MeetingItem Object

The MeetingItem object represents a meeting in a folder.

At a Glance

The MeetingItem object is a subclass of the Message object and exposes all the same properties and methods. In the following tables of properties and methods, those that are common with the Message object are linked to their descriptions for the Message object. Only the properties and methods unique to the MeetingItem object are described in this section.

Properties

Methods

Remarks

A MeetingItem object is distinguished from a Message object by its Type property containing IPM.Schedule.Meeting.Request.

New MeetingItem objects are created automatically by CDO when appointments are made into meetings. You can cause an AppointmentItem object to become a meeting by setting its MeetingStatus property to CdoMeeting and sending it to one or more recipients. To do this, create a Recipients collection using the appointment's Recipients property, populate the collection using its Add method, and call the appointment's Send method. CDO instantiates a MeetingItem object at the time you call Send. You cannot create a MeetingItem object directly.

When you turn an appointment into a meeting, you are identified as the initiating user in the appointment's Organizer property. If your calendar folder is in Microsoft® Outlook™, you also appear as one of the meeting's recipients.

A meeting item can be obtained from its parent Messages collection using the collection’s Item property. To get to the Messages collection in a folder, use the Folder object’s Messages property. If you know a meeting’s unique identifier, you can obtain it directly from the Session object’s GetMessage method.

A MeetingItem object becomes a member of the Inbox Messages collection of each recipient to which the original AppointmentItem object was sent. You can treat it programmatically like the Message objects in the collection. In particular, you can apply a MessageFilter object to the collection and filter meeting items on any properties, including the inherited Message object properties.

A recipient wishing to modify appointment information can call the MeetingItem object's GetAssociatedAppointment method to obtain an AppointmentItem object associated with the meeting request. This AppointmentItem is not the same object as the original AppointmentItem belonging to the meeting's organizer. It has the same property settings when it is first instantiated, but the recipient can change them as desired to make it different from the original. This AppointmentItem object is saved in the recipient's active calendar folder when its Update method is called.

To accept a meeting request, a recipient calls the MeetingItem object's Respond method with the RespondType parameter set to CdoResponseAccepted. Respond returns another MeetingItem object with the MeetingType property set to CdoMeetingResponse, which the recipient can Send back to the organizer. Calling Respond with either CdoResponseAccepted or CdoResponseTentative causes an associated AppointmentItem object to be created and saved in the recipient's active calendar folder.

To decline the meeting request, a recipient calls Respond with RespondType set to CdoResponseDeclined. No AppointmentItem object is created in the recipient's calendar folder in this case. However, any existing AppointmentItem object is left undeleted in the folder. An associated AppointmentItem object could be in the folder because of a previous response with CdoResponseAccepted, or because the recipient called GetAssociatedAppointment on the meeting request.

Calendar folders are not supported in the public folders store provided with Microsoft® Exchange, and AppointmentItem and MeetingItem objects are stored as Message objects. An attempt to access a property or method specific to an appointment or meeting, such as Duration or GetAssociatedAppointment, returns an error. If you have declared a MeetingItem object with early binding, for example Dim objMeeting As MeetingItem, CDO returns CdoE_NO_SUPPORT in this case. With late binding, Microsoft® Visual Basic® returns an error indicating no support.

A MeetingItem object can be rendered into HTML hypertext using the CDO Rendering ObjectRenderer object. To specify this, set the object renderer's DataSource property to the MeetingItem object itself. The individual properties that can be rendered with the RenderProperty method are indicated in the MeetingItem and Message object property descriptions.

A MeetingItem object can also be rendered as the parent of a Recipients collection, using the ContainerRenderer object. The individual properties that can be rendered with the RenderProperty method are indicated in the MeetingItem and Message object property descriptions.