Irfan Liaqat

How-to Guide: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar By: M. Irfan Liaqat IT Dept. F.A.R. Venture Rev. 0 | 03 March 2012 Table of Contents How-to Guide: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar ................................................... 1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................... 3 Defined Company Resources ........................................................................................................................ 3 Reserving a Resource .................................................................................................................................... 3 Feedback .....................................................................................................................................................10 How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 2 Introduction There are many common resources such as (Conference Room, Projector etc.) provided by our company, which are at disposal to all the departments to performs their tasks. These resources may be required by one or more concerned individuals or departments which may at times lead to conflict or inconvenience. Therefore, IT department under direction of our President have defined these common company resources into our Email system (Exchange Server) and enabled the functionality of reserving these resources using Outlook Calendar software. It is important that before using these resources, everyone should establish their availability and book them in order to avoid any inconvenience and to have a better working environment. This document will provide a step-by-step guide on creating and managing reservation of company resources. Defined Company Resources Currently, IT department have defined following resources which can be scheduled, booked, or reserved using Outlook Calendar application. - Conference Room (FAR-HO) - Projector (Sony) - Simulation Room (FAR-HO) - Training Room (FAR-HO) In future more resources may be added, all such resources can be found under Resources address book in your Microsoft Outlook software or Outlook Web Access (OWA) website. It is important to note that the resource reservation system work on the basis of: “First Come, First Served”. Hence, the first request received for a given resource at a given time will be accepted automatically and later requests made for the same resources at same time or time period which over laps will be denied immediately. Reserving a Resource Following are typical steps that can be used to reserve a resource, for this example we will use Conference Room (FAR-HO). How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 3 1. Open Microsoft Outlook, open “New” menu and then select “Meeting Request”. 2. In the new “Meeting” window that appears, make sure “Appointment” show option is selected, and then click on “To”. 3. In the “Select Attendees and Resources” window, open the “Address Book” drop-down menu and select “Resources”. How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 4 4. From the list below, select the resources required to be booked, and then click on “Resources->” to add it, and then finally click “OK”. 5. Once back into “Meeting” window, select “Scheduling” show option from the menu bar. How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 5 On this screen you can see a calendar grid, which show the availability of all the attendees and resources selected for the meeting. Legend, at the bottom of the screen, explains the color scheme. Use the scroll bar, at the bottom of the screen, to find an appropriate free time and select it by highlight the time period grid. 6. If you would like to add/invite more attendees or resources to the meeting request, you can do so by clicking on the “Address Book” icon on the menu bar, then make the required selection in the “Select Attendees and Resources” window, when finished click “OK”. This will populate the schedule screen with the newly selected attendees and/or resources. How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 6 Note: Availability information (also called Free/Busy status) of attendees and resources is only available for people and resources of our company only. You cannot get the availability information for attendees or resources which are not part of our company. 7. Select “Appointment” show option from the menu bar, enter the meeting title in the “Subject “bar and description of the meeting request (i.e., Meeting Agenda, documents, etc.) in the blank area below. Then finally click on “Send”, to submit the meeting request. The submitted meeting request will start to appear on your calendar. How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 7 8. If the resource (in this case Conference Room) is available for the set appointment period, you will receive an acceptance email from the resource itself. How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 8 9. In case, the resource (in this case Conference Room) is already reserved or overlaps the appointment period, and then you will receive a rejection email from the resource itself. You can reopen the meeting request from your calendar, and select a new time period in the scheduling screen, and then resend the request. How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 9 Feedback You can submit your feedback, comment or suggestions by email to- How-to: Company Resource Reservation using Outlook Calendar – Rev. 0 10