Setting Free/Busy Status On Calendar Events

A few weeks ago I showed how to use Outlook's Scheduling Assistant feature. That feature is especially powerful when you need to schedule a meeting with multiple people, because it allows you to quickly find a time when everyone has a free spot on their calendar. But that system only really works if:

1. Everyone keeps their schedule on their calendar (i.e. blocking out time when they aren't available)
2. Everyone sets their free/busy status appropriately for events on their calendar (i.e. not blocking out time they really are available)

#1 is simple, but I wanted to quickly show explain #2 and show how to set the free/busy status for events on your calendar. You may sometimes have events on your calendar that aren't really meetings or even events you will personally attend. They might be personal reminders, or I know some managers keep track of their team's vacation schedule by getting them to send a calendar invite for the times they will be out so the manager has it on their calendar as a reminder. If you have events like this on your calendar, you need to ensure their free/busy status is set to Free. That will still keep it on your calendar, but it won't make it appear like you are blocked off during that time when other people are trying to look at when you would be free using Outlook's Scheduling Assistant.

Here is where you would set the free/busy status when you have a calendar event open in Outlook. They call that event setting Show As:

You can also set the free/busy status for a calendar event from your iPhone. They call that event setting Availability:

When you accept an invite from someone, by default the event will be set to busy when it is added to your calendar. So just remember to change it to Free if it really shouldn't block off your calendar.