scheduling assistant | Thomas' Work Space

Scheduling assistant shows no information on free/busy

2014/01/16 plagwitz Leave a comment

This effectively prevents all reservations of shared equipment. We tested with these 4 resources, and increasingly nearer dates in the future (from May to today). This is in Offcie265 from a student account. From a staff account in OWA, I do not see the same behavior:

Update: A resolution is being worked on… Update2: FIXED

Categories: e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, service-is-library Tags: calendaring, live@edu, ms-exchange, office365, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling assistant, sharing

The Scheduling Assistant is simply multiple calendars displayed as parallel timelines for easier comparison

2013/09/09 plagwitz Leave a comment

We are all conversant in reading a daily – like here for the classroom-, weekly or monthly calendar sheet:
If you send a Meeting request to the classroom to book it, the Scheduling Assistant displays exactly the same free/busy information for the classroom.
1. Same pattern of events as above:
2. Except that it is folded from a calendar into a timeline format (and in OWA does not display text explanatory beyond with what/whom the room is busy).
3. This timeline format may be less familiar, but is much more practical to compare the availability for the multiple participants of a meeting.
Compare here: Same pattern for the room booking on both views.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure Tags: calendaring, live@edu, ms-exchange, office365, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling assistant

How to find resources that best fit your schedule using the OWA scheduling assistant parallel timelines

2013/09/02 plagwitz Leave a comment

Load all equivalent resources for each resource type that you require.
Using the parallel free/busy timelines in the “Scheduling Assistant”, look for and “plug the holes” (in white):
1. In the above example,
  1. for the given time frame (between rad/green line), no item is completely available;
  2. however, if you adjust your time frame slightly to earlier in the morning, you would be able to book either camera13 and 17 (assuming you need only one) and micboom 2
Remove the resources from the “Attendee list that are non-white = busy for the start/end time that you require the resources for.
Click upper left menu: “Send” to book.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, Film-studies, service-is-library Tags: calendaring, FAQs, live@edu, ms-exchange, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling, scheduling assistant, sharing

How to view the full MS-Exchange resource booking details in scheduling assistant

2013/08/13 plagwitz 3 comments

If you set resource mailbox calendar default permissions to “full details” like so:
you will get the benefit of seeing immediately the contact info of other bookers of the resource in the scheduling assistant , like so:
That is more personal and personable – in Outlook! In OWA of exchange 2010 sp2, you still do not, and you have to go through the full calendar (subscribed or published with full detail like in the view links here).
Here is a little bonus for the recent commenter: You may have to trigger a refresh (wait time seemed bit enough). The information for the resources at the bottom I started seeing only after I switched back and forth between scheduling assistant/appointment/scheduling assistant view.

Categories: e-infrastructure Tags: ms-exchange-2010, outlook-2010, OWA, scheduling assistant

How to poll for the best meeting time using Meeting Requests

2011/11/21 plagwitz 1 comment

Please also see the follow-up user-perspective video here: How to respond to a poll for the best meeting time using Meeting Requests.
A traditional issue around the LRC is getting busy teachers to agree on a common workshop time. Ideally, the scheduling assistant would automate this by allowing you to see the common free time slot in their busy timelines. However, this requires that the university calendaring system has already been widely adopted. In the meantime, meeting requests can still greatly facilitate finding this most common free time, by serving as a poll.
To find the most popular time slot, send a number of alternative meeting requests with the instruction: “If interested in the workshop, please accept those times during which you could attend. I will only not cancel the most popular meeting time”. (Make sure that respondents know that they can “Edit response before sending” to include a message, or else this will skew the tally).
At the end, you can easily tally the response in your calendar, and, as the meeting organizer, cancel the unpopular ones:
And you can spare everybody one final summary email: “ Mark your calendars!” . The interested parties’ calendar has already be marked.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, documentation, service-is-training Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, meeting-requests, ms-exchange, ms-outlook, scheduling, scheduling assistant

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Resource Calendaring: How to use the Scheduling Assistant in OWA

2011/08/31 plagwitz 10 comments

The scheduling assistant lets you find a common free time for all the (resource and human) participants of your meeting request.
The scheduling assistant shows you start/end meeting time and free/busy information.
The default shows only work hours:
You can show more than work hours (useful for some resources):
You may also be able to see the meeting subjects.
You can spot scheduling conflicts in advance, instead of sending a meeting request that will have to be denied.
For some resources, you can make a recurrent/repeating meeting request: . note that you will lose the begin/end markers: