Outlook 2016 Tips and Tricks

Lesson 4 – Managing Meetings

Outlook 2016

S CHEDULING A M EETING  D ISCUSSION

You can use the Outlook Calendar to schedule meetings. A meeting is an appointment to which you electronically invite people and resources. Resources include items you typically use in a meeting, such as a conference room, an overhead projector, or a laptop computer. Both people and resources may or may not be available for a meeting, and you can use Outlook to determine a time for your meeting that best fits all attendees’ and resources’ schedules. The Scheduling Assistant display shows the free and busy times of every attendee or resource invited to the meeting. Note: The Scheduling Assistant Button usually only appears when using a Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft.com account; otherwise the button just appears as Scheduling in the Show group under the Meeting tab. If a time slot is blank, the attendee or resource is free. If a time slot is colored, then the attendee or resource is either busy or tentatively busy. If a time slot displays diagonal bars, that person’s schedule is not published. If a scheduling conflict occurs, the AutoPick tool can automatically locate free time slots for the specified invitees and resources. You can use AutoPick for all invitees, all people and one resource, required people only, or required people and one resource. Responses to the meeting requests are delivered to your Inbox and can be tracked in the Meeting window. The Room Finder task pane is a feature that was new in Outlook 2013. This tool allows you to quickly find resources like Conference rooms that are available to book for a meeting, provided the resource’s schedule is published. Meeting times in the Scheduling Assistant display are indicated by green and red vertical bars. The green bar indicates the meeting start time and the red bar indicates the meeting end time. You can move these bars to adjust the length of a meeting. The hours available in the Scheduling Assistant display are based on the Calendar working hours set in the Options dialog box. These hours may vary depending on your working environment.

You can access the Scheduling Assistant display from the Calendar Ribbon, or when you are in an open Meeting or Appointment window.

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