Working with Schedules of Others

At the beginning of this workshop, we created a lunch appointment with our colleague, Abby. In the preceding video, we saw how to mark that meeting as tentative until we could confirm with Abby that she was available.

To confirm, we could send her an email and then wait for her reply, but that is not an efficient way to schedule meetings. Instead, we will use the Scheduling Assistant in Outlook.This feature allows users to make sure that others are available during a specific time slot, so that when meeting invitations are sent, there is a very good chance that the people invited will be available during that time.

First, let's find the appointment for the lunch date with Abby.

Changing Calendar Views

We may have strayed away from our current time frame. Let's move back to today's date, so that it will be easier to find the lunch date that we need to reschedule.

Step1. To move to the Home tab, on the Ribbon, if necessary,

Click the Home tab

Step2. To move to today's date on the calendar, in the Go To group,

Click

Today's date appears. Our tentative lunch date is the next weekday.

We see on the left side of the window that the Date Navigator has some dates marked in bold. The bolded days indicate active appointments. We can use the Date Navigator to get to the appointment labeled, "Lunch with Abby."

Step3. To move to the tentative date with the manager, in the Date Navigator,

Clickthe date for the next weekday

The date that has the appointment labeled, "Lunch with Abby" appears. Let's change the view of the calendar, so that we can see the entire week.

Step4. To view the Outlook calendar in Week view, in the Arrange group,

Click

We see our calendar's view change to a week (Sunday through Saturday), with several cells that represent the days of the week.

Let's open the appointment.

Step5. To open the appointment,

Double-Click the appointment labeled, "Lunch with Abby"

The Appointment form opens.

Viewing Free and Busy Times

When we set this up as an appointment earlier, we did not invite Abby to meet with us. Let's do that now.

Step1. To invite Abby, in the Attendees group,

Click

When we use the Invite Attendees button, Outlook knows that we are converting this appointment into a meeting. Therefore, a "To..." field is added, and we can invite others.

Step2. To enter the username, in the "To..." field, type:

demo31 Tab key

Since our subject line will show up in both calendars (our own and our colleague's) we should replace the current subject with one that makes sense to everyone.

Step3. To add more information to the subject line,

Press & Drag "Lunch with Abby,"

type: Lunch-Mary/Abby

Since Abby isn't expecting this meeting invitation, we should add a message that will explain.

Step4. To add some body text, in the body section, type:

Abby,

Would you like to meet for lunch tomorrow?

Regards,
Mary

Now we have a meeting invitation. However, if we send this out now, there is a very good chance that the person we are inviting may be busy during the proposed time. We could wait for a reply and then change the time as needed, but that is a very inefficient way to schedule meetings, especially if we were inviting several people.

Outlook includes a Scheduling Assistant that allows us to look at the schedules of others and select meeting times when they are free. While this feature isn't foolproof, since they may not always record all of their activities on their Outlook calendar, it can save meeting initiators lots of time and energy.

Step5. To view our colleague's Free/Busy times, in the Show group,

Click

We see the Free/Busy schedule for ourself and for Abby:

We can see that Abby is available during the noon hour on this day (if she has recorded all of her activities in her Outlook calendar). Earlier, we made this meeting Tentative because we weren't certain Abby could make it. Since acceptance of our invitation will make both people busy at this time, we want to change that time to Busy instead of Tentative.

Step6. To designate the meeting as Busy, in the Options group, if necessary,

Click, Click Busy

When the server next updates information, our time will be marked as busy.

In the timeline portion of the dialog box, we see blue vertical lines on each side of the time block. We could press and drag these lines these to change the meeting's duration.

We can send the meeting invitation from here, or we can move back to the Appointment form and edit the message before sending the meeting invitation. Since we want to add a location to the meeting, we will move back to the Appointment form now.

Step7. To move back to the Appointment form, on the Ribbon,

Click

Step8. To add a new location for our meeting, in the Location field, type:

Campus Center

Step9. To invite our colleague, to the left of the attendee names,

Click

Our invitation has been sent.

Viewing Non-Consecutive Days

In the last exercise, when scheduling the appointment with Abby, we looked at the Outlook calendar using the "Week" view. There is also a "Work Week" view, which displays only Monday through Friday. But what if someone does not work a traditional work week? Let's say that she works Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays on most weeks. If this is the case, she may want to pull up just these days on her calendar.

Outlook allows us to view up to 15 non-consecutive calendar days in a single window.

Step1. To return to the Home command tab, on the Ribbon,

Click the Home tab

The calendar appears, in the week view.

Step2. To return to 1-day view, in the Arrange group,

Click

Step3. To view today's date, in the Date Navigator,

Click Today's date

Step4. To view several non-consecutive days, press:

Control key and Click a nearby day in the Date Navigator

The 1-day view of both days appears in the calendar window.

Step5. To view more days, repeat step 3, above.

The window accommodates more days as we continue to select them. The days will appear in chronological order no matter how they are selected.

NOTE: To deselect a date, Control key and Click the date in the Date Navigator.

Step6. To return to the current day, in the Arrange group,

Click