An Outlook user was confused by Outlook's Tracking feature:
The organizer of a meeting thought an invitee had not accepted the meeting because the Response column under Tracking showed None. The invitee said she accepted the meeting and choose not to send a response. It doesn't seem right to me that a person who had not accepted and a person who has accepted but chose not to send a response are both listed as None. Am I missing something here or is this a useless feature?
You're missing how it really works. There isn't a magic connection between the meeting invitation and Outlook - Outlook needs to be told that the invitation was accepted (or declined) and the way to tell Outlook is to send the response.
While you might think that using an Exchange server would create a hidden connection between the recipient's and organizer's calendar and update the meeting, it doesn't work that way. Outlook needs the response message returned before it can update the message. If the recipient uses Outlook (and the TNEF blob is intact), Outlook will process the response and update Tracking. If Outlook can't process the response, the organizer can update the tracking manually, assuming the recipient sent a response.
