Calendar Sharing in Exchange / Outlook for Multiple Users

As a part of my day job I  manage the Domain Controller and Exchange server for our 80+ person office. We’re spread out across two physical locations. A little while back a couple of users asked to be set up with the Calendar sharing function within Exchange / Outlook.  (FYI: We’re running Exchange 2003, and all of my clients are running Outlook 2003.) I accommodated their requests by going to their respective locations and setting up the shares.

As tends to happen, other users started asking for the same functionality once word got out within the office that the feature was useful. It became apparent that I was going to need a better solution than just dealing with each request individually.

I began scouring the Microsoft sites, searching for a way to remotely manage Calendar sharing for multiple users within Exchange. After quite a lot of searching I learned that there is no tool provided by Microsoft for centralized management of Calendar sharing within Exchange/Outlook.

(How this was missed by MS engineers, I’ll never know. This seems like such a basic task.)

However, there is a program out there –SetPerm.exe– that will allow you to manage calendar sharing in Exchange for multiple users. This tool can be run from any client PC on the domain, and only requires that the user account executing the code have some specific permissions. The author of the program is Kevin Snook. The website dedicated to the tool is apparently now gone, so I’m hosting the file here. Download Setperm.exe I’ve also created a step-by-step guide on how to use the program.

(I’m writing this post so that hopefully it’ll get indexed by Google and help out people that are searching for the same solution that I was…)

Step 1

First things first. Get the file: Download Setperm.exe and prepare for use.

1. SetPerm.exe requries that ACL.dll be registered in order to operate. It is included in this zip file.
2. Copy ACL.dll to the C:\windows\system32 folder. From a command prompt, execute regsvr32.exe acl.dll
3. The computer from which you are working must have Outlook installed on it.
4. Get the Collaboration Data Objects installer from Microsoft. (You’ll need this if you’re getting a ‘429′ error.)

Step 2

Assign your user account the appropriate permissions. In order for your account to have the authority to change the Calendar shares for multiple users within your domain, you’ll need to assign yourself some special permissions. *Being a domain administrator is not enough.*

Check out this KB292509 from Microsoft for how to create an account that will meet your needs.

Alternately, you can use ADModify to set the permissions on an existing account. Personally I think creating a new account specifically for this purpose might be best. But, if you want to use ADModify, here’s the skinny:

1. Run ADMODIFY and select the users whose Calendar’s you’ll want to share.
2. Click the Next button and then select the “Mailbox Rights” tab.
3. Here, you’ll want “Add User to Mailbox Rights”. Enter the Username of the account you will use to run SetPerm. The format is DOMAIN\username. The option you want is “Full Mailbox Rights”

Step 3

Launch Setperm.exe and set the permissions. You’ll want to launch this from a command prompt. The format will be: setperm /mailbox:username\exchangeserver

The username will be the name of the account that has rights to make the changes. You’ll be telling the program which accounts you want to change later…

The exchangeserver is simply the name of the exchange server you’re logging in to.

Step 4

Once the main screen for SetPerm.exe loads, you’ll notice that you can not only set permissions for Calendars, but also for all sorts of other folders, including contacts, and emails.

The box at the top, titled “Set Permissions on Mailboxes for…” will allow you to select the mailboxes that you would like to apply the permissions to.

The box titled “Selected Mailboxes” will allow you to select the users who will be assigned the permissions.

If you do not select any users in the top box, the software will apply the permissions to EVERYONE. So you’ll probably want to exercise some caution here.

Once you’ve made your selections, click “Set Permissions” and away you’ll go.

Verify that the permissions have been correctly set by attempting to “Open a Shared Calendar” from within Outlook for one of the user accounts for which you have set the permissions.

I’ve been using this tool on a regular basis to handle Calendar sharing as well as Contacts for several users and its worked like a charm. If you have any questions or need any further explanation of what I did to make it work for me, feel free to drop me a line.