IT Tips - September 2015

IT Tips – September 2015

 

Here comes another lovely fall in the Berkshires! 

 

 

What’s Inside:

Tech Section

o   New Conference Room Calendars!

§  Adding the room calendars to your Outlook.

§  Booking with the new Conference Room Calendars. 

 

New Conference Room Calendars

This scrumptious new tip continues on the Outlook 2013 momentum from last month. We’re all about solutions in IT (just ask Shaun), so we have upgraded the Public Folder conference room calendars with new-and-improved “Room calendars”. Seriously, public folders are SO 2003.

Public Folders are like so totally 2003.

This has been a long time coming; now that we are all on Outlook 2013, we can finally take advantage of “Room Calendars”! 

Are you saying that we no longer have to click a million things to get into the Public Folders? For reals?

For reals.

First, I want to show you how to add the new conference room calendars to your Outlook so you can view what’s going on in each room. This is much like the old public folder calendar view. The difference is that once added, you simply need to go to your calendar rather than all of the clicks required to access the Public Folders. Hooray for click reduction!

Follow these steps to add the room calendars to your Outlook Calendar view:

1.      Go to your calendars in Outlook.

2.      Now let’s add a calendar group to keep things organized. Click on “Calendar Groups” and then “Create New Calendar Group”.

3.     Name the group and click OK (I chose “Rooms” for the group name because I’m clever).

 

4.     You will now see the “Select Name” window appear. Choose “All Rooms” from the drop-down box on the top-right.

5.     Select each room and then click on the “Group Members” button. Once they’re all added to the Group Members field, click OK.

6.     The conference room calendars are now added!

Here is a video of the whole process:

Having all of these calendars selected simultaneously is dizzying. Fortunately, you can pick and choose which calendars display by clicking the checkboxes next to each calendar. Like this:

 

What if I don’t want a separate “Rooms” group? Can I just add the room calendars to the “My Calendars” group?

You just have to break away from the pack, don’t you?

It’s actually quite easy:

1.     Right click on “My Calendars”, mouse over “Add Calendar” and click on “From Room List”.

2.     Now add them just like we did above.

3.     They will appear in your “My Calendars” list now. 

OK, now how do I actually book the rooms?

I suppose this part is a little important.

There are actually two methods for booking conference rooms and they’re equally awesome.

First, the newfangled way. This. Is. Marvelous.

1.     From your calendar, click on “New Meeting” (NOT “New Appointment”).

2.     Do your normal process of selecting the attendees and set the subject.

3.     Now click the “Rooms” button and choose the room that you wish to book. This will add the room name to the “To” field; this is normal and it must be left there.

 

4.     Now pick your date. This is where it gets really cool! You can use the “Room Finder” on the right side to see what times the conference room is available. If you don’t see the “Room Finder”, it can be turned on with the “Room Finder” button in the ribbon. When you’ve chosen your time, click send!

 

5.     As long as there isn’t a scheduling conflict, you will receive a confirmation from the conference room in your inbox like this:

 

Here is a video of the entire process:

The beauty of this method is that you can book the room and schedule a meeting at the same time!!

What if I manually select a date/time that is already booked and send the meeting request (scheduling conflict)?

You should have looked at the Room Finder!!!

Don’t worry, the system will not allow you to book a conflicting appointment. You will receive a response from the conference room declining your conflicting appointment. Like this:

The solution here is to simply find a room that is open at this time or reschedule if nothing is available. 

OK, on to the second method for booking a room.

Anyone who has booked the conference rooms the old way will know this method.

Simply open the calendar of the conference room that you wish to book. Then double-click on the day you wish to book. Finally, name the meeting and set the time. That’s it!

 

Have a great month, everyone!

-Keith

Please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email if you have a something that you think will make a good tip. You’ll get credit on the blog for your contribution and I might give you a high-five