10 Minute Guide to Schedule+ for Windows 95 - Lesson 17 - Preparing to Schedule Meetings on a Network In this lesson, you will learn the preparation steps you need to schedule a meeting on your network, including how to invite attendees and pick a time for the meeting. Scheduling Group Meetings When you use Schedule+ in a network environment, you can schedule meetings with other users on your network. Itís easy and fast, and you can coordinate the best possible meeting times, track responses to your meeting invitations, and reschedule appointments with minimal effort. To actually invite someone to a meeting, you send the person an e-mail message describing the event and requesting attendance. You can even e-mail meeting invitations to people outside of your network environment, as long as they use Microsoft Exchange to receive and send e-mail messages. (Although Schedule+ is useful for automating the scheduling and tracking of meetings with attendees outside your network, it is not required.) For example, if youíre setting up a seminar, and you want to invite colleagues from other companies, Schedule+ can help you arrange the event and send out e-mail invitations. When you schedule a meeting, there are several steps you have to go through before you can finalize the meeting on every participantís schedule. Look at this overview of the procedures you need to follow to schedule network meetings. 1. Initially, you need to determine who needs to attend the meeting. After you do this, you can view the schedules of the people you want to attend the meeting using the Invite button on the Planner tab. This button adds other usersí schedules to your Planner view to enable you to see busy and free times. 2. Next, you need to check everybodyís schedules for an available time in which you can all meet. When it comes to finding an appropriate meeting time, Schedule+ has several ways to help you. You can choose a meeting time by manually viewing schedules in the Planner view until you find a good time, or you can use the AutoPick feature to automatically coordinate an available time among all the attendees. 3. After you find a meeting time, you need to send out a Meeting Request. You use Schedule+ís Meeting Request form to send out request messages to everyone you want to attend the meeting. (More about this feature in Lesson 18.) 4. Finally, you can track everybodyís responses to your request and find out whoís attending the meeting and whoís not (see Lesson 18). One of the easiest ways to set up a meeting is to use Schedule+ís Meeting Wizard, a step-by-step approach to arranging a meeting from start to finish. (You learn more about this feature in Lesson 18.) Using the Invite Button The first step to preparing a meeting with other users on your network is to determine who needs to attend the meeting. You can use the Invite button on the Planner tab to view other usersí free and busy times in the Planner view. The Invite button does not invite people to the meeting, it just enables you to see everybodyís schedule at a glance. When creating an attendance list for a meeting, indicate which of the following categories each attendee falls into: Required These are the people whom you require to attend the meeting, and who are essential for the meetingís success. When the attendee notes that you require attendance, it simply signals that you need the attendeeís input. Optional These are the people whose attendance is not absolutely necessary for the meeting, but who you think may be interested in attending or participating. Resource Use this category for the person in charge of the meeting location or any special equipment you need for the meeting (such as a computer or video player). Follow these steps to select attendees with the Invite button: 1. With Schedule+ open to the Planner view tab, click on the Invite button. (This button is only available if youíre using group-enabled mode. See Lesson 1.) See Figure 17.1 to locate the Invite button. Figure 17.1 The Invite button on the Planner view tab. 2. The Select Attendees dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 17.2. You may need to choose another address list from the Show Names from the drop-down list box. Then select the name of a person you want to attend, or type in the name. Figure 17.2 The Select Attendees dialog box. 3. Next, click on the Required, Optional, or Resource button to assign the attendee to a category. 4. After you choose all of the meetingís participants, click on the OK button to return to the Planner view tab. A Step Ahead If you select categories in step 3, you can fill out a Meeting Request form to send out to the attendees more quickly. The names you assign as Required appear in the To line of the request form. The Optional names appear in the Cc line, and the Resource name appears in the Where line. You learn more about the Meeting Request form in Lesson 18. Viewing Free and Busy Times There are several ways that you can view the schedules of the attendees. To see the attendeesí busy times on the Planner as a group, you should view one attendee category at a time. For example, to see the busy times of the Required attendees, double-click on the Required heading in the Attendees box. A check mark next to the category means that the attendeesí schedules appear on the Planner. The busy times for all the attendees in that category appear highlighted by black borders on the Planner grid. After viewing the busy times, click on the category heading to turn off the display for that category. To view all the attendees in each category, as shown in Figure 17.3, double-click on each heading. Figure 17.3 Use the Attendees box to display the busy times of the people you want to attend your meeting. Use any of these other methods to change the attendees whose schedules are displayed: To view just one userís busy times, double-click on the personís name in the Attendees box. Black borders highlight the personís busy times on the Planner. Click anywhere in the Attendees box to clear the black borders from the Planner grid. To see the names of the people who are busy at a specific time on the Planner, double-click on the time slot or right-click the mouse button. To see details about any particular userís schedule, double-click on the busy time slot and select the userís name from the list. If you have access to the userís schedule, you see the details about the userís previously scheduled appointment. Click on any time slot on the Planner grid and look over at the Attendees box to see who is busy and who is free. A check mark appears if that personís schedule is in the Planner. A question mark means that personís schedule is not available. An X indicates that the person has a prior commitment during the meeting time. Reading Bars on a Network Planner As you learned in Lesson 15, the blue bars in your Planner view are exclusive to your schedule. However, when youíre networked, you see other colored bars on the Planner as well. When you publish your schedule on the network, it shows other users a colored bar representing the times you are busy. The colored bars help differentiate between users. Depending on what access permissions you assign, other users may or may not be able to see details about your schedule. Hereís how to read the colored bars in your Planner view: The gray bars on the Planner indicate the busy times of the required attendees at your meetings. The purple bars are busy times for the optional folks attending your meetings. The green bars represent busy times for the resource (meeting location or equipment). Remember, you can double-click on a time block to see details about an attendeeís appointments, as long as you have access to the attendeeís schedule. Selecting a Meeting Time The next step in arranging a meeting is picking out an appropriate time. After you decide who should attend and you view the free and busy times of the attendees, youíre ready to select a meeting time. Probably one of the best tools you can use when you schedule meetings is the AutoPick feature. You can use it to quickly locate free blocks of time for all attendees on the Planner. Hereís what you do: 1. Select the time slot (one or more) in which you want to schedule the meetingótry to pick the earliest date or time you need. 2. Now open the Tools menu and select AutoPick. Schedule+ goes to work, locating the earliest time available for all the attendees and highlighting it on the Planner schedule. 3. If you like the time suggested, click on the Request Meeting button and send out your invitations. If you donít like the time suggested, select Tools, AutoPick and do it again until you find a suitable time. In this lesson, you learned how to prepare for meetings with other users on your network by determining who should attend and selecting a time for the meeting. In the next lesson, youíll learn how to send out Meeting Request forms to invite people to the meeting.

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