Question : Free Busy information not available to 2007 Outlook clients

We just installed our first Exchange 2007 mailbox server in our Exchange 2003 Organization. We also use the Microsoft ExchSync utility to replicate Free/Busy information with some of your business units that are not fully integrated into our Organization. I noticed that using an Outlook 2007 client on our Exchange 2007 server, I can no longer see the free busy info on these contact objects in our AD. Now I know 2007 does not rely on Public Folder data anymore for Free/Busy information and it uses the Availability service but there has to be some work around for this. We have over 700 contact objects in AD and their Free/Busy information goes away when the client is Outlook 2007. Is anyone else in this situation and if so, is there a work around besides converting all the Contact objects to Mailboxes?

Answer : Free Busy information not available to 2007 Outlook clients

I escalated to Microsoft Product Support. I need a solution.