Create resource boxes

[hbgpensfan]

Hello, my organization is going from a netware/groupwise environment to Win2K/Exchange2K. We used groupwise in the past to schedule events in our conference rooms along with other "resource" type objects. I'd like to set something similar up in Exchange but I am having a great difficulty figuring out how. I have the users, groups, etc. all set up and it has been tested. I first of all was wondering if this is possible. Do I need a product like conferencing server to do this? If so, are there any third party add-ins that'll do it? If you could help point me in the right direction I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks-
Bill Swanson

 

[majmojo]

The easiest thing to do is to create a mailbox for each resource; i.e. if you have a conference room 1000, name it CR1000, that way all CRs appear together in the address book. There is also a good third party tool called AutoAccept that helps in the managing of the resources.

good luck.
mojo

 

[achilleus]

After some playing around we decided to use the resource booking services available through Outlook. Here are the steps we took:

1) Set up each conference room as a Domain User with Email.
2) Log on to a box using the newly created account.
3) Launch (and configure)Outlook 2000 and go to tools > options > General Tab > Calendar Settings (think thats what its called).
4) From there I can't remember the exact wording, but there is a button that refers to resources. You can set the resource to automatically accept booking requests. Also, it can deny requests if it is already booked.
5) As an optional step, you can copy the calendar to a public folder for others to see and rename it whatever you called the conference room.

This allows users to book the resource using the scheduling functions built into Outlook.

Sorry if this is not clear. I don't have Outlook open so I can't refer to it. Let me know if you need more info.

 

[majmojo]

FWIW-

I had heard that these to not work was well as advertised so you may want to keep an eye on it.

good luck
mojo