About scheduling
Scheduling a meeting
Inviting attendees to a meeting
Working with the Scheduling window
Answering meeting invitations
Keeping track of meeting invitations
Working with meetings
Understanding meeting options
In the previous chapter, you learned how you can use Outlook to keep track of appointments. As useful as this is, it is only one of the tools Outlook provides to help you organize and manage your time. Scheduling goes a step further. In a nutshell, scheduling refers to arranging your time commitments so they do not conflict with other commitments you may have or with commitments that other people have. For example, scanning your calendar to find a mutually agreeable night to go to dinner with friends is scheduling, as is choosing a meeting time at work that will permit the whole project team to attend.
An appointment is an event that lasts less than a full day and does not require coordination with anyone else's time. A meeting, on the other hand, is an event that must be coordinated with one or more people's schedules. Outlook provides two tools that help to automate the task of setting up meetings:
Viewing other people's calendars to see when they are free.
Sending meeting requests via email allowing the recipients to accept or decline.
You may use just one of these tools to schedule a meeting, or you may use both. The following section takes a look at how this is done.
In many ways, creating a meeting is the same as creating an appointment, as you learned how to do in the previous chapter. As with an appointment, you can assign a meeting to a category, associate it with one or more contacts, and so on. This section focuses on those aspects unique to creating a meeting.
To create a new meeting, select Meeting Request from the New menu or press Ctrl+Shift+Q. Outlook opens a new, blank meeting form as shown in Figure 12.1. This form is very similar to the new appointment form. The differences are
It has a Send button instead of a Save & Close button.
It has a To field.
It has a Cancel Invitation button in place of an Invite Attendees button.
You see how these new elements are used soon.
To continue creating the meeting, follow these steps:
Note
Please note that these steps do not all have to be performed in this precise order.
Enter a subject for the meeting in the Subject field.
Enter the meeting location in the Location field, or click the adjacent down arrow to select from a list of recently used locations. This is important so the meeting invitees will know where the meeting is.
Specify the date of the meeting and the start and end time in the corresponding fields.
Look at the message just above the To field. It will tell you that invitations for this meeting have not been sent yet. If the time and date you selected conflict with an existing appointment, it will also inform you of this fact, as shown in Figure 12.2. If there is a conflict you can use the Scheduling tab to resolve it, as described in the next section. If not, continue with step 5.
Click the To button to display the Select Attendees and Resources dialog box as shown in Figure 12.3. Resources can be scheduled only if you are using an Exchange Server account.
Select individual attendees and click the appropriate button to place them in the Required or Optional field depending on whether their attendance at the meeting is required or optional.
Click OK to return to the meeting form. You'll see the selected attendees are now listed in the To field.
Click the Send button to send the invitation to the invitees and add the meeting to your Calendar.
When an invitee receives your meeting invitation, she can accept, tentatively accept, decline, or propose a new time for the meeting. Her response is sent back to you and automatically registered by Outlook, as described later in the chapter.
Figure 12.2. Outlook tells you whether a proposed meeting time conflicts with an existing appointment.
There are two options that you can change before sending a meeting request. You access them by clicking the Responses button in the Attendees section of the ribbon:
Request Responses: This is on by default. If you turn it off, your meeting invitation will be an informative message with the time, date, subject, and place of the meeting, but no request for a response. If the recipient accepts the meeting, it will be added to his calendar but no response will be sent to the meeting organizer.
Allow New Time Proposals: This option determines whether meeting invitees are allowed to respond by proposing a new time for the meeting. Its default setting is on or off depending on the setting of the calendar option Allow Attendees to Propose New Times for Meetings You Organize, as described later in this chapter in the section "Setting Meeting Options." This option is not available if the Request Responses option is turned off.
The Scheduling window, available from the meeting form, provides a visual tool that lets you schedule a meeting so that it does not conflict with existing appointments on your schedule. After you have entered the date and time for a meeting on a meeting form, click the Scheduling button on the ribbon to display the Scheduling window as shown in Figure 12.4.
Figure 12.4. The Scheduling window lets you view conflicts with your schedule and optionally other people's schedules.
The elements in this window are
The Zoom list lets you select how much time is displayed across the window. You can zoom out to show a whole week or zoom in to show just a couple of hours.
The Attendees list contains your name and the names of any people that you have added to the To field on the meeting form. To add additional attendees, click at the bottom of the list where it says Click Here to Add a Name, or click the Add Others button. People who you add here will be added to the To field for the meeting.
The row to the right of each attendee's name provides information about their availability, as explained in more detail later.
The All Attendees row at the top displays free/busy information based on the schedules of all attendees.
The vertical green and red lines show the start and end of the meeting, respectively.
The Scheduling window lists availability information for meeting attendees other than yourself only if you are using a Microsoft Exchange Server. Otherwise, the Scheduling window lists attendees' time as "No Information," indicated by diagonal hatching.
If the meeting time you have specified conflicts with one or more schedules—or even if it does not—you can use the AutoPick feature to find another time free for all attendees. Click the AutoPick Next >> button to select the next time period free for all attendees whose schedule information is available; click the << button to look for the nearest earlier time slot. You can also change the meeting time and date manually using the corresponding fields at the bottom of the window.
When you are finished with the Scheduling window, you can do one of the following:
Click the Appointment button to return to the meeting form and finish setting up the meeting.
Click the Send button to save the meeting and send requests to all attendees.
You can see that the Scheduling window has an Options button. Click this button to do any of the following:
Specify whether only your working hours, as defined in Outlook, are displayed.
Specify whether calendar details are displayed.
Select how the AutoPick feature works in identifying free time. For example, you can specify that all attendees must be free or only that required attendees be free.
Update the schedule display of other attendees to reflect any changes they may have made to their calendars.
When a recipient receives a meeting invitation and opens it, it appears as shown in Figure 12.5. They can respond in various ways to an invitation. Responding lets them add the meeting to their own calendar (unless they decline the meeting) and also sends a message to the person who originally proposed the meeting. This lets them keep track of who can and who cannot attend the meeting, and to change the time if needed.
In some respects, a meeting invitation is like a regular email message—you can reply to it, forward it, categorize it, and so on. Note that Outlook displays a message just below the ribbon if the meeting conflicts with something already on your calendar. There are four special buttons on the ribbon that let you respond to the invitation.
Accept: Accept the invitation and add the meeting to your calendar. Outlook displays the dialog box shown in Figure 12.6. The options have to do with the response, if any, that is sent to the person who sent you the invitation:
Edit the Response Before Sending: Lets you add text or otherwise edit the response before sending it.
Send the Response Now: Sends the response immediately.
Don't Send a Response: No response is sent.
Click the Tentative button to accept the invitation and add the meeting to your calendar as "tentative." Outlook displays the same dialog box as shown in Figure 12.6, where you select response options.
Click the Decline button to decline the invitation. Nothing is added to your calendar. You areoffered the same response options as described earlier for Accept.
Click the Propose New Time button if you want to either decline the meeting or accept tentatively while proposing a new time. Outlook opens the Scheduling window and displays your free/busy time as well as the free/busy time of other invitees for whom the information is available. Select the time you want to propose and click the Propose Time button. Outlook creates a new email message with the proposed time information, addressed to the person who sent you the invitation.
When you have requested responses to a meeting invitation, each response sent will appear in your Inbox. In addition, Outlook automatically registers the response and keeps track of all responses to a particular meeting. You can view this information by opening the meeting (double-click it in Calendar view) and then clicking the Tracking button in the Show section of the ribbon. The Tracking window, shown in Figure 12.7, lists all the people who were invited to the meeting, whether they are a required or an optional attendee, and their response (if any). In the figure, for example, you can see that Wanda Jackson has not yet responded to the invitation.
A meeting on your calendar can be either a meeting that you organized or a meeting that someone else organized and invited you to.
When you open a meeting that you organized, you can modify various aspects of the meeting including the subject, time, and location. Then, click the Send Update button to send the revised information to all attendees. Other actions you can take are
Click the Cancel Meeting button in the Actions section of the ribbon to cancel the meeting and send a cancellation message to all attendees. The recipient can open the message and click the Remove from Calendar button to remove the cancelled meeting from her calendar.
Click the Add or Remove Attendees button in the Attendees section of the ribbon to add or remove attendees. Then, click the Send Update button. You have the option of sending updates only to added and deleted attendees or to all attendees. Attendees you add receive a regular meeting invitation, and deleted attendees receive a message saying the meeting was cancelled.
Click the Message to Attendees button to create a regular email message or reply addressed to all meeting attendees.
When you open a meeting that someone else invited you to, a message is displayed just below the ribbon with information about whether you have responded. For example, the meeting shown in Figure 12.8 indicates the meeting was accepted on December 14.
When the meeting is open, you can change the subject, location, and date/time, although doing so makes little sense seeing that you are not the meeting organizer. You can also change your response. For example, suppose that you had initially accepted the meeting but something important has come up that will prevent you from attending. You can click Decline to send another response to the organizer informing her of your change in plans.
Outlook has several options that affect the way meeting requests and responses work. Some of these options are found in the Calendar Options dialog box. To view and change these options:
Select Options from the Tools menu to display the Options dialog box.
If necessary, click the Preferences tab.
Click the Calendar Options button to display the Calendar Options dialog box (see Figure 12.9).
Set options as described next.
Click OK twice to close all dialog boxes.
Two of the meeting-related options are in the Calendar Options section of this dialog box:
Allow Attendees to Propose New Times for Meetings You Organize: If this option is turned on, people to whom you send meeting invitations can propose new times for the meeting. If not, they will not have this option available to them.
Use This Response When You Propose New Meeting Times: If this option is selected, the widely supported iCalendar format is used for the response when you propose a new meeting time. If not, the less widely supported Outlook format is used. You should leave this option on unless you have a specific reason for turning it off.
The third option is in the Advanced Options section, and determines the format used for sending meeting requests. Again, unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise, you should leave this option turned on so that the more widely supported iCalendar format will be used.
Other options are located in the Tracking Options dialog box. To display this dialog box (which is shown in Figure 12.10):
Select Options from the Tools menu to display the Options dialog box.
If necessary, click the Preferences tab.
Click the E-mail Options button to display the E-mail Options dialog box.
Click the Tracking Options button.
The relevant options are
Process Requests and Responses on Arrival: If this option is selected, Outlook automatically processes responses to invitations when they arrive—that is, records the response in the tracking section of the meeting request. If not, you will have to open the response message and manually process it.
Delete Blank Voting and Meeting Responses After Processing: If this option is selected, Outlook automatically deletes blank meeting responses after processing. A blank response is one to which the sender has not added text.
A Meeting Workplace is a web site linked to a meeting or project that you are organizing. By giving other meeting attendees access to the Meeting Workspace, you enable a variety of collaboration tools that let everyone share information and meeting materials. A Workspace can be created for a project and then linked to each meeting that you organize for the project. Meeting Workspaces are available only when you are using Outlook in conjunction with a Microsoft SharePoint Services server, which is covered in Chapter 29.