One of Outlook 2000’s greatest strengths is its ability to let you work with others.
Using Outlook’s
Plan a Meeting tool, you can plan a meeting with one or several people.
Outlook’s scheduling features allow you to check other people’s schedules to determine their availability. In addition, you can use Outlook’s
AutoPick feature to automatically find the first time when all attendees are available, even if the first available time is several days in the future.
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.
Keep going!
