Free/Busy Data Demystified

To track users’ availability for meetings, Exchange Server and its clients use free/busy data—a mechanism that often causes angst for Exchange administrators. Few administrators understand how clients publish free/busy data as users update their calendars, where Exchange stores the data, and what the data actually represents. Although TechNet and the Exchange development team blog (at http://msexchangeteam.com/default.aspx) provide good information about free/busy data, this article aims to give you comprehensive coverage of the topic, bringing different sources of information together to illuminate one of the more esoteric parts of Exchange.

Let’s start demystifying free/busy data by looking at where Exchange stores it and how clients publish it. With that foundation, you can explore what the free/busy data represents, how Exchange and Outlook use it, and how you can use the Exchange Information Store Viewer to gain additional insight into the data. We’ll finish up with a look at some changes coming in Exchange Server 2007 that promise to give users the most current free/busy data available as they manage their calendars. . . .