In addition to inviting people to attend meetings, you can also schedule resources, such as the conference room where you plan to hold the meeting, or the slide projector you plan to use for a presentation.

In order to schedule a resource, the resource must have its own mailbox on your server. An individual in the organisation sets up and administers the mailbox. 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.

The administrator for the resource can restrict the ability to schedule the resource. For example, if only managers are allowed to book certain conference rooms, permissions can be set so that requests from managers are accepted and requests from non-managers are declined.

Step by Step

1. Set up a mailbox profile for the resource in Exchange.
2. Open Outlook in the profile that has been set up for the resource.
3. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Calendar Options.
4. Click Resource Scheduling.
5. Click the options you want.
6. Click Set Permissions, and then complete the procedure for setting resource permissions for users. The Resource users are those in the organisation who will have access to booking the various resources.