Sharing Group Schedules
Outlook is more than a personal organizer. If you work closely with a team of people who also use Outlook, you can coordinate schedules among group members to streamline the process of organizing meetings. As a meeting organizer, your job is much easier when you can see at a glance what times are available for the other group members.
Outlook 2002 is significantly more capable than earlier versions when it comes to working with group schedules. In the office, you can view details from calendars on a Microsoft Exchange Server or on a corporate Web server. For Outlook 2002 users only, Microsoft offers an Internet server on which you can publish a list of Free/Busy times and share them with friends, family, and co-workers over the Internet.
Caution
The basic concepts behind group scheduling are simple, but the reality is not so easy without an Exchange Server close at hand. Support for Internet Free/Busy information sharing was notoriously buggy and unreliable in Outlook 2000, and as this is written, Microsoft's public Free/Busy server is too new to assess fairly. If you choose to use this emerging technology, be prepared to endure some configuration headaches as well as some glitches in day-to-day operation.
To use Outlook's automatic scheduling features, everyone in your office needs to publish details of their schedules so that Outlook can identify free and busy times for each meeting attendee. If you're connected via an Exchange Server, this process is relatively easy. If you choose to use an Internet or intranet-based Web server, the process is slightly more complicated.
Tip from 
Group scheduling works properly only when everyone in a workgroup actively participates. In particular, you need to make sure that every appointment you make is entered in your Calendar folder; if you don't, Outlook constantly reports to other people that you have free time, even when you're booked solid. Make sure that you check the Show Time As box for every appointment. You can select any of four options: Free, Tentative, Busy, or Out of Office. Check the Private box if you've published your Calendar folder on an Exchange Server and you want others to see only that you're busy, without being able to view details.
Sharing Calendars on an Exchange Server
To allow other users to share your calendar on an Exchange Server, you must meet all the following conditions:
You must use Microsoft Exchange Server as your mail service.
Your Calendar folder must be stored in the Exchange Server mailbox.
You must assign access permissions to the Calendar folder. Right-click the folder icon, choose Properties, and click the Permissions tab. Click Add to add the name of a user or group; choose Default to assign rights for all persons who have access to the Exchange Server. Set the desired permissions and click OK.
Caution
When assigning rights to others to view your Calendar folder, be careful. For the default access, choose the Reviewer role, which enables others to view items in your Calendar but not add, edit, or delete items. Remember that unless you check the Private box, other people will be able to read the Subject line of any appointment or meeting on your Calendar.
Using Microsoft's Public Free/Busy Service
If you use Outlook outside of a traditional office, you can use Microsoft's Internet-based Free/Busy Service to store information about your schedule. If the other members of your team do the same, you can easily share schedules with one another when you're halfway across the country or even on different continents.
Tip from 
If you share schedules with people in other time zones, it's crucial that you configure Outlook to reflect your time zone accurately. Don't forget to do the same in your Passport account.
To set up the connection, choose Tools, Options, and click the Preferences tab. Click the Calendar Options button, and then click the Free/Busy Options button. In the Free/Busy Options dialog box, check the Publish and Search Using Microsoft Office Internet Free/Busy Service box. To set up the service or change settings, click the Manage Button. The management controls are Web-based; this button opens your Web browser and takes you to the correct page.
To use the Microsoft Office Internet Free/Busy Service, do the following:
Log in with a Microsoft Passport account. This account is based on an e-mail address, although not necessarily the one you use with Outlook.
Sign up for the Microsoft service.
Enable Outlook to work with the service. This process uses an ActiveX control.
Authorize other users to access your Free/Busy information. They can do so using Outlook 2002 or by accessing the Microsoft Office Internet Free/Busy Service directly over the Web.
Note that this option is not compatible with Outlook 97, 98, or 2000. If your team uses a mix of new and old Outlook versions, you can still share Internet Free/Busy information using the option described in the next section.
Publishing Free/Busy Information on a Web Server
If you don't have access to an Exchange Server, you can still publish your Free/Busy information to a Web server for sharing over a company intranet. This option lets other people see the times you've marked as busy on your calendar, but it doesn't allow them to view details about individual appointments.
Outlook publishes Free/Busy information as a simple text file in HTML format. To publish your information, follow these steps:
Choose Tools, Options, and click the Preferences tab. Click the Calendar Options button, and then click the Free/Busy Options button. You'll see the dialog box shown in Figure 13.1.
Figure 13.1. To publish your free and busy times on a Web server, enter the details here.
Check the Publish at My Location box.
Tip from 
You can define any page name for your Free/Busy information, but we suggest that you use the following standard naming scheme. Start with the full name of the server, and for the page name, use the first portion of your e-mail address (up to the @ sign), followed by the extension .vfb. Thus, if your e-mail address is [email protected] and your administrator has set up a folder called Freebusy on a Web server named Groucho, enter the URL http://groucho/freebusy/jsmith.vfb. Using this naming convention makes it easy for other people to find your information without customizing your contact record, as explained in step 5.
Specify the number of months of information you want to include on the Free/Busy page, as well as how often you want to update this information. By default, Outlook publishes two months'worth of information and updates details every 15 minutes. You can enter any number between 1 and 99 in either box.
In the Search Location box, enter the following URL: http://<servername>/<pathname>/%NAME%.vfb. Substitute the actual names of the server and path where your company's Free/Busy information resides, but type the remaining text exactly as shown here. When searching, Outlook substitutes the first part of each contact's e-mail address for the %NAME% variable, followed by the .vfb extension. If everyone in your organization uses the standard naming conventions defined in step 2, you'll be able to pick up Free/Busy information automatically.
Click OK to close the dialog box and begin publishing your Free/Busy information on the schedule you specified in step 4.
If some of your contacts have published information using nonstandard naming schemes, or on servers other than the default location you defined, you can enter a custom URL that identifies this information. Switch to the Contacts folder and open that person's item; then click the Details tab and enter the full URL in the Internet Free-Busy Address box.
Working with Group Schedules
In previous Outlook versions, comparing group schedules was a fairly cumbersome process. Outlook 2002 provides easy access to a group schedule window, where you can save settings for any number of groups and open them by clicking a button.
From the Calendar window, click the Schedules button (or choose Actions, View Group Schedules). This opens the Group Schedules dialog box (see Figure 13.2), which shows groups you've already created. You can create a new group or work with an existing group; to add or remove names from a group, for instance, click the Open button. You can also remove a group from this window.
Figure 13.2. This dialog box shows groups you've already created and saved.
To create a new group, click the New button, enter a name for the group, and click OK. To add new members to the group, enter their names in the Group Members box and let AutoComplete suggest the correct name for you; or click the Add Others button to add from any Address Book or public folder. When you're finished, the dialog box should resemble Figure 13.3.
Figure 13.3. When creating a new group, you can enter names directly in the Group Members box or pick from an address book.
Click the Save and Close button to save the settings for the new group you just created. When you do, Outlook updates the Free/Busy information for the people on the list. If schedule information is not currently available for any person in the group, you'll be prompted to save a link that invites the group members to sign up for the Microsoft Office Internet Free/Busy service when they receive an invitation or e-mail from you.
After creating a group, you can use it as the basis of a meeting request or e-mail. Open the group schedule and click the Make Meeting button to see your options.