Working With Group Meetings in Outlook 2003

Group meetings allow you to schedule more than one person at a time for a meeting - you don't have to schedule the meeting on each individual's calendar. There are several ways to work with group meetings in Outlook. You can add members to a meeting on the fly or you can create your own group for people that you schedule often. When adding a group meeting, you should look to see if there are any conflicts with the attendees before scheduling a meeting.

Publishing Free/Busy Information

Finding Available Times & Scheduling A Group Meeting

Cancelling a Meeting

Responding to Meeting Requests

Scheduling a Group (e.g., Distribution List)

Publishing Free/Busy Information

When others plan meetings, they may need to view the times when you are busy, free, or out of the office. The default in Outlook 2003 is to publish 2 months in the future.

1. Choose Tools | Options
2. Click Calendar Options button in the Preferences tab
3. Click Free/Busy Options button in the Advanced options section
4. Under Options, choose a time period to publish your information on the server. Publish ? month(s) of Calendar free/busy information on the server..
5. Click OK | OK | OK

Finding Available Times & Scheduling Group Meeting

1. Open your Outlook Calendar
2. Click on the Actions menu
3. Click on Plan a Meeting
   
   
   
   
4. To invite attendees, click the Add Others button
5. Select Add from Address Book
6. Select a name from the list. If you want to invite people not listed in the GAL (Global Address Book), click the Advanced button and chose New to add them
7. Select each name and click Required, Optional, or Resources (Note: If you are scheduling a Resource you MUST add it as 'Resources' otherwise, it won't be scheduled).
   
   
   
   
8. Click OK
9. To have Outlook automatically choose a time, click the AutoPick Next button. Outlook will automatically choose a time according to everyone's schedule. You can also choose the meeting date and time manually
10. Click the Make Meeting button. The appointment window opens
    
    
    
    
11. In the Subject field, type the subject of the meeting
12. If you did not schedule a room, you may want to enter a location in the Location field
13. Select any other options
14. If the meeting is recurring, click the Recurrence button. Select the recurrence pattern range of recurrence options
15. Click Send. The meeting invitation is sent to all attendees

Note: If you do not want to receive responses, uncheck the Request Responses option under the Actions drop-down menu.

Once the meeting request has been sent, you can track responses by double-clicking the meeting in your calendar. Click the Tracking button in the appointment to see how many people have accepted, tentatively accepted, or declined your request.

Cancelling a Meeting You Scheduled

To cancel a meeting you scheduled, follow the steps below:

1. Open the meeting to be canceled in your Calendar.
2. Click Actions, and then click Cancel Invitation
3. Select to either 'Send cancellation and delete meeting' OR 'Delete without sending a cancellation' and click OK. The meeting is removed from your Calendar.
   
   Note: We recommend that you DO send a cancellation notice, because if you do not, the meeting attendees will not know the meeting has been cancelled.

Responding to Meeting Requests

When someone schedules a meeting and you are invited to attend, you will receive an email message stating the time, date, and location of the meeting.

You will see five buttons at the top of the email message: Accept, Tentative, Decline, Propose New Time and Calendar

Accept - You want to accept the meeting and add it to your Calendar

Tentative - You want to tentatively accept the meeting and add it to your Calendar

Decline - You want to decline the meeting and not add it to your Calendar

Propose New Time - You want to propose a new date/time for the meeting

Calendar - You want to see the appointment in your Calendar before responding

You should take one of the actions above for each meeting you are invited to attend.

Note: If you want to change your response to a meeting request, right-click either the original email message requesting the meeting or the meeting in your Calendar. A shortcut menu appears. Click Accept, Tentative, Decline or Propose New Time.

Scheduling a Group (e.g., Distribution List)

If you need to repeatedly schedule the same group of people in meetings, you may want to create a Distribution List in Hawkmail to use when scheduling this group of people. (Note: you can use the same distribtution list to send messages to these people).

To Create a Distibution List

1. Choose File | New | Distibution List
2. In the Name: field, type the name of the distribution list
3. Click Add New button
4. Manually type the Display Name and E-mail Address in the fields provided
   OR
   Click the Select Members button to search for and select members from your Address Book.
5. Click the Save and Close button.

You can now use this distribution list when you create a new meeting. Note: your distribution lists are stored in your Contacts folder, where you will be able to make changes to the list(s).

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