Scheduling is a time consuming task.  To reduce the time needed to schedule, you can use Outlook and Microsoft Exchange.  For example, I needed to schedule a meeting today with Dave Harestad, eOptimize VP Products and Services.  We needed our small conference room and the projector. 

To automatically schedule our design meeting, I went into Outlook 2003 and created a new appointment.  I then selected the Scheduling tab which is near the top of the dialog. I next added Dave Harestad, Conference Room - Small, and the Projector (our system administrator had created the last two resources).  I entered 12:00 - 12:30 for the meeting time.  Next I clicked on the AutoPick Next >> button near the bottom of the dialog.  This is what it looked like:

On the bottom right you can see that Outlook automatically looked ahead and found the first time when all four people and resources were available, which happened to be 3:30 today.  Visually, you can see the vertical bar in white with green and red edges which are located in the 3:30 - 4:00 time period.

I’ve used Outlook for nearly a decade and it’s only since joining eOptimize that I discovered this useful feature of Outlook and Exchange for automating scheduling. How many other Outlook users have never used this feature?  I’m guessing that it’s quite a lot.

David Greer

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Outlook, Scheduling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.