Overview

Conference rooms can be booked via email directly going forward rather than requesting a conference room from the office staff.  Availability can be checked via the calendar before scheduling a meeting or using the Scheduling Assistant when setting up the meeting. 

Once the invite is sent to the calendar email, if the room is available, the invite will be automatically accepted, and the room reserved for that time on the calendar.  If the room is not available for the full duration of the meeting the calendar invite will be declined and a decline message will be received by the person who sent the meeting invite. 

Process

Rooms and Equipment Available

*There was a type when it was originally set up – to correct it IT would have to delete it and lose all calendar entries and then recreate it. 

Viewing Conference Room Availability and Reserving Room Using Calendars

First add the Calendars to Outlook. This will only need to be done once – and then they will always be linked in your Outlook.

This step does not have to be done if reviewing/reserving the calendar using the Scheduling Assistant method below – to skip this step click Scheduling Assistant Method on the right.

Add Calendars to Outlook

Outlook for Windows

• View the Calendar screen in Outlook by selecting the calendar icon
• Click the drop-down arrow in the “Open Calendar” section
• Click Open Shared Calendar
• Type in the name of the calendar’s listed above (one by one) and click ok and ok at the next box that appears.
• The calendar should now appear in the “Shared Calendars” section

Outlook for Apple

• View the calendar screen in Outlook by selecting the calendar icon
• Click on “Open Shared Calendar at the top”
• Type the name of the calendar’s listed above (one by one) into the search box
• Select the calendar and click “open”
• The calendar should now be in the list on the left-hand side under “SU exchange”. You may need to uncollapse the list by clicking on the arrow to the left of this
• Repeat for the other calendars

Viewing Room Availability

Please note again: calendar’s must be added to Outlook to use this method.  To view room availability without adding the calendar select Scheduling Assistant Method on the right to jump to that section.

Outlook for Windows

• Select (tick the circle next to the name) the room’s calendar (can select more than one room to view multiple calendars)
• Unselect (untick the circle) “your” calendar (listed under “My Calendars”) so that only the conference room(s) are selected

Depending on the outlook settings the calendars will open next to each other or combined in different colors representing each calendar.

Colored blocks on the dates will show when the room is already reserved.  For those who do not have “write” access, the details of the meetings will not appear – it will just show as blocked out.

Outlook for Apple

Depending on how the Outlook is setup will depend on how to select the calendar. 

For setups like this:

• Select (tick the circle next to the name) the room’s calendar (can select more than one room to view multiple calendars)
• Make sure to highlight the word “calendar” under the room number

For setups like this:

• Select (tick the circle next to the name) the room’s calendar (can select more than one room to view multiple calendars)

Next, for both setup types

• Unselect (untick the circle) “your” calendar so that only the conference room(s) are selected

Depending on the outlook settings the calendars will open next to each other or combined in different colors representing each calendar.

Colored blocks on the dates will show when the room is already reserved.  For those who do not have “write” access, the details of the meetings will not appear – it will just show as blocked out.

Reserving the Conference Room

• Go to the Calendar screen in Outlook and review the conference room calendar(s) to determine which conference room is available. (See Viewing Room Availability section above for more instructions on how to do this.)
• Once availability has been identified and the room selected, unselect all calendar room and reselect the personal calendar is selected (the personal calendar is the only calendar that should be selected at this point)
• Click New Meeting (Windows for Outlook) or Meeting (Windows for Apple) in the ribbon
  • A new meeting invite will open
    • Select the date and time for the meeting
    • Enter Title
    • Enter Recipients being invited and include the conference room desired by entering the email associated (see table at the beginning of instructions).
    • Click send to send the calendar invite to all meeting participants (including the conference room added – please make sure only one conference room is present before sending)
  • A meeting confirmation will be sent by the conference room if the room was available for that date and time.
  • If a “declined” meeting invite is received for the conference room this means that someone booked that conference room for that specific date for some or all the time that was selected. If the conference room calendar is reviewed prior to sending the invite, this should not happen. 

Viewing Conference Room Availability and Reserving a Room Using Scheduling

It is not necessary to add the calendars to Outlook for this method

• View the Calendar screen in Outlook (make sure the personal calendar under My Calendars is selected and no others)
• Click New Meeting (Outlook for Windows) or Meeting (Outlook for Apple) in the ribbon
  • A new meeting invite will open
    • Select the date and time for the meeting
    • Enter Title
    • Enter Recipients being invited and include any/all conference room(s) emails to review availability for (see table at the beginning of instructions).
  • Click Scheduling Assistant (Outlook for Windows) or Scheduling (Outlook for Apple) in the ribbon
  • It will now show the availability of everyone (the calendars of the conference rooms included as well as the calendar(s) of the other meeting participants put into the recipients list)
  • Any colored section like above will mean the room is reserved for that time (or a participant isn’t available).
    • If only one room was reviewed, and the time originally selected is not available a new time when the room, and other meeting invitees, are available can be selected at the top.
    • If multiple rooms were selected, once the room is identified that can fit the scheduled time for the meeting, the other rooms can be removed from the list of email addresses, and they will disappear from the schedule.
  • At this point, if the room is available and all meeting recipients have been added, the room can be booked, and the meeting invite sent to all participants by clicking the “Send” button.
    • Make sure to remove any additional conference rooms originally added and reviewed so that only ONE conference room is on the invite.
    • A meeting confirmation will be sent by the conference room if the room was available for that date and time.
    • If a “declined” meeting invite is received for the conference room this means that someone booked that conference room for that specific date for some or all the time that was selected. If the conference room calendar as outlined above is reviewed correctly, this should not happen.