Scheduling an appointment

You can schedule meetings and appointments from any view except Preferences. You can schedule an appointment for yourself, or you can schedule a meeting and invite attendees.

The Calendar scheduling tool can assist you with finding the next-available free times and meeting locations across your organization. You can set up preferences for preferred meeting times, buildings, location and room size. As you enter attendee names the wizard begins to suggest times and locations in the Overview pane. You also have the option to look for a location for your meeting before adding attendees. If you set your location preferences, the location lists display their availability.

Scheduling a single meeting from the Appointment page

1. In any view except Preferences, on the toolbar click the arrow on and select Appointment.

For other ways to start an appointment click here.

2. If the From field displays, you created more than one persona for your account. Select the identity to use when creating this appointment.

3. The Subject field is required. Type a description. The appointment displays in the calendar as this description.

Now you can use the Calendar scheduling tool to find the next available free times and meeting locations for attendees.

Note: The scheduling tool is enabled by default. If you do not want the scheduling tool to suggest times and locations automatically, in the Suggest Times>Suggestion Preferences dialog, set the suggestions option to Manual.

4. Enter the start and end date for the meeting. If the scheduling tool is set to automatic, the mini-calendar in the Overview pane displays suggested times and locations that are available.
   
   Note: If the time zone is displayed (Preferences>Calendar), it reflects the time zone that you are in. You usually do not need to change this. When you schedule meetings with attendees in different time zones, the invitation is sent reflecting the meeting time in their time zone. For example, if you create a meeting with attendees in California and New York, the invitation displays Pacific time for attendees in California and Eastern time (three hours later) for attendees in New York.

If you want to find a location for your meeting before adding attendees, in the Overview Pane click on the number to see a list of rooms. When you select a location, the room address is added to the Location field.

If you want to find the times when most users are available and what rooms are available for those time, enter the names of the attendees in the Attendees field. You can enter attendee names in any of the following ways:

• In the Attendees field, type the email addresses, separating addresses by a semicolon (;). As you type, names in your Contact lists that match are displayed. The Scheduler shows any free/busy information that is available.

• Click Attendees to search for addresses to add.

The Scheduler displays free/busy information as you enter attendee names. If attendees' schedules are known, availability appears in horizontal bars next to the names.

Optional Attendees. If some attendees are not required to be at the meeting, but you want to invite them, select Show Optional and type email addresses in the field, or in the Scheduler, click the icon next to the name and select Optional Attendee. When the invite is sent, their names are listed as optional.

If the scheduling tool is set to automatic, as you enter names, the mini-calendar in the Overview pane displays suggested times that all attendees are available and which locations are available. Select location and the time.

Note: If the suggestion tool is set to manual, in the Overview Pane click Show Suggestions for <date> link to display the suggest times and locations.

• To select the start time for the meeting, in the Suggested Times Overview pane, select the time the meeting start.  The Start and End time are updated.  

• In that same row, click on the number link that is displayed. Select a location from the list. The Location field is updated with this location address.

5. Click Show Resources to select equipment to reserve.

6. In the Display section, select how your availability for this meeting should display in the Calendar. Select either free, tentative, busy, or out of office, and if you have multiple calendars select the calendar for this appointment.

You can mark the appointment as private.

7. In the Reminder field, select when you want to be reminded of this meeting.  If you have configured an email address or SMS alert in your Preferences>Notification page, check the appropriate box, Email or SMS. If you have not configured a notification, click Configure to go to the Notification Preferences page to set this up.

8. Use the Text field to add additional information to include in the email. To add attachments, click Add Attachments on the tool bar.

9. In Options on the toolbar, you can disable Request Responses if you do not want to receive responses from the attendees.

10. Click Send. An email invitation is sent to all attendees.

If you want to send the invitation at a later time, click Save. This saves a local copy of the appointment and invitations are not sent to the attendees.

If you are adding an appointment to a shared calendar, you may need to refresh the screen to see the appointment.