Issue with runbook and the "&"

Question

I was working on a Service request/ Runbook for creating a new Shared mailbox in exchange online.  Everything worked fine when I submitted the request(s). Then I had another team member try it out on a real request and things did not work as expected. 
Once the request was submitted and approved I would see that the runbook would attempt to start.  But there were no log entries in the runbook designer and the console showed that the job had started but there were no instance of the runbook running.  
No errors, No Events, No indication of what was happening.
I scrapped the runbook and recreated it as well as all the service manger stuff that when along with. I tested it and all was well.  Had co-worker test and then FUBAR.
Long story short:
The service request prompts for mailbox name and purpose.  The runbook get the mailbox name as a parameter the purpose goes into the description of the SR.
So when I was testing it I was using testxxx as the mailbox name (works fine). When my co-worker tried the mailbox name was T&E ... and this would cause the problem.  As I mentioned above the runbook would appear to start then nothing.   
It all came down the "&" that was being passed to the runbook.  
Has anybody seen this behavior before ?  If so what is happening with the "&" that is causing the issue?

Answer 1

Hi,
The Problem with & is caused by SC Service Manager. Orchestrator is accepting the & as input for a parameter from WebServices.
Technet states in http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh519779.aspx "Special characters (such as the ampersand [&]) in the
User Name box are not supported."I know the problem is/was also for passwords containing a $, same seems to be fpr vaules passed by the connector ...
Regards,
Stefan
www.sc-orchestrator.eu ,
Blog sc-orchestrator.eu