Auto send CRM Appointments

Question

I have a workflow that creates appointments in CRM 2011.  The appointment is created setting a user as the organizer.
The issue is that the appointment syncs to the Outlook client, and the user needs to open it on their Outlook calendar and click send before it is distributed.
If I use the email router, the appointment is not emailed out either.  I have also tried manually sending an appointment using the email router but it doesn't get picked up by the email router.  I'm starting to think that sending appointments is
outside the scope of the email router for CRM 2011.
I have looked in the database at the ActivityPointerBase and see that once the organizer opens the appointment and clicks send, the ApptGlobalObjectId and ApptOutlookOwnerApptId columns are updated.  But I'm not seeing anything else on that table updating. 
My hope was to find something similar to a pending email flag.
From what little I have seen on a similar scenario where Appointments created in CRM are automatically sent, it took a plugin sold by Power Objects but I think it was for CRM 4.  I also don't see anything about the 2 columns ApptGlobalObjectId and ApptOutlookOwnerApptId
that I see getting updated when Outlook sends the appointment after the organizer clicks send in Outlook.
So I'm thinking that the best option is a plugin.  Does anyone know what table(s) and column(s) is required to be updated by a plugin in order to automatically send appointments created by CRM through the organizers Outlook client without having the
organizer open the appointment in Outlook and clicking send?
Jason Peterson

Answer 1

This is CRM 2011, so it doesn't have server side sync.  But even with server side sync, I'm not sure it would help.  The workflow that creates the appointment is synced to the organizer's Outlook through the Outlook client synchronization. 
It isn't received by the organizer as a mailed or sent appointment.  In the Outlook calendar, the appointment looks as if the user created it and then only saved it without sending it out.
There is obviously some flag related to the activity base tables that indicate if the appointment should be mailed out or held waiting for the user to open it and click the send button.
For example, you can see this in CRM.  There are 2 different ways to create emails through workflow.  1. You can choose create email that is then automatically send, or 2. you can choose to create a record, then choose record type email. 
This creates the email activity, but holds it in a pending state until the user opens the activity in CRM and clicks the send button.
I want something similar to #1 above.  Here is a blog article from Power Objects that demonstrates what I'm looking for.
Jason Peterson