There are several benefits to planning a meeting via Outlook.  First, as the attendees respond to your request through email, you automatically keep track of everyone's responses so that you can see at a glance who will be attending and who will not.  Second, for those attendees that accept the meeting invitation, Outlook automatically schedules the meeting on their calendars as soon as they respond.  Third, canceling a meeting is easy!  Outlook automatically sends a cancellation notice to all the attendees when you decide to cancel.  Once the attendees open the cancellation notice, they can easily remove the meeting from their calendars from within the notice window.  Keep in mind that planning a meeting using Outlook works only for those attendees who also use Outlook.

Planning a Meeting

1. Be sure you are viewing the Outlook calendar, and from the Actions menu, choose Plan a Meeting.  The Plan a Meeting dialog box appears as below.

2.  Choose the Invite Others button to open the Select Attendees and Resources dialog box.  Select attendees from the lists available in Outlook and choose either the Required or Optional buttons according to whether or not you wish them to be required to come to the meeting.  You can choose from your Contacts list, the Global Address List, etc.

Note that you have a Resources button available.  This is used to choose rooms and/or equipment from the Resources list.  Not all companies include their resources for meetings in Outlook.  If a Resources list is available to you, that means you can also choose a room and/or equipment while you are planning your meeting.

3.  Once you have selected all of your attendees and resources, choose OK.  You will be returned to the Plan a Meeting dialog box where your attendees will be listed along with the grid which shows their available times.

Choosing a Time/Sending the Request

The currently selected meeting time is shown as a white bar on the grid (See previous graphic).  Your goal is for this bar to remain white -- this indicates that no one is busy during the planned meeting time.  Any person who is busy or out of the office will show a color on the white bar according to the color key below the grid.  The striped "No Information" indicator shows for those who are not using your Outlook server.  This would include those who are not with your company.  However, if those who are not with your company are using Outlook, they should still receive a meeting invitation and be able to respond, but you will not be able to see ahead of time if they are available for the meeting.

1.  Find a time when all or most of your attendees are available.

With the Options button, you can choose to show only the working hours on the grid, show it zoomed out to see more on the grid, and/or update the free and busy times shown for the attendees to include any recent changes in their calendars since you started planning your meeting.

You can pick your own time for the meeting using the drop-down arrows for date and time, or have Outlook find the next available time when people can attend by using AutoPick.

Use the back pointing arrows next to the AutoPick button to select a time previous to what is currently shown for the meeting start and end times, or the forward pointing arrows to select a time after the start and end times currently shown.  AutoPick also has some options:

For example, you can choose to have AutoPick select a date and time when only the required people will be able to attend.  This is very helpful when you are scheduling a meeting and a good time is difficult to find.  The default setting is to find a time when all people can attend and at least one of your resources is available.

2. Once you have selected all of the attendees/resources and an appropriate meeting time, choose the Make Meeting button.

3. The Untitled - Meeting window is displayed as shown below.  Type a Subject for the email and any pertinent details in the message area.

4. Choose the Send button to send the email request to the attendees.

Tracking a Meeting

Attendees can choose Accept, Tentative, or Decline when they reply to your meeting request.  Once you start receiving replies, Outlook automatically keeps track of the replies in the original request email that was sent.

1.  Navigate to the Sent items folder, and find the original email you sent requesting the meeting.  Double-click to open the email in its own window.  You will not see the proper tabs if you view the email in the preview pane.

2.  Select the Attendee Availability tab, as shown below, to see the results of replies received.  Note that you can add attendees in this window by typing the name or using the Invite Others button.  You can also re-check the calendars of the attendees to see if they are available by choosing Show attendee availability.

Canceling a Meeting

The easiest way to cancel a meeting you have created is to attempt to delete the meeting entry from your own calendar.  When you choose to delete the meeting, Outlook recognizes that you were the meeting planner and asks if you would like to send a cancellation notice to the attendees, as shown below.

When you choose to send a cancellation, Outlook brings up a cancellation email addressed to the attendees and allows you to send the message from that window.  A cancellation message makes it easy for attendees to remove the meeting from their calendar by providing a button for them to do so in the email message window.