How a booking on an Outlook or Google room is validated
A room synced from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is checked twice, in order — the provider first, Offision second. Which check the mailbox's auto-accept setting skips, and when you want it to.
A booking on a room synced from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace passes two checks, and they run in a fixed order.
- The provider checks first. Microsoft or Google applies the room mailbox’s own rules — which are simple, and in practice come down to whether the time is already taken. A meeting that clashes is refused here, and Offision is never told about it at all.
- Offision checks second. What passes the provider is handed to Offision, which applies the detailed policy on the resource — the booking window, the length limits, the quota, the purpose, approval.
Only the second check knows about anything you configured in Offision. Which matters, because the room mailbox can be set to answer before Offision is ever asked.
Auto-accept decides whether the second check runs
Set the room mailbox to accept invitations automatically and the provider answers straight away. The booking is confirmed on the spot and Offision does not apply its policy to it — the answer was already given.
Leave it off and the invitation waits instead. The booking sits at Pending System Validation — asked, and not yet answered — while Offision checks the policy, and Offision then answers on the room’s behalf. See What a booking status means.
Which one you want
| Your rooms | Auto-accept | Why |
|---|---|---|
| No booking policy on them | On | Booking from Outlook stays fast and smooth. There is no second check to skip |
| A booking policy you rely on | Off | Otherwise the policy is not applied to anything booked in Outlook, and only bookings made in Offision obey it |
Where a room needs approval and the mailbox accepts automatically, the organiser can also be told twice: an acceptance from the provider, and then a rejection from Offision if a rule or a reviewer says no. Telling those two emails apart is The rejection email came from Microsoft 365.
While a request waits for a reviewer
Where approval is on and Block timeslot before approval is on, the room accepts up front to hold the slot, before anybody has reviewed it. That acceptance is not a confirmation — the booking still reads Waiting review — but an organiser seeing a green Accepted header has no reason to think so.
Open Booking policyRoom replies in Outlook while waiting is the switch for that. Turn it off and the holding acceptance goes out silently: the slot is still held, and the organiser hears nothing until the reviewer approves.