capacity of 24 and also has a projector.

The Set-CalendarProcessing command is used to add additional content in the auto generated meeting reply no matter if the meeting was accepted or rejected.

There may be certain resource mailboxes that you do not want to automatically process meeting request for and would rather the manger of a resource be responsible to accept or reject a meeting request. In these scenarios, the AutomateProcessing needs to be set to None and resource delegates needs to be added to the resource mailbox using the ResourceDelegates parameter.

Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity Room13W -ResourceDelegates ccrandall@jennchris.com, rashad@jennchris.com -automateprocessing None

There’s more

Setting the value of AutomateProcessing to AutoAccept and enabling AddAdditionalResponse and AdditionalResponse can be a useful to inform the organizer of additional information about the resource mailbox. Using the  Set-ResourceConfig command, additional properties can be added to the resource schema to include custom resource priorities you want to add to your resource mailboxes can  Illustrated in the command below, the term WhiteboardandProjector is added to the resource schema.

Set-ResourceConfig -ResourcePropertySchema ‘Room/WhiteboardndProjector’

Once the new resource property have been added, the resource needs to be assigned to the resource mailbox by using the Set-Mailbox cmdlet.

Set-Mailbox Room13w -ResourceCustom WhiteboardandProjector

Now when users access Room13w from Outlook 2007/2010/2013 the user will be able to see that the conference room has a whiteboard and projector.

Converting Mailbox

There may be scenarios when you want to change a standard mailbox-enabled user account to a resource mailbox-enabled user account. As we talked about earlier the user account will  be disabled and the user type will also be changed once you run this command:

Get-Mailbox Room* | Set-Mailbox -Type Room