Scheduling a Room Resource

The steps to schedule a room calendar for a meeting are based on what you use to access your mail. Once a room is added, it will appear in both the “To:” and “Location:” fields of the invitation.

 

Outlook Web Access (OWA)

1. Open a new Calendar Event
2. In the ‘People’ section click the Scheduling Assistant icon 
3. Set your meetings Start and End times
4. Click the Add Room button
5. Select the room you want to book from the list. If it does not show up it is because OWA shows only rooms available for your selected time slot by default. Click the ‘Show all rooms’ link to show a list of all Rooms if you want to book a specific room and use the Scheduling Assistant to find an open time slot for it.
6. Click OK.

 

Outlook Desktop Client

1. Open a new Meeting
2. Click the Scheduling Assistant button
3. Click the Add Rooms button
4. Search for the room you want to book, select it from the list and click the Rooms → button to add it.
5. Click OK

 

 Scheduling an Event, Vacation, or Equipment Calendar

 

The steps to schedule a resource calendar for a meeting are based on what you use to access your mail.

 

Outlook Web Access (OWA)

1. Open a new Calendar Event
2. In the ‘People’ section click the Scheduling Assistant icon 
3. Set your meetings Start and End times
4. In the Add Attendees field search for the calendar you want to book and select it from the list.
5. Click OK.

 

Outlook desktop client

1. Open a new Meeting
2. Click the Scheduling Assistant button
3. Click the Add Attendees button
4. Search for the resource you want to book, select it from the list and click the Resources → button to add it.
5. Click OK

 

 

Why Can’t I Direct Book the Resource Calendar?

 

Direct Booking is when you place a meeting directly onto the calendar of a resource mailbox, instead of requesting the resource from your calendar using the methods above. This bypasses any Auto-Accept or Delegation behaviors set up for the room causing unpredictable behaviors. Yale ITS does not recommend Direct Booking of resource calendars for the following reasons.

 

1. Direct Booking and direct modification have been shown to result in calendar corruption causing unpredictable behavior such as calendar appointments not appearing the same on all attendees’ calendars or not appearing at all for some attendees.
2. Direct booking requires granting an organizer read/write permission to the calendar. Such users can go onto the resource's calendar and cause issues in the following ways:
   • Delete existing meetings to free up space for their meetings
   • Modify or delete existing meetings and not send changes to all invitees. This can result in people missing meetings, showing up at the wrong times or wrong places, or showing up to canceled meetings. 
3. Direct Booking bypasses the resource’s conflict checking making it likely to have double booking and meeting conflicts. 
4. If a Direct Booked meeting is marked as private, since the meeting is organized by the resource and no one can log into the resource, no one will be able to see, modify, or remove the meeting. You would be unable to use or change the booked time slot if it is now private.

 

See also: Microsoft 365 email: Calendaring Best Practices & Considerations.