Scheduling Resources
Exchange makes it easy to schedule resources such as conference rooms.
As always seems to be the case, there are several different ways to accomplish the same thing. This page will provide instructions for each of three primary alternatives and briefly discuss the pros and cons of each.
- Resource Mailbox - The Best Way
- Public Folders
- Moderated Public Folders
Resource Mailbox Method - The Best Way
The best way to keep track of your resource is to let us set it up with its own mailbox, just like a regular user. When creating a meeting, you can see the conference room's availability along with everyone else's in the meeting planner. You invite the conference room to the meeting, it automatically accepts, and the time is booked in its calendar.
Despite what you may have read elsewhere, third-party scripts, costly utilities, custom programming, and special configurations are not required. Exchange used with Outlook does this out-of-the-box. It's part of the basic functionality built-in by Microsoft. Here's all you need to do.
- Configure the resource to automatically accept meeting invitations.
- Invite the resource 'as a resource' when you create the meeting invitation.
The following steps and screen shots demonstrate.
Using Outlook, log on to the conference room's mailbox, as if you were the conference room. You may want to create a separate Outlook profile for the conference room mailbox. See Outlook Setup if you need help creating a new profile.
- From the Tools menu choose Options.
- From the Preferences tab page in the Options dialog, click the Calendar Options button.
- From the Calendar Options dialog, click the Resource Scheduling button.
- The following dialog will appear. Click to select the appropriate options, to let this mailbox automatically accept and decline meeting invitations.
- When you invite the resource to the meeting, invite it as a resource, not as a required or optional attendee. See the following screen shot. This dialog is accessed by clicking the To: button in a meeting request.
- The meeting planner will show the availability of the resource as well as the required and optional attendees. Click to enlarge the following screen shot.
Public Folder Method
The only problem with the Mailbox Method explained above is it requires the resource to have a user account / mailbox, just like a person, and that costs money. Microsoft charges hosting providers license fees based on the number of user accounts / mailboxes, and we charge clients the same way. Using a calendar-type public folder to represent the resource does not require an additional user account.
When you create the public folder, specify that it will contain appointment items.
At this point you can book the room directly, by making entries in the public folder. You can manipulate the permissions on the public folder to control who in your workgroup has read / write access. This alone is light-years ahead of having no system at all, but there are drawbacks. The folder does not appear in the global address list, you can't invite the room to a meeting in the meeting planner to automatically book it, and you can't see its availability in the meeting planner.
Moderated Public Folder Method
Another way to solve the resource reservation and booking process problem is to declare a group of people that are responsible for that resource. The moderator(s) resolve resource booking conflicts.
The steps in detail are as follows:
- Create a new public folder with the calendaring design from your Microsoft Office Outlook Client.
- Grant the appropriate permissions on this folder to make sure that only employees responsible for this resource have the relevant authorization.
- Configure a Moderator for this public folder. Right click the public folder, choose properties, then choose the Administration tab page, then the Moderated Folder button. The following dialog will appear.
