Adding a Meeting Room as a Resource for a meeting

Outlook 2003 Rule of thumb: Working with Meeting Rooms is (almost) exactly the same as working with normal meeting participants. The important thing to remember is to add the Meeting Rooms as Resources to the meeting. Detailed instructions: 1. Create a new meeting as you normally would: 1.1. From within Outlook 2003, go to your Calendar 1.2. Create a new Calendar entry 1.3. From within the new Calendar entry form, click the "Scheduling" tab Result:

2. Add other participants as you normally would, e.g. through the address book 2.1. Click the Add Others button 2.2. Click the Add from Address book option 2.3. Select individual(s) you wish to invite to the meeting in the "Required ->" or "Optional ->" fields

Result:

3. Add a Meeting Room as a resource 3.1. To invite (and book) a Meeting Room as a resource, click on the "Show Names from the:" drop-down box (Global Address List) in the upper right hand corner of your Address Book and select "Meeting Rooms" within your sector .
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Illustration:

3.2. Select/Highlight your desired Meeting Room and then click the "Resources ->" button Result:

4. Click OK Result:

5. Find the appropriate time for all participants including the Meeting Room as you normally do

6. Fill in the appropriate remaining information (i.e. time, subject, etc) and click the "Send" button Expected results: The Meeting Room will automatically accept the meeting (and reply back) if: Room is free at that time Planned meeting occurs in the future Booking is for no more then 18 months in advance

NOTE: THIS ALSO MEANS THAT A RECURRING APPOINTMENT HAS TO HAVE AN EXPLICIT END DATE WITHIN THE FOLLOWING 18 MONTHS! A RECURRING APPOINTMENT WILL ONLY BE ACCEPTED IF THE ROOM IS FREE ON ALL PROPOSED DATES. IF THERE IS EVEN ONE CONFLICT IN THE SCHEDULE THE ENTIRE APPOINTMENT WILL BE REJECTED! You are allowed to book the room (e.g. some rooms in 3R can only be booked by the receptionist)

Otherwise, the Meeting Room will decline your meeting. Meeting rooms will also handle updated or deleted meetings the same way other participants do, i.e. they will change their calendar accordingly. It takes up to 15 minutes before the meeting (change) shows up on the Meeting Room Calendar. However, this is just a matter of displaying the calendar. The actual meeting (change) has been processed correctly. If you e.g. receive an Accepted message, then it has been booked under your name and no one else can book the room for that period. Note that this has always been the standard behavior for Outlook in Oc for all meeting participants, including the human participants. If you try to book a room to which you dont have the appropriate permissions, you will get a message (with the word Undeliverable in the subject) saying that your message could not reach the room in question.
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For example:
Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients. Subject: Sent: Test 3r40 25-2-2008 13:51

The following recipient(s) could not be reached: Meeting Room Venlo 3R40 - Limited on 25-2-2008 13:51 You do not have permission to send to this recipient. For assistance, contact your system administrator. <OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net #5.7.1>

Booking Any Available Room from a selection

1. Follow the steps 1 trough 3.1 from the previous section 2. Select multiple Meeting Rooms from the Address Book by either a) holding down the CTRL key and clicking on each of the desired rooms OR b) selecting the first Room you desire, holding down the SHIFT key and clicking on the last room you desire in the row. 3. Click the Resources -> button 4. Click OK 5. Determine the desired meeting duration (e.g. 1 hour) 6. Let outlook determine the first next available moment for all people and one resource 6.1. Make sure there is a checkmark next to All People and One Resource under Options: AutoPick: Illustration (assumed scenario is: give me any Meeting Room in 3N, I dont care which one):

6.2. Click AutoPick Next > Result:

Outlook has now found the first moment at which all the attendees and one Meeting Room are available. In our case the automatically chosen Meeting Room is 3N13. The meeting invitation will only be sent to that room. That is why there is a cross next to all the other Meeting Rooms. If you wish, you can repeat this process and Outlook will keep looking for the first available room and crossing out the others. 7. Fill in the appropriate remaining information (i.e. time, subject, etc) and click the "Send" button

Using the Meeting Room alias instead of the full name

(e.g. just 3N01 instead of Meeting Room Venlo 3N01) If you already know which Meeting Room you want to add to your meeting you can also add it to the meeting by just typing its alias instead of the full name. This is similar to the way we use our Oce initials instead of the full names. The Meeting Room alias generally has the following form: 3N01 is alias for Meeting Room Venlo 3N01. Dont forget to change the recognized room to a resource instead of an attendee (see below) After typing in the rooms alias, you can hold Ctrl key pressed in while pressing the k key to initiate the checking of the names.

To demonstrate: 1. Type in 3N01 as one of the attendees:

2. (Left) Click on the square left of the name to change 3N01 into a resource:

The room alias will most likely already be recognized by Outlook and replaced with the full name (Meeting Room Venlo 3N01). If not: 3. Hold Ctrl key and press the k key to initiate the Check Name procedure You can repeat this procedure to add multiple rooms.