Using Exchange 2010 to Schedule a Meeting
Draft
Exchange 2010 incorporates tools facilitating the scheduling of meetings - in particular it allows you to easily work out when a given set of people are all available.
The following sections show how to schedule a meeting between a number of people using various interfaces to Exchange:
1. Scheduling a Meeting using Outllook 2010 on a PC
Open your calendar:
click on "New Meeting":
Enter a title for the meeting and click on "Scheduling Assistant"
On the left hand panel, enter the names of the attendees. You will immediately be shown their availability on the planner on the right.
A red arrow next to the name of an attendee indicates that the presence of this person is required. You can change this by clicking on the red arrow and mark his or her attendance as optional.
Find and mark a period where all required attendees are available and click on "Send"
The participants will now be sent e-mails inviting them to the meeting.
You can at any time check the status of your meeting by opening the meeting from your calendar and clicking on the tracking button
2. Scheduling a Meeting using the Web Interface to Exchange 2010
Login to the Exchange server via the web interface
click on Calendar and click on "New":
Enter a title for the meeting and click on "Scheduling Assistant"
On the left hand panel, enter the names of the attendees. You will immediately be shown their availability on the planner on the right.
A red arrow next to the name of an attendee indicates that the presence of this person is required. You can change this by clicking on the red arrow and mark his or her attendance as optional.
Find and mark a period where all required attendees are available and click on "Send"
The participants will now be sent e-mails inviting them to the meeting.
You can at any time check the status of your meeting by opening the meeting from your calendar and clicking on the tracking tab.
3. Scheduling a Meeting using Outlook on a Mac
Open your calendar and click on "Meeting":
Enter a title for the meeting and click on "Scheduling":
On the left hand panel, click "add new" and add an attendee.
A panel will pop up - enter the name of the participant and click on "Required" (or "optional" if his/her attendance is not critical).
Repeat this procedure for the remaining attendees.
You will be shown the availability of all attendees on the planner on the right:
Find and mark a period where all required attendees are available and click on "Send"
The participants will now be sent e-mails inviting them to the meeting.
You can at any time check the status of your meeting by opening the meeting from your calendar. The symbol to the right of each attendee's name shows the status (green = invitation accepted, red = invitation declined, grey = pending).
4. Scheduling a Meeting using Apple Mail / ICal on a Mac
Open your calendar :
Double-click anywhere on the calendar - this will bring up a new event window:
Enter a meeting name and add attendees in the "invitees" box.
If the presence of a person is not necessarily required, you can mark this by clicking on his or her name and then clicking "optional".
To see the availability of all the attendees, click on "available meeting times":
You will be shown the availability of all attendees on a planner. Grey marks periods when an attendee is not available. Pale red marks available times. Dark red marks the currently selected time.
Find and mark a period where all required attendees are available and click on "Done"
The participants will now be sent e-mails inviting them to the meeting.
You can at any time check the status of your meeting by opening the meeting from your calendar. The symbol to the right of each attendee's name shows the status (green = invitation accepted, red = invitation declined, grey = pending).
