How To Use Scheduling Assistant to Reserve Rooms

If you plan to have a meeting or event in one of our shared meeting spaces like the Main Conference Room or Garden Room, you need to reserve it on the calendar. This is especially important now that we are making those more available to outside organizations during business hours. Here are tips on how you can check the availability of one of those rooms, and how to properly reserve the space in a way that others would see it was in use during that time.

This is very important, because unless everyone schedules these shared resources in the way I about to explain we will inevitably have scheduling conflicts. So, if there are multiple people needing the same space … the new rule is, whoever had it properly reserved on the calendar gets the room. This will also ensure if an outside organization reserves the space, it will actually be available for them to use when they get here (I’m guess it might be awkward if it isn’t).

I am going to explain how to do this using Outlook Web Access, although the steps would be very similar in the Outlook desktop client.

1. Open Outlook Web Access by going to mail.betenbough.com
2. Click on the Calendar tab in the left navigation menu, then click the New link at the top.
   
3. That should open a new window where you can enter the event details (shown below). Click on the Scheduling Assistant tab at the top.
   
   Important: You can’t just type in the room in the “Location” textbox for the event (shown above). That won’t add it on the shared calendar for that room, which means nobody else will be able to see that you plan to use that space during that time.
4. In this window you can add both meeting attendees (at least for Betenbough Employees) and specify the Rooms you want to reserve. Just click on the line under Select Rooms, and you can start typing in the name of the room you want to reserve. It will auto-complete possible choices as you type. For this to work, you must type in one of these room names:
   • Main Conference Room - The big room where we have ownership meetings
   • Small Conference Room - The small room behind Peggy’s desk where we do closings
   • Garden Room - Yep … exactly what you think it is.
   • Break Room - This is the redesigned space for kids, but if you want to reserve it for a party or for something like worship team practice … you might pick this room.
   
   Ensure there is a check by the room you want to reserve. In the center on the window you can see the free/busy schedule for all attendees as well as any rooms you selected. Just click on an open timeslot on the schedule and it will automatically adjust the start & end times of the meeting:
   
5. You can now switch back to the Appointment tab at that top and finish entering the rest of the details for the meeting/event (i.e. subject, when the reminder should go off, etc).
   
6. Click the Send button in the top left corner, and you’re done. That will send an invite to the attendees and also send the calendar event to the shared calendar for the room.