Manage equipment mailboxes

In Exchange Server, an equipment mailbox is a resource mailbox assigned to a resource that's not location specific, such as a portable computer, projector, microphone, or a company car. After an administrator creates an equipment mailbox, users can easily reserve the piece of equipment by including the corresponding equipment mailbox in a meeting request. You can use the Exchange admin center (EAC) and the Exchange Management Shell to create an equipment mailbox or change equipment mailbox properties. For more information, see Recipients.

For information about another type of resource mailbox, a room mailbox, see Create and manage room mailboxes.

What do you need to know before you begin?

• Estimated time to complete: 2 to 5 minutes.

• To open the EAC, see Exchange admin center in Exchange Server. To open the Exchange Management Shell, see Open the Exchange Management Shell.

• You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Recipient Provisioning Permissions" section in the Recipients Permissions topic.

• For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts in the Exchange admin center.

Create an equipment mailbox

Use the EAC to create an equipment mailbox

1. In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Resources.

2. To create an equipment mailbox, click New > Equipment mailbox. To create a room mailbox, click New > Room mailbox.

3. Use the options on the page to specify the settings for the new resource mailbox.

   • * Equipment name: Use this box to type a name for the equipment mailbox. This is the name that's listed in the resource mailbox list in the EAC and in your organization's address book. This name is required and it can't exceed 64 characters.

   Tip

   Although there are other fields that describe the details of the room, for example, Capacity, consider summarizing the most important details in the equipment name using a consistent naming convention. Why? So users can easily see the details when they select the equipment from the address book in a meeting request.

   • * Email address: An equipment mailbox has an email address to receive booking requests. The email address consists of an alias on the left side of the @ symbol, which must be unique in the forest, and your domain name on the right. The email address is required.

4. When you're finished, click Save to create the equipment mailbox.

Once you've created your equipment mailbox, you can edit your equipment mailbox to update info about booking options, MailTips and delegates. Check out the Change equipment mailbox properties section below to change room mailbox properties.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to create an equipment mailbox

This example creates an equipment mailbox with the following configuration:

• The equipment mailbox resides on Mailbox Database 1.

• The equipment's name is MotorVehicle2 and the name will display in the GAL as Motor Vehicle 2.

• The email address is [email protected].

• The mailbox is in the Equipment organizational unit.

• The Equipment parameter specifies that this mailbox will be created as an equipment mailbox.

New-Mailbox -Database "Mailbox Database 1" -Name MotorVehicle2 -OrganizationalUnit Equipment -DisplayName "Motor Vehicle 2" -Equipment

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-Mailbox.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully created a user mailbox, do one of the following:

• In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Resources. The new user mailbox is displayed in the mailbox list. Under Mailbox Type, the type is Equipment.

• In the Exchange Management Shell, run the following command to display information about the new equipment mailbox.

  Get-Mailbox <Name> | Format-List Name,RecipientTypeDetails,PrimarySmtpAddress
  

Change equipment mailbox properties

After you create an equipment mailbox, you can make changes and set additional properties by using the EAC or the Exchange Management Shell.

Use the EAC to change equipment mailbox properties

1. In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Resources.

2. In the list of resource mailboxes, click the equipment mailbox that you want to change the properties for, and then click Edit .

3. On the equipment mailbox properties page, click one of the following sections to view or change properties.

   • General

   • Delegates

   • Booking Options

   • Contact Information

   • Email Address

   • MailTip

General

Use the General section to view or change basic information about the resource.

• * Equipment name: This name appears in the resource mailbox list in the EAC and in your organization's address book. It can't exceed 64 characters if you change it.

• * Email address: This read-only box displays the email address for the equipment mailbox. You can change it in the Email Address section.

• Capacity: Use this box to enter the maximum number of people who can use this resource, if applicable, For example, if the equipment mailbox corresponds to a compact car, you could enter 4.

Click More options to view or change these additional properties:

• Organizational unit: This read-only box displays the organizational unit (OU) that contains the account for the equipment mailbox. You have to use Active Directory Users and Computers to move the account to a different OU.

• Mailbox database: This read-only box displays the name of the mailbox database that hosts the equipment mailbox. Use the Migration page in the EAC to move the mailbox to a different database.

• * Alias Use this box to change the alias for the equipment mailbox.

• Hide from address lists: Select this check box to prevent equipment mailbox from appearing in the address book and other address lists that are defined in your Exchange organization. After you select this check box, users can still send booking messages to the equipment mailbox by using the email address.

• Department: Use this box to specify a department name that the resource is associated with. You can use this property to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups and address lists.

• Company: Use this box to specify a company that the resource is associated with. Like the Department property, you can use this property to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups and address lists.

• Address book policy: Use this option to specify an address book policy (ABP) for the resource. ABPs contain a global address list (GAL), an offline address book (OAB), a room list, and a set of address lists. To learn more, see Address book policies in Exchange Server.

  In the drop-down list, select the policy that you want associated with this mailbox.

• Custom attributes: This section displays the custom attributes defined for the equipment mailbox. To specify custom attribute values, click Edit . You can specify up to 15 custom attributes for the recipient.

Delegates

Use this section to view or change how the equipment mailbox handles reservation requests and to define who can accept or decline booking requests if it isn't done automatically.

• Booking requests: Select one of the following options to handle booking requests.

  • Accept or decline booking requests automatically: A valid meeting request automatically reserves the resource. If there's a scheduling conflict with an existing reservation, or if the booking request violates the scheduling limits of the resource, for example, the reservation duration is too long, the meeting request is automatically declined.

  • Select delegates who can accept or decline booking requests: Resource delegates are responsible for accepting or declining meeting requests that are sent to the equipment mailbox. If you assign more than one resource delegate, only one of them has to act on a specific meeting request.

• Delegates: If you selected the option requiring that booking requests be sent to delegates, the specified delegates are listed. Click Add or Remove to add or remove delegates from this list.

Booking Options

Use the Booking Options section to view or change the settings for the booking policy that defines when the resource can be scheduled, how long it can be reserved, and how far in advance it can be reserved.

• Allow repeating meetings: This setting allows or prevents repeating meetings for the resource. By default, this setting is enabled, so repeating meetings are allowed.

• Allow scheduling only during working hours: This setting accepts or declines meeting requests that aren't during the working hours defined for the resource. By default, this setting is disabled, so meeting requests are allowed outside the working hours.By default, working hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday. You can configure the working hours of the equipment mailbox in the Appearance section on the Calendar page.

• Always decline if the end date is beyond this limit: This setting controls the behavior of repeating meetings that extend beyond the date specified by the maximum booking lead time setting.

  • If you enable this setting, a repeating booking request is automatically declined if the bookings start on or before the date specified by the value in the Maximum booking lead time box, and they extend beyond the specified date. This is the default setting.

  • If you disable this setting, a repeating booking request is automatically accepted if the booking requests start on or before the date specified by the value in the Maximum booking lead time box, and they extend beyond the specified date. However, the number of bookings is reduced so bookings won't occur after the specified date.

• Maximum booking lead time (days): This setting specifies the maximum number of days in advance that the resource can be booked. Valid input is an integer between 0 and 1080. The default value is 180 days.

• Maximum duration (hours): This setting specifies the maximum duration that the resource can be reserved in a booking request. The default value is 24 hours.

  For repeating booking requests, the maximum booking duration applies to the length of each instance of the repeating booking request.

There is also a box on this page that you can use to write a message that will be sent to users who send meeting requests to reserve the resource.

Contact Information

Use the Contact Information section to view or change the contact information for the resource. The information on this page is displayed in the address book.

Email Address

Use the Email Address section to view or change the email addresses associated with the equipment mailbox. This includes the mailbox's primary SMTP address and any associated proxy addresses. The primary SMTP address (also known as the reply address) is displayed in bold text in the address list, with the uppercase SMTP value in the Type column.

• Add: Click Add to add a new email address for this mailbox. Select one of following address types:

  • SMTP: This is the default address type. Click this button and then type the new SMTP address in the * Email address box.

  • EUM: An Exchange Unified Messaging (EUM) address is used by the Exchange Unified Messaging service in Exchange 2016 to locate UM-enabled recipients in an Exchange organization. EUM addresses consist of the extension number and the UM dial plan for the UM-enabled user. Click this button and type the extension number in the Address/Extension box. Then click Browse and select a dial plan for the mailbox.(Note: Unified Messaging is not available in Exchange 2019.)

  • Custom address type: Click this button and type one of the supported non-SMTP email address types in the * Email address box.

    Notes:

    • With the exception of X.400 addresses, Exchange doesn't validate custom addresses for correct formatting. You must make sure that the custom address you specify complies with the format requirements for that address type.

    • When you add a new email address, you have the option to make it the primary SMTP address.

• Automatically update email addresses based on the email address policy applied to this recipient: Select this check box to have the recipient's email addresses automatically updated based on changes made to email address policies in your organization.

MailTip

Use the MailTip section to add a MailTip to alert users of potential issues before they send a booking request to the equipment mailbox. A MailTip is text that's displayed in the InfoBar when this recipient is added to the To, Cc, or Bcc lines of a new email message.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to change equipment mailbox properties

Use the following sets of cmdlets to view and change equipment mailbox properties: Get-Mailbox and Set-Mailbox cmdlets to view and change general properties and email addresses for equipment mailboxes. Use the Get-CalendarProcessing and Set-CalendarProcessing cmdlets to view and change delegates and booking options.

• Get-User and Set-User: Use these cmdlets to view and set general properties such as department and company names.

• Get-Mailbox and Set-Mailbox: Use these cmdlets to view and set mailbox properties, such as email addresses and the mailbox database.

• Get-CalendarProcessing and Set-CalendarProcessing: Use these cmdlets to view and set booking options and delegates.

For information about these cmdlets, see the following topics:

• Get-User

• Set-User

• Get-Mailbox

• Set-Mailbox

• Get-CalendarProcessing

• Set-CalendarProcessing

Here are some examples of using the Exchange Management Shell to change equipment mailbox properties.

This example changes the display name and primary SMTP address (called the default reply address) for the MotorPool 1 equipment mailbox. The previous reply address is kept as a proxy address.

Set-Mailbox "MotorPool 1" -DisplayName "Motor Pool 1 - Compact" -EmailAddresses SMTP:[email protected],smtp:[email protected]

This example configures equipment mailboxes to allow booking requests to be scheduled only during working hours.

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'EquipmentMailbox'" | Set-CalendarProcessing -ScheduleOnlyDuringWorkHours $true

This example uses the Get-User cmdlet to find all equipment mailboxes in the Audio Visual department, and then uses the Set-CalendarProcessing cmdlet to send booking requests to a delegate named Ann Beebe to accept or decline.

Get-User -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "(RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'EquipmentMailbox') -and (Department -eq 'Audio Visual')" | Set-CalendarProcessing -AllBookInPolicy $false -AllRequestInPolicy $true -ResourceDelegates "Ann Beebe"

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully changed properties for an equipment mailbox, do the following:

• In the EAC, select the mailbox and then click Edit to view the property or feature that you changed. Depending on the property that you changed, it might be displayed in the Details pane for the selected mailbox.

• In the Exchange Management Shell, use the Get-Mailbox cmdlet to verify the changes. One advantage of using the Exchange Management Shell is that you can view multiple properties for multiple mailboxes. In the example above where booking requests could be scheduled only during working hours, run the following command to verify the new value.

  Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'EquipmentMailbox'" | Get-CalendarProcessing | Format-List Identity,ScheduleOnlyDuringWorkHours