Meeting Maker Features that cannot be migrated to Office 365
Custom reminder intervals
The reminder for when an event or meeting is about to start can be customized per event in
Meeting Maker but this information is not included in the data that Meeting Maker exports, and
so cannot be migrated into Office 365. Reminder intervals will be set to the default 15 minutes in
Office 365.
You will be able to set a new reminder time by editing the event in your Office 365
calendar after the migration.
Events marked as Flexible are not marked as Show as Free
In Meeting Maker, users have the option to set events or meetings as Flexible, which is the
equivalent of setting the show as option in Office 365 as Free. This information is not included in
the data that Meeting Maker exports, and so cannot be migrated into Office 365. Events with
Flexible ticked in the Options tab in Meeting Maker will have their Show as field display Busy in
Office 365.
You will be able to change the event to show as free by editing it in your Office 365
calendar after the migration.
Comments made to a meeting
Comments made to meetings in Meeting Maker by invitees are not exported and thus cannot be
migrated into Office 365. This does not affect any notes added to the event body by the
organizer.
You should email any comments you made to future meetings to the organiser after
the migration.
Carbon Copy (CC) and Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) attendees
Meeting Maker allows the organiser to CC (Carbon Copy) and BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) attendees.
Office 365 does not have this function – people are invited to attend or they are not. People CC
or BCC in Meeting Maker may have responded to a meeting request, but this information is not
included in the data that Meeting Maker exports, and so cannot be migrated into Office 365.
Attendees added to meetings as CC or BCC in Meeting Maker will appear as normal invitees and
will have their attendance status event set to tentative when the data is migrated to Office 365.
You should check Meeting Maker to see if you had accepted or declined these
meetings and accept or decline them in your Office 365 calendar after the migration.
Responses sent to individual instances of a recurrence
An invitee’s acceptance status for individual instances of recurring meetings is not included in
the data exported by Meeting Maker, only the acceptance status for the whole series.
If the invitee accepted the series in Meeting Maker even if they declined one or more individual
instances, the migration to Office 365 will show them having accepted all instances. If they
declined the whole series in Meeting Maker, Office 365 will show all instances as being declined.
If they ignore the series in Meeting Maker, Office 365 will show all instances as tentative.
Use case example: Jane was invited to a recurring monthly meeting from January through June of
2015. Jane has accepted this series of meetings but she cannot make it in January or March, so
she declined to attend these individual instances in Meeting Maker. All instances in the series will
still appear as accepted in Office 365 because the series was accepted as a whole in Meeting
Maker.
You should check Meeting Maker to see if you had declined any instances and do so
again in your Office 365 calendar after the migration.
Recurring events occurring “Every x number of days before month’s
end”
Meeting Maker allows monthly recurring events to be defined as happening x days before the end
of the month.
This type of occurrence does not exist in Office 365.
Our migration partners have developed a programmatic solution that detects and moves
instances to the correct date in each month, but this led to various other complications involving
acceptances, room bookings and what happens if any changes are subsequently made to the
meeting. Furthermore, although the dates of each instance in Office 365 would have been
correct, the description of the recurrence pattern in Office 365 would have said “Each month on
day ‘y’ of the month” (the accurate description simply doesn’t exist within Office 365).
On balance it has been decided that it would provide a better user experience to use the original
migration process, which is to determine the date in the month of the first occurrence of the
event, and use the same date for all subsequent occurrences.
If you are the organiser you should check Meeting Maker and change the dates of any
affected instances in your Office 365 calendar after the migration if necessary.
Moving weekend instances of recurring events that happen monthly
or annually
Meeting Maker gives four options for dealing with any instances of monthly and annual events
that fall on a weekend. They can be left as they are, moved to the Friday, moved to the Monday or
moved to the nearest weekday (Saturday instances moved to the previous Friday and Sunday
instances moved to the following Monday).
Office 365 does not offer this option.
Our migration partners have developed a programmatic solution that detects and moves weekend
instances, but this led to various other complications involving acceptances, room bookings and
what happens if any changes are subsequently made to the meeting. Furthermore, it could not
distinguish between the four weekend handling options, and assumed that all weekend instances
were to be moved to the closest week day, irrespective of what option had been selected in
Meeting Maker.
On balance it has been decided that it would provide a better user experience to leave the
occurrences where they fall, even if this is a weekend.
If you are the organiser you should check Meeting Maker and change the dates of any
affected instances in your Office 365 calendar after the migration if necessary.
Events recurring on more than one week in a month
Meeting Maker allows recurring events to be created on a particular day of the week in more than
one week in each month. For example, on the Friday of the first, third and last week in each
month.
Office 365 allows events to be created on a particular day of just one week (either first second
third fourth or last) of each month.
Events with multiple week recurrence patterns will be migrated to Office 365 as several
independent series, all created with the same title.
In the above example, Office 365 would have one meeting series on the Friday of the first week
in each month, one on the Friday of the third week in each month and one on the Friday of the
last week in each month. Each meeting series would have the same name, location, invitees etc.,
but otherwise would not be linked. Changes or acceptances to one series made in Office 365
after migration would not affect the other series.
Use case example: Jane has created a recurrent meeting in Meeting Maker set to happen every
second and third week of the month from December 16th 2014 through March 10th 2015. Since
December 16th 2014 falls on a Tuesday, a recurring series of meetings happening every Tuesday
of the third week of a month is created in Office 365, starting on December 16th. Another
recurring series of meetings happening every Tuesday of the second week of the month is
created in Office 365, starting on January 6th 2015.
If you need to make any updates to this meeting in your Office 365 calendar, be
aware that you will need to update each series.
Rooms and resources
When an event is migrated to Office 365, acceptance for rooms and resources is determined by
the configuration of the room or resource, and not by the acceptance status in Meeting Maker.
All resource and room bookings in Office 365 migrated events will be initially set to
‘Tentative’. Resource / room delegates will need to accept or decline invitations to
reflect the acceptance status in Meeting Maker.
Variable working patterns
Meeting Maker allows you to set different working patterns for each day of the week. Office 365
does not.
If you work different hours on different days you may wish to set up recurring events
to reflect this in your Office 365 calendar after the migration.
Private status
The Private option for events is not included in the data exported by Meeting Maker, and so
cannot be migrated.
Check events against those in the Meeting Maker and set as required in your Office
365 calendar after the migration. If this is a recurring event, you will need to edit the
series, not edit the occurrence. You may also wish to review and modify or delete
private events in Meeting Maker in advance of the migration.
Content that will not be migrated at this time
The following information in Meeting Maker will not be migrated to Office 365:
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Events and meetings prior to the migration date.
Banners.
Contacts (note that work continues to identify a mechanism to do this).
To-Do Lists.
Favourites.
Groups.
Preferences, eg Working Patterns, Labels, Filters.
Calendar Proxies (Users are advised to set this up themselves if they have not already done
so as part of the email migration to Office 365).
Resource Delegation (resource delegation will be set up in Office 365 on the basis of the
feedback from the resources audit, rather than on the basis of the delegation in Meeting
Maker).