Can we disable the 'Do not send a response' option for invitations?

Question

Our organization recently migrated to Outlook \Exchange 2010 from Lotus Notes\Domino R7.0.4. Users are getting frustrated with the many limitations, or hopefully our lack of understanding, related to calendaring in Outlook.
Current Issue:
Employees can select "Do Not Send a Response" to meeting invitations, but still accept the invitations for their personal calendars. This can be very frustrating to the invitee, who is attempting to orchestrate complex meetings, since they do not
get updates for invitees who have accepted the meeting using this option.
It is plausible that all invitees could accept a meeting, but choose not to send a response. The originator of the meeting may than cancel the meeting, thinking, "what's the point, no one accepted it". The originator or an Admin staff should have
the ability to disable the "Do not Send a Response" option or at least have the option to require a response if desired.
Additionally, when invitees do send a response, it would be nice to have an option not to see response in the form of an email, but simply as an update to the Calendar 'Attendees' status, to avoid inbox clutter.
Lotus Notes had these functions at least 10 years ago, so I'm sure we are just overlooking a setting or configuration. Any guidance Microsoft support or readers can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi,
We can disable that option via GPO.
Please refer to Disable user interface items and shortcut keys in Office 2010:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179143(v=office.14).aspx
After adding the Office 2010 GPO templates to the domain, in Group Policy Management go to:
User Configuration / Polices / Administrative Templates / Microsoft Outlook 2010 / Disable Items in User Interface / Custom
Add the following Policy ID's: 19987, 19995 and 19991.
This will disable the three menu items "Do Not Send a Response" below the buttons Accept, Tentative and Decline. When the mouse pointer points to the disabled ("grayed out") menu item a message is shown telling the user that this menu is disabled by the
administrator.
If you are not used to the email response, simply create a rule to move all these responses to a single folder and clean them up periodically:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook-help/manage-email-messages-by-using-rules-HA010355682.aspx
Regards.
Melon Chen
TechNet Community Support
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