A user came to me for advice, asking "What’s the best way to book recurring meetings with high number of attendees?" Her problem is first make sure the conference room is available for all the occurrences and rest of the attendees on the same time. It’s really tough job. Her major problem was some occurrence in a conference room was not available, so the whole meeting request was rejected by the "Auto Accept Agent" from our Exchange server.
Now I have to give her some advice and I did. Before I go on for the advice, I wish Microsoft provides the following feature in Outlook (may be in future). I will check Microsoft Office site to see I can ask for this feature.
From the Meeting Request Window in Outlook, There must be a option to check all the occurrences are available or not for selected attendee or conference room.
Now the some advices on booking recurring meetings:
– Do NOT ever book "No End Date" meetings, See the referenced picture below
– Use Auto-Pick feature (in Scheduling tab). Many users don’t even try this. I would say give it a try.
– Open the conference room calendar in Outlook (File–>Open Other Users Calendar..). Change the view to "Monthly". Check your meeting occurrences manually.
– I saw an admin who books the conference room first. After she gets the confirmation from the conference room (Accepted by Auto Accept Agent in Exchange servers), she invites all other attendees.
– You may add two or three conference rooms into the same meeting request and check the availability at same time. Of course, you have to remove other conference rooms except the "One" from the meeting request later.
Anand, the Architect 