Inviting users, resources, and conference rooms to meetings

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Jan 10, 2019 by Bill Anderson
12 min read

Up to date information on the availability of people and resources is a necessary part of planning the workflows for FASS Supported Units.  In order to maintain that data accurately and effectively, it is imperative that the following rules and guidelines are followed.  All FASS Supported Units utilize the University’s Exchange system for e-mail, calendaring and contacts. This system is the backbone of our communications and resources scheduling.  Users not in a FASS Supported Unit, need to follow these instructions for proper scheduling of personnel and resources. If a user is outside of a FASS Supported Unit, they will need an Exchange user in their department to schedule any Conference Rooms or other resources connected to Exchange.

A meeting is an appointment that includes other people and can include resources such as conference rooms and equipment (golf carts, cars, etc.). Responses to your meeting requests appear in your Inbox. It is very important that you place any appointments, meetings, vacations, or other times that you are not available in your Calendar. In order for the Free/Busy data to work correctly, it needs to know when you are free and busy. If an event is personal or private, please make sure to mark it as Private, using the Private tag. This can be found in the Appointments tab, in the Tags section:  

  

Creating a New Meeting

  1. From the Home tab, in the New group, click the New Items button drop-down and choose Meeting.
    1.  
  2. Keyboard shortcut - To create a new meeting request; press CTRL+SHIFT+Q. 
  3. In the Subject box, type a description.
  4. In the Start time and End time lists, click the start and end time for the meeting. If you select the All day event check box, the event shows as a full 24-hour event, lasting from midnight to midnight.
  5. To set up a recurring meeting, on the Meeting tab, in the Options group, click Recurrence. Choose the options for the recurrence pattern you want, and then click OK. When you add a recurrence pattern to a meeting request, the Meeting tab changes to Recurring Meeting.
  6. To change the advance time of the meeting reminder, on the Meeting tab, in the Options group, click Reminder, and then click the time you want. Click None to turn off the reminder. The organizer can also set the reminder time for recipients by changing the reminder time on the meeting invitation. If the organizer does not change the default reminder time on the invitation, the recipients will each use their own default reminders.
  7. In the meeting request body, type any information that you want to share with the recipients. You can also attach files.
  8. On the Meeting tab, in the Show group, click Scheduling Assistant. The Scheduling Assistant helps you find the best time for your meeting.
  9. Click the Add Attendees button. This will bring up a dialog box where you can search for people in the Global Address List (uoregon.edu Exchange Users) or from your personal Contacts folder.
    2. Find the user(s) you wish to invite and click the Required or Optional buttons, depending on whether or not the user is required to be there or is optional.
    3. Click OK when finished.
  10. On the right side, click the drop-down list under Show a room list and choose an appropriate Room List.
  11. This will add the conference rooms to the Scheduling Assistant window.

  12. Notice that the rooms are not checked. Only check the box of the conference room you want to book after you have looked at the free/busy data and determined the best room and time. The colors in the grid tell you the person or room’s availability.
    2. You will most likely see the No Information mark for users who are outside of the uoregon.edu domain. 
  13. The Suggested times box will show you times that work for all parties.
  14. Click Send.
  15. You will receive an e-mail confirmation that your conference room has been reserved.
  16. The meeting will be placed in your calendar as well as the calendar of the conference room you reserved.
  17. You must invite the room you plan on utilizing. If not, the free/busy data will be incorrect and you might schedule a room that is already occupied or someone may schedule a meeting at the same time.
  18. It is important to put any times you are unavailable in your calendar. This affects your free/busy data and could cause someone to schedule you in a meeting for which you are not able to attend. 

Changing or Cancelling meetings

It is important to communicate any changes to the attendees. This ensures their calendars reflect the current meeting information. 

  1. To cancel a meeting, open the meeting from your calendar and press the Cancel Meeting button.  This will send a meeting cancellation notice to all attendees and remove from their calendars.
  2. To update a meeting, make your changes (i.e. Date, Time, Location, Additional Attendees, etc.) and then press the Send Updates button.  This will send the updated changes to all attendees. 
  3. If you are adding attendees, you will get the following message:
    2. This will allow you to send updates to everyone or just the people you added. 

Conference Room Availability Room Agent Panels

For walk up traffic, these Room Agent panels will make it easier to find the location of a particular meeting or conference room, determine its availability and book the room for an ad-hoc meeting if necessary. With Room Agent, the touchpanels operate as a client of Microsoft Exchange, so any meetings for that conference room will show when you book the room through the process listed above. Booking a room from the touchpanel is as easy as tapping the Reserve button for the time you want. The intuitive interface clearly displays room availability and a timeline view of the room’s occupancy status for the rest of the day. In addition, bright red and green LEDs within the bezel make it easy to see whether a room is available or occupied even from down the hall.

To maintain a measure of fairness in booking conference rooms, it is imperative that you reserve the room via the Room Agent or Exchange. Any meetings in rooms that were not booked will be asked to leave by another party booking the room via Room Agent or Exchange. The Exchange calendar always wins.  If you are not an Exchange user, you must have another Exchange user book the room. There are no exceptions to this rule.

When a Conference Room is Reserved, you will see the following screen:

When a Conference Room is Available, you will see the following screen:

 

  • Make on-demand reservations from the touchpanel. Just press the Reserve button on the screen to book the room immediately. The Room Agent and the Conference Room calendar in Exchange will be updated simultaneously.  No risk of double-booking!
  • Make meeting rooms available as soon as a scheduled meeting ends. If you are done with your meeting early, just press the Release button on the screen to release the room immediately. This will give others a chance to book it.
  • Each TouchLink Pro touchpanel model communicates directly with Microsoft Exchange and updates the room calendars in real-time.

Calendar Groups

Quickly see the calendars of people you frequently work with. Select the members one time, then use the Calendar Group every time that you want view those same calendars. Calendar Groups can also include resources, such as conference rooms. This is a great way to find available conference rooms in your building.

  

Create, view, or delete a calendar group

If you have a set of calendars that you frequently view together, such as your work colleagues or your family, using calendar groups makes it easy for you to see the combined schedules at a glance.

Create a calendar group

There are two ways that you can create a calendar group:

  • Pick members from an AddressBook or Contacts list
  • Create a calendar group based on the calendars that you are viewing
Pick members from an Address Book or Contacts list
  1. In Calendar, on the Home tab, in the Manage Calendars group, click Calendar Groups, and then click Create New Calendar Group.
  2. Type a name for the new calendar group, and then click OK.
  3. Under Address Book, choose the AddressBook or Contact list from which you want to pick members of your group.
  4. Browse for names or type them in the Search box, click the name that you want and then click Group Members. Repeat this step for each calendar that you want to include in the group, and then click OK.
Create a calendar group based on the calendars that you are viewing
  1. In Calendar, on the Home tab, in the Manage Calendars group, click Calendar Groups, and then click Save as New Calendar Group.
  2. Type a name for the new calendar group, and then click OK.
Notes
  1. The new calendar group opens beside any calendars or groups that were already open.
  2. To add other calendars to the view, select the check boxes of the calendars that you want in the Navigation Pane.
Add calendars to a calendar group
  1. To add a calendar to an existing calendar group, in the Navigation Pane, drag it to the calendar group that you want.
  2. If the calendar that you want to add is not in your Navigation Pane, do the following:
    1. In Calendar, on the Home tab, in the Manage Calendars group, click Open Calendar, and then click the type of calendar that you want.
    2. Browse for names or type them in the Search box, click the name that you want and then click Calendar. Repeat this step for each calendar that you want to include in the group, and then click OK. The added calendars appear in the Shared Calendars folder in the Navigation Pane.
    3. In Schedule View, you can click the Add a Calendar box at the bottom of the view and then enter the name that you want. The calendar is added to the Shared Calendars folder in the Navigation Pane.
    4. In the Navigation Pane, drag the calendar from Shared Calendars to the calendar group that you want. 
    5. You can move a member of any calendar group to a different group. In the Navigation Pane, drag the calendar to the calendar group that you want.
View a calendar group
  1. In the Navigation Pane, select the calendar check box.
  2. Group calendars appear side by side or in horizontal Schedule View. To see the calendars in overlay mode, do the following:
    1. On the Home tab, in the Arrange group, click Day, Work Week, Week or Month.
    2. The calendars are arranged side-by-side.
    3. Click the View in Overlay Mode arrow on the tab on each calendar that you want to overlay.
Delete a calendar group
  1. In the Navigation Pane, right-click the calendar group that you want to delete, and then click Delete Group.


For a tutorial on creating Group Calendars, see http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/calendar/outlook-2010s-  group-schedules/.  The instructions are the same for Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016.

Schedule View

Whether you use the new Calendar Groups, or manually select multiple calendars to review, the new Schedule View can help take some guesswork out arranging meetings. Individual, resource, or Calendar Group calendars appear in a horizontal view to quickly discover the best time to meet.

 

Best practices when using the Outlook Calendar

Forwarding meeting requests

When you use Outlook to forward a meeting to someone who was not originally invited to the meeting, Outlook sends a meeting forward notification to the meeting organizer. When the organizer receives the meeting notification, the new attendee is added to the organizer’s meeting. If existing attendees need to know that an additional attendee was added to the meeting, then the organizer must open the meeting and send a meeting update to all of the attendees.

Note: If you want to let someone know about a meeting, but not invite them, simply drag the meeting request from your calendar to the Mail icon on the lower left side of Outlook. This opens an email with information about the meeting that you can send out. Note that this email does not add the recipient(s) to the meeting, and it only contains meeting information such as date, time, subject, and agenda.

Process all meeting requests and cancellations

Although you can delete a meeting request directly from your Inbox, you should properly process the meeting request by either accepting or declining it. Always use the Remove from Calendar command to process meeting cancellations from your Inbox. Avoid processing meetings directly from the Calendar module.

Working with recurring meetings

Set end dates and limit the number of occurrences

We enforce a limit on recurring meetings to 366 days. Most likely, recurring meetings will require modifications at some point. For example, attendees will be added to or removed from a single occurrence or the meeting location or time will change due to vacation dates or unforeseen circumstances. Outlook saves each of these unique changes as a meeting exception. Meetings with a very large number of exceptions result in a meeting series that is difficult to manage. Additionally, it can introduce unexpected behavior. You can always create a new meeting series when the current one ends.

End a recurring meeting before the original end date

Although you can cancel a recurring meeting, a better option is to change the end date for the series. This allows you and the attendees to keep a record of the meetings that occurred in the past. If you cancel the recurring meeting altogether, that history is lost. The best option is to set a new end date and then send the update to all attendees. This ends the meeting series early, while keeping a record of previous meetings.

Change the organizer

Outlook does not provide a way to change a meeting organizer. To change the meeting organizer of a recurring meeting, end the recurring meeting. To do this, set an earlier end date and send the update to all attendees. After you complete this step, the new organizer should create a new recurring meeting.

Avoid using a recurring meeting to share attachments

Attachments add to the complexity of recurring meeting exceptions. Each exception contains its own copy of the attachments. As exceptions are added to recurring meetings, new copies of the attachments are created. If you make changes to one set of attachments, these changes do not propagate to the other exceptions. If you require that all attendees have the most recent copy of changes for any given meeting, share the documents via a UofO shared file server on the network.

Avoid copying meetings

By design, Outlook removes any links between a copied meeting and the original meeting. This helps prevent inconsistencies. Newer versions of Outlook add the text string "Copy:" to the subject. This makes it easy to identify meeting copies.

Actions related to copied meetings yield unexpected results, so we recommend avoiding copying meetings. This applies to both meetings copied from another user's calendar, as well as those copied from another calendar folder that you own.

Expect to experience some calendar inconsistencies if you do not run the same version of Outlook on the same platform (either Mac or PC) on all of your computers. If you are running different versions of Outlook or are using different platforms, you will occasionally encounter strange calendar behavior.

  • If you have 2 computers (both for the office, or a work and a personal machine), one of which is a Windows PC and one is a Mac, use Outlook Web App (OWA)  rather than Outlook on the computer that is not your primary one.
  • Executives and managers and their calendar delegates should use the same version of Outlook on the same platform as well.

Keep only your own calendar open. Whenever you finish accessing the calendar of another individual or a shared resource to schedule a meeting, close it.

  • For each calendar you keep open, you impact the performance of your own Exchange account on your computer.
  • If you just need to open up someone’s calendar to check it one time, you may want to use the “Scheduling Assistant” in the meeting request itself to view their "Free/Busy" times, rather than actually opening up their calendar folder on your account. The more calendar folders you have open, the more that will have to update from then on, which can slow the performance of your email program.