With the release of the newest version of SmarterMail, we changed how conference rooms are handled. Now, conference rooms are give a hidden (meaning it won't affect licensing) email address that matches the name of the conference room. For example, if you create a conference room called "East Conference", SmarterMail creates an "east_conference" address that's used when scheduling that room.
In many cases, this won't cause any problems. However, what that means is that the names created for these conference rooms cannot conflict with any existing users, user aliases, or mailing lists. While it's unlikely any of these types of users will conflict with the name of a conference room, it can happen, especially when upgrading from an older version of SmarterMail to the latest.
Conflict Indicators
You'll know there's a conflict a few different ways.
One way is via a notification window. If a conflict arises, you'll see a notification like this:
Another way is in Domain Settings > Sharing > Resources. The conference room card(s) will look like this:
When you click on a conference room with a conflict, you'll see something like this:
Finally, in the calendar itself, the conference room will be missing from the folder list if there's a conflict. In addition, any existing appointments that used that conference room will no longer show on the Attendees / Resources area of the appointment.
Resolving Conflicts
In order to resolve any conflicts, the system administrator will need to become involved. The fix entails stopping the mail service and editing JSON files. These are the steps needed:
- Go to Domain Settings > Sharing and get a list of the conflicted email addresses / names.
- Stop the SmarterMail service.
- Take a backup of the domain's folders.json file.
- Open the file in a text editor.
- Find the conference room entry that needs editing. For example, our conflicted name is "alias"
- Change the display_name of that room to a new name that does NOT conflict with any existing users, aliases, or mailing lists for the domain.
- Remove the email_alias name for the room. (I.e., "alias")
- Repeat steps 5 - 8 for all conflicts.
- Next, find and modify "calendar_folder_version", changing it from 5 to 4. DO NOT change it to any number lower than 4 and DO NOT remove the line. Changing to a number lower than 4 or removing the line will delete any existing domain contacts, notes, and task folders.
- Save the edited folders.json file.
- Restart the SmarterMail service.
Once this is done, the conflicts will be resolved and any missing/hidden appointments will now be displayed.