Setting up a resource in Outlook

[sierrapeac]

I want to set up a resource in Outlook. I want to be able to schedule meeting in our conference room. I set up an exchange account as a user called Conference room. When we send a meeting request I want the conference room to automatically respond with yes or no. When we send the meeting request to the conference room we don't get a reply. Is there a way to do this? Is there a better way to set up a resource? Thanks.

 

[StevenGates]

We have set up a resource account for our conference room as well. I don't know all the answers to your questions, but I'll share what I've learned...

If you want a reply to come back approving reservation of the conference room, that implies that you want someone to do the approving. That someone would be set up as a 'delegate' for the resource account with rights to send and receive messages on behalf of the resource.

We originally set ours up this way with our receptionist being that delegated user. (After all, she was maintaining the physical calendar we were trying to replace!) What we discovered is that we were working harder than we had to.

In our case, we don't really require 'approval' if someone wants to use the confernce room, we used to go through the receptionist purely as a way of making sure the room didn't get double-booked. Now that the conference room schedule is available under Outlook, we've gone back to the idea that people can schedule the room for any time that it's free. (If they need a time slot that's not free, it's up to them to go to whoever booked the room and negotiate.)

It sounds as though this approach would work for you, no? By asking for the conference room to reply with a yes or a no, aren't you really asking for it to confirm whether or not it's available? If so, no message is required- the meeting originator can see whether it's available in the free-busy status window in Outlook (and shouldn't be booking a meeting for when the room is busy anyway!).

HTH!

Steven