Booking approvals for meeting rooms synced with Microsoft

When a meeting room is synced with Microsoft 365, deskbird can require booking requests to be approved before they are confirmed — but the decision is made by the room's own mailbox in Exchange, and deskbird follows it. This article explains how that works and how to set it up. For rooms created directly in deskbird, see Approvals for non-synced meeting rooms. For rooms synced with Google Workspace, see Booking approvals for meeting rooms synced with Google Workspace.

1. How approvals work on synced rooms
2. Before you start
3. Setting up approvals
4. Managing approval requests
5. Troubleshooting
6. FAQs

1. How approvals work on synced rooms

On a synced room, two systems have an opinion about the same booking: deskbird, and the room's mailbox in Exchange. To keep those in step, Outlook is the source of truth. Whatever the room mailbox has settled on is what deskbird shows, and approving inside deskbird is a way of answering on behalf of the room.

Both sides can decide, and either can change its mind:

💡 Note: Changes settle within roughly 10 to 60 seconds in either direction. deskbird deliberately waits for Exchange to stop changing its mind before acting on a decision.

⚠️ Warning: Rooms with approvals enabled currently cannot be booked via Kiosk Mode.

⚠️ Warning: This article describes room-calendar approvals, where the room's delegates accept or decline requests. Exchange also offers a separate mechanism called mailbox moderation, which holds the invitation before it ever reaches the room's calendar. Approvals cannot sync in both directions on a moderated mailbox — see step 3.4.

2. Before you start

You need all of the following:

• The Rooms plus package. Without it, approvals cannot be switched on.
• A synced room. The room in deskbird has to be linked to the Exchange room mailbox, and your Microsoft tenant has to be connected. If bookings made in deskbird already appear in Outlook and the other way round, this is already done.
• Help from an Exchange administrator. The room mailbox has to be configured in Microsoft, and those settings are not visible to deskbird. If you do not have Exchange administrator rights yourself, involve the colleague who does before you begin.
• Mailbox moderation switched off. The room mailbox must not have ModerationEnabled set to true. Moderation is a different mechanism from the delegate approvals described here, and approvals cannot sync both ways while it is active. See step 3.4 for how to check and switch it off.

⚠️ Warning: Approvals on a synced room only exist if the room's mailbox is configured to ask a delegate. Exchange's own default is to accept every booking instantly, which means requests will be approved the moment they are created. Enabling approvals in deskbird does not change the mailbox — this is the single most common reason approvals appear not to work.

💡 Note: This article covers rooms synced with Microsoft 365. Rooms synced with Google Workspace support approvals too, with a different setup and sync behaviour — see Booking approvals for meeting rooms synced with Google Workspace.

3. Setting up approvals

Do the Exchange side first, then the deskbird side, then verify with a real booking. Plan for a working session: Exchange settings take 5 to 30 minutes to take effect.

3.1 Step 1 — Configure the room mailbox in Exchange

This step is done by an Exchange administrator in your organization. Start by deciding who approves: pick one or more people who will receive the room's booking requests in Outlook. In Exchange these people are the room's delegates. Keep them identical to the approvers you add in deskbird later.

Then configure the room mailbox in the Exchange admin center:

1. Go to Resources > Rooms & equipment and select the room.
2. Under Manage delegates settings, choose the option to select delegates who can accept or decline booking requests, then add the people you picked.
   
3. Under Manage booking settings, raise the booking window or remove that limit (recommended). It defaults to 180 days, which is shorter than the end dates deskbird uses for recurring bookings. Set it to at least 400 days, or to its maximum of 1080 days if you do not want a practical limit.
   
4. Confirm that mailbox moderation is switched off for the room. It is not shown in the screens above and has to be checked separately — see step 3.4.
5. Save, and allow 5 to 30 minutes for the change to take effect.

💡 Note: The same configuration can be applied with Exchange Online PowerShell instead, which is useful for setting up several rooms at once. This is optional — the Exchange admin center is the recommended route.

Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity room@customer.com `
  -AutomateProcessing AutoAccept `
  -AllBookInPolicy $false `
  -AllRequestInPolicy $true `
  -ForwardRequestsToDelegates $true `
  -ResourceDelegates "approver@customer.com" `
  -BookingWindowInDays 400

To check what a room mailbox is currently set to:

Get-CalendarProcessing -Identity room@customer.com |
  fl AutomateProcessing,AllBookInPolicy,AllRequestInPolicy,ResourceDelegates,ForwardRequestsToDelegates,BookingWindowInDays

3.2 Step 2 — Enable approvals in deskbird

1. Open the room's settings under Admin > Floors & spaces.
2. Turn on approvals for the room. Once enabled, the room is marked as Requires approval.
3. Add approvers. These are the people who can approve requests in deskbird. We recommend mirroring the list of people set as approvers in Exchange.

💡 Note: There is nothing else to enable. As soon as a synced room has approvals turned on, deskbird follows the room mailbox's decisions automatically.

💡 Note: The approvers in deskbird and the delegates in Exchange are two separate lists. Technically they can differ, but keeping them identical avoids confusion about who is responsible for a decision.

3.3 Step 3 — Verify the setup

Test with a real booking made by somebody who is not an Exchange delegate for the room.

1. Check that booking creates a request. Book the room in deskbird. The booking should show as Pending in deskbird, the room should show the meeting as tentative in Outlook, and the delegate should receive a request email. If the booking approves itself within seconds, the mailbox is still set to accept everything automatically — go back to step 3.1.
2. Check that decisions flow both ways. Have the delegate accept in Outlook: within a minute, deskbird should show the booking as approved and labelled Decided in Outlook. On a second booking, approve in deskbird: within a minute, Outlook should show the room as accepted and busy. On a third, decline in Outlook: deskbird should reject and cancel it.
3. Check recurring bookings. Create a recurring booking that runs as far ahead as your users realistically need. If it disappears into the rejected list a few seconds after creation, the series extends past the room's booking window — raise it as described in step 3.1.

3.4 Mailbox moderation is not supported

Exchange has a second, unrelated approval mechanism called mailbox moderation. From the outside it looks similar — somebody has to say yes before a booking goes ahead — but it works in a completely different way, and approvals cannot sync between deskbird and Outlook while it is switched on.

With moderation enabled, Exchange holds the booking invitation in a hidden system mailbox before it ever reaches the room's calendar. That has four consequences:

• While the invitation is held, no calendar event exists. deskbird receives no signal at all, so the booking simply sits at Pending.
• Approve and Reject exist only as buttons in the moderator's email. Microsoft provides no API for that step, so deskbird can never approve or reject on the room's behalf.
• If the moderator rejects, the invitation is never delivered. Nothing reaches the calendar, so deskbird never learns that a decision was made and the booking stays Pending indefinitely.
• If the moderator approves, the invitation arrives late and deskbird picks it up — but decisions made in deskbird still never reach Outlook. Approvals work in one direction only.

To check whether a room mailbox is moderated:

Get-Mailbox room@customer.com | fl ModerationEnabled,ModeratedBy

To switch moderation off, so the delegate approvals described in this article can be used:

Set-Mailbox room@customer.com -ModerationEnabled $false

⚠️ Warning: Switching moderation off does not release bookings that are already held. Those invitations have to be approved or discarded by the moderator, or the bookings cancelled and made again.

3.5 Common setup mistakes

• Booking as a delegate. Exchange never asks people to approve their own requests, so a delegate's own bookings are accepted immediately and the approval step is skipped. This is built-in Exchange behaviour and cannot be switched off. It makes approvals look broken during testing, and it applies to real bookings too — test with an account that is not a delegate.
• Leaving mailbox moderation on. A moderated room mailbox cannot sync approvals in both directions, and rejected bookings stay Pending forever. Check it as described in step 3.4.
• Assuming a default. Rooms created in the Exchange admin center and rooms created in the Microsoft 365 admin center can start out with different settings. Always check the room rather than assuming.
• Testing too early. Exchange settings need 5 to 30 minutes to propagate. Testing immediately after saving usually shows the old behaviour.
• Leaving the booking window at 180 days. Recurring bookings that extend beyond it are declined by Exchange a few seconds after they are created.
• AutomateProcessing set to AutoUpdate. If the mailbox was previously configured with PowerShell, this value may be wrong. On a room mailbox, AutoUpdate means delegates never receive the requests, so nobody is ever asked. It has to be AutoAccept.

4. Managing approval requests

Admins manage requests under Requests > Bookings. This tab covers Meeting Rooms as well as Catering & Services requests, so all pending approvals can be reviewed in one place. Each request has its own detail page showing the room, date and time, organizer, invitees, and current status.

Approving or rejecting here also answers on behalf of the room in Outlook, which is why we recommend handling approvals in deskbird rather than in Outlook: you get the full booking context, and everyone sees the same status. Requests decided in Outlook instead appear in deskbird marked as Decided in Outlook.

💡 Note: An approval cannot be undone from deskbird. To free the room again, cancel the booking, or have a delegate decline it in Outlook.

5. Troubleshooting

6. FAQs