It has become increasingly important for administrative assistants and secretaries to be able to check and reply to email, maintain a current calendar, and even keep up with a task list for their boss.  In addition, many executives today have a high mobility rate.  Are they in the office or out of the office?  In order for other key employees in the office to keep up with executive schedules, it is necessary for some to be able to view another person's calendar.  Microsoft Outlook provides easy access to these items right on the user's desktop by setting up delegates and permissions on the machines in question.

Note:  Delegates and permissions work only on machines which share a common server.  In other words, this only works on Outlook network installations such as you would find in an office setting.

Assigning Delegates and Permissions

The person who wants others to access his/her Outlook items (the delegator), must first give permission to those he/she wants to have access (the delegates) from within his/her own Outlook program.  With the proper permission, delegates can also send items on your behalf.  Therefore, this is also called "Send-on-behalf-of" permission.

At the DELEGATOR'S workstation:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Options.

2. In the Options dialog box, select the Delegates tab and choose Add.

3. The Add Users dialog box is displayed and looks almost exactly like the box you would see when accessing your company address list.  Select the name of the delegate from the Global Address List and choose Add.

4. Choose OK.  Upon choosing OK, the Delegate Permissions dialog box immediately appears and allows you to set the various Outlook permission levels for this delegate.   For our purposes here, John Smith is the delegator, and Karyn Stille is the delegate.

5. Set the permission levels for each Outlook item.  The following table outlines the various permission levels that can be set.

Note:  Editor permission must be granted to those whom you wish to send email on your behalf.

6. Once the permissions are set, choose OK through all open boxes to return to the Inbox.

In order for the delegate to be able to view the items from his/her personal workstation, the delegator must also give permission to view the folders.

7. If you are not already displaying the Folder List in the Inbox, from the View menu, choose Folder List.

8. Right-click on Outlook Today [Mailbox-Delegator's Name].

9. From the shortcut menu, as shown below, choose Properties.

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10. Select the Permissions tab in the Properties dialog box, and choose Add.

11. Select the delegate's name from the Global Address List as before.

12. Choose Add and OK.

13. Highlight the delegate's name in the Properties dialog box.

14. In the options toward the bottom of the box, make a check mark next to Folder Visible.

15. Choose OK, and if necessary, turn the Folder List off from the View menu.

Now it's time to set up the delegate's workstation to view the permitted items.

Keep going!