At a glance
What it is: A placeholder room for each building (e.g. Copenhagen HQ). Staff add the building as the location in Outlook, and the meeting waits in Planner until a coordinator assigns a real room.
Is this for you? Yes, if reception, facilities or a meeting services team decides which room a meeting gets, rather than the person booking.
| Without Blind Booking | With Blind Booking |
Booker | Picks a room without knowing what the meeting really needs, so rooms end up poorly used | Adds the building as the location and sends the invite; the right room is matched on size and equipment |
Coordinator | Unclear which bookings can be moved, and reassigning a room means disappointing someone who chose it | Sees every meeting awaiting a room in one list, assigns rooms by priority, and reassigns freely since no one was promised a specific room |
External guest | Gets a room that may change before they arrive | Gets the building address, which stays the same |
There are three steps to set this up and use it:
Configure the Exchange room mailbox to accept overlapping bookings.
Configure the Virtual Room in Planner admin.
Book and assign rooms.
Step 1 — Configure the Exchange room mailbox to accept overlapping bookings
Why this is needed
A normal Exchange room mailbox automatically declines any request that clashes with a meeting it has already accepted. That is how it stops a single room being double-booked.
For a Virtual Room that behaviour is wrong. Many people will book the same shared address at overlapping times, and you want every one of those requests to come through so a coordinator can hand them out to real rooms. So the Virtual Room mailbox must be told to accept conflicting requests. Planner takes care of the real room conflicts later, when the coordinator assigns rooms.
Note: This change applies only to the dedicated Virtual Room mailbox. Leave your real meeting-room mailboxes as they are; they should keep rejecting conflicts so they are never double-booked.
How to configure it
Tip - It makes sense to name the virtual room as the name/location of the building. i.e. [email protected]. This makes it obvious to the recipient where their attendance is required.
Create (or pick) a dedicated Exchange resource mailbox to act as the Virtual Room. Then, using Exchange Online PowerShell, allow it to accept conflicts:
# Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline
# Allow overlapping bookings on the Virtual Room mailbox
Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity "[email protected]" `
-AutomateProcessing AutoAccept `
-AllowConflicts $true
What each setting does:
Setting | Value | Why |
|
| The mailbox automatically accepts requests instead of leaving them pending. |
|
| The required setting. Lets the mailbox accept meetings that overlap others, with no automatic decline. |
Check the result:
Get-CalendarProcessing -Identity "[email protected]" | Format-List AutomateProcessing, AllowConflicts
AllowConflicts must show True.
Only AllowConflicts is required. You don’t need to change AllowRecurringMeetings; it already defaults to True, so recurring meetings are accepted as-is.
Step 2 — Configure the Virtual Room in Planner admin
Open Planner Web Admin.
Go to Administration → Integrations → Calendar Synchronization.
Find the Exchange Placeholder Rooms card.
In your tenant’s row:
Name - Enter a name for the Placeholder Room, i.e. Copenhagen HQ
Virtual Room Exchange Email — enter the mailbox address from Step 1 (for example [email protected]).
Active — tick the checkbox to enable it.
Click Update. You should see “Virtual Room updated successfully”.
Step 3 — Connect the Virtual Room as a Fixed Meeting Place
Open Planner Web Admin.
Go to Administration → Organization → Fixed delivery options and fixed meeting places.
Click New Address
In the New address dialog:
Name - Enter a name for the Placeholder Room, i.e. Copenhagen HQ
Delivery Options - select Meeting place only.
Connect to Exchange resource — Toggle the switch on and select the virtual room created in Step 2.
Click Save. You should see “Created”.
Rules and common errors
The Virtual Room address must be a valid email and must be unique; it can’t be the same as something Planner already knows. Update is rejected if the address:
is not a valid email, or is too long;
matches an existing physical room;
matches a service / calendar-sync account;
matches another tenant’s Virtual Room;
matches an existing user.
You’ll also be blocked if calendar synchronization isn’t connected for the tenant.
Step 4 — Booking and assigning rooms
For the person booking (in Outlook direct)
Create a meeting in Outlook.
Add the Virtual Room mailbox (
[email protected]) as the room, the same way you’d add any room.Send the invite. It is accepted even if it overlaps other bookings, and no physical room is chosen yet.
For the person booking (with the Outlook Add-in)
Create a meeting in Outlook.
Open the Meeting Addin.
Click on the > icon next to the location.
Choose the Meeting Place connected to the Virtual room mailbox.
Send the invite. It is accepted even if it overlaps other bookings, and no physical room is chosen yet.
For the coordinator (in Planner)
The meeting appears in Planner as a placeholder waiting for a room.
Open the Bookings page.
Filter by “Only awaiting assignment” to see the placeholders that still need a room.
Open the meeting and assign a physical room.
Save.
Once a room is assigned, the meeting becomes a normal booking and the organiser receives their confirmation. A Virtual Room placeholder must be given at least one real room before it can be saved.