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Scheduling Company Resources in Microsoft Outlook

A resource mailbox is used for scheduling conference rooms or the use of company equipment. To schedule a resource, the resource must have its own mailbox on your organization's account. An administrator in the organization should set up the mailbox and then give permission to others to schedule the resource. Aside from that, the resource is self-sufficient; accepting and rejecting invitations automatically. When you want to schedule the resource, you can invite it to a meeting. The invitation is accepted if the resource is free, and the meeting is automatically entered in the resource's calendar.

1. Create a new mailbox.

Create a new Hosted Exchange Professional Mailbox

Your organization should come up with a naming convention for resources. Perhaps all conference rooms could start with CONF or company cars could start with VEHICLE. If you have multiple resource mailboxes, you might prefix all entries with RES_, as in "RES_VEHICLE" and "RES_CONF". Since entries in the Global Address List (GAL) are alphabetical, this will keep all resources together.

2. Setup a new Outlook profile for this mailbox.

The Resource mailbox must have its own Exchange Profile created. The mailbox can be created either by running the Outlook Auto-configure tool or AutoDiscover. Once the Resource profile is created, logging into this mailbox is not needed.

After following the steps below the mailbox is set up to automatically accept Meeting requests and process cancellations.

3. Log-in into the resource mailbox within Outlook to configure Resource Scheduling.

1. Launch Outlook
2. Click Tools > Options > Preferences > Calendar Options
Tools>Options>Preferences>Calendar Options
3. Select Resource Scheduling
Resource Scheduling
4. Select the desired Resource Scheduling options. Next click Set Permissions.

The best practice is: Select automatically accept Meeting requests and process cancellations and automatically decline conflicting meeting requests
Set Permissions

5. Select Add to grant the users who will be allowed to use the resource. Be sure to assign at least author permissions and make sure to add users, not groups of users.
Add
6. Set up is Complete! Close Outlook since it doesn't need to remain open for the scheduling assistant to operate.

Booking the Resource

Use the following steps to invite attendees and resources to a meeting:

1. Click Calendar.
2. In the Actions menu, click Plan A Meeting.
3. In the Plan A Meeting dialog box, click Invite Others.
4. In the Type name or Select from List box, type the name of the person or resource that you want at the meeting.
5. For each name entered, click either Required, Optional, or Resources.

NOTE: As a rule, users should be invited as Required or Optional, and resources like the conference room name should be invited as Resources. The meeting invitation is addressed with the required and optional attendees appearing in the To box on the Appointment tab, and the resources appear in the Location box.
6. Click OK, and then use the scroll bars to view the free/busy time for invitees.
7. Click a time when all invitees are available. You can use AutoPick to find the next available free time for all invitees.
8. Click Make Meeting.

Note: When you direct book a resource, you update the free/busy information for the resource.

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