Scheduling Meetings


When you want to schedule a meeting with other people, you send an appointment message.

NOTE

Appointment messages that you send to other people are sometimes referred to as meetings or meeting requests .


In some cases you may need to schedule a meeting for someone else, such as your supervisor. GroupWise enables you to schedule meetings for others (in other words, meetings that you don't plan to attend ).

You can use the GroupWise Proxy feature to view and manage others' Calendars. (Chapter 8, "Advanced Features," explains the Proxy feature.)

Sending Appointments

You send appointments to other GroupWise users to schedule meetings either for yourself or for someone else. When you want to send an appointment, you must set a start date, a start time, and a durationjust like you do for posted (personal) appointments. The only difference is that you are sending the appointment request to others, not just adding the appointment to your Calendar.

To create and send an appointment, follow these steps:

  1. Click File, New, Appointment or click the New Appt button on the Toolbar. You'll see the screen shown in Figure 7.1.

    Figure 7.1. The New Appointment screen provides many fields to designate details about the meeting, such as place and duration.

    graphics/07fig01.jpg

  2. Address the appointment message just as you would any other type of GroupWise messageby entering the names in the To field or by using the Address Book. If you plan to attend the meeting, make sure you include your own name in the To field. If you do not include your own name , the appointment will not appear in your Calendar. (By default, GroupWise inserts your name in the To field when you create an appointment.)

  3. Enter the location of the meeting in the Place field.

    TIP

    If your system administrator has made the meeting place (for example, a certain conference room) a resource, you can schedule the room at the same time you send the appointment. Open the Address Book and click View, Filter for Resources. Select the room from the list of resources. If the room has not been defined as a resource, you can describe the meeting place in the Place field, but the room will not be reserved by GroupWise.

  4. Enter a subject in the Subject line. (Be descriptive because only the Subject line appears in the recipients' Calendars.)

  5. Enter detailed information about the meeting in the Message field. If you like, you can attach a file, such as the meeting agenda.

  6. Set the date of the meeting by typing the date in the Start Date field or by clicking the small calendar icon to the right of that field.

    NOTE

    If you want to create a recurring appointment, you can use the Auto-Date feature, explained later in this chapter.

  7. Set the time of the meeting by typing the time in the field to the right of the small calendar icon or by clicking the small clock icon next to that field.

  8. Enter the duration of the meeting in the Duration field (or set the duration by clicking the small clock icon to the right of the Duration field).

  9. Choose Send.

The appointment appears in the recipients' Mailboxes and Calendars.

When you schedule meetings, you can use the Busy Search feature to find a time when all attendees are available. The Busy Search feature automatically sets the date, time, and duration of the meeting. Busy Searches are explained in the next section.

Busy Search

The Busy Search feature is a very powerful GroupWise scheduling tool. You no longer need to call people in advance of a meeting to find a time when everyone can meet. GroupWise takes care of that chore for you.

To perform a Busy Search when scheduling a meeting, follow these steps:

  1. Open a new appointment message and use the Address Book to place the attendees' addresses in the To field.

  2. Click the Busy Search button in the Toolbar. GroupWise searches the users' Calendars and displays the Choose Appointment Time dialog box, as shown in Figure 7.2.

    Figure 7.2. Busy Search will display the availability for invitees to your meeting.

    graphics/07fig02.jpg

The Choose Appointment Time dialog box presents you with a grid showing you the schedule of each user you specified. An empty space across from the username indicates that the user is available for that time.

If you want GroupWise to show you the times when all users are available, click the Available Times tab (see Figure 7.3).

Figure 7.3. The Available Times tab will help you select the best time for the meeting.

graphics/07fig03.jpg

You can select the appointment time from either of the Choose Appointment Time screens. To set the appointment time, follow these steps:

  1. Click the highlighted box in the grid and drag it to a time the attendees are available. You can click and drag the sides of this box to increase or decrease the duration of the meeting.

  2. Click OK. The date and time of the meeting appear in the appropriate fields of the appointment message.

Here are some handy Busy Search tips:

  • To include more users in the Busy Search from the Choose Appointment Time dialog box, click the Invite To Meeting button.

  • If there isn't a time when all attendees are free, you can extend the search to include more days by clicking the Invite To Meeting button and increasing the value in the Number Of Days To Search field.

  • When the Choose Appointment Time dialog box shows that some users are busy, you can find out what a user has scheduled by clicking the box representing that timeslot. (You can see the person's schedule only if the user has granted you access rights to his or her Calendar.)

  • The Auto-Select button selects a time when all the selected users are free for the duration you have specified.

  • You can exclude a user from the Busy Search without removing the user from the To field by choosing the Available Times tab and then clearing the check mark that appears next to the user's name in the right side of the dialog box. (This exclusion feature is useful when someone should be invited, but it is not absolutely necessary for that person to attend.)

  • To perform a Busy Search before creating your appointment message, choose Tools, Busy Search. Enter the users in the dialog box that appears.

  • You can add names to the Busy Search by clicking the Invite To Meeting button. You can delete names from the Busy Search by clicking the username and pressing the Delete key.

  • If you are Busy Searching for multiple users, GroupWise may take awhile to return the results on all users. You can minimize the Busy Search dialog box and work on other tasks while GroupWise receives the Busy Search results. A status box will appear on your Windows taskbar showing you the search progress.

  • You can do a Busy Search for a resource (such as a conference room, company car, or VCR) to find out times when the resource is not reserved.

Here's how to change Busy Search defaults:

  1. Click Tools, Options.

  2. Double-click the Date and Time icon.

  3. Choose the Busy Search tab.

NOTE

The Busy Search feature is only useful if all GroupWise users keep their Calendars up to date. Remember also that appointments can be delegated by recipients. Check the status of the message to see if any of the intended attendees have delegated the appointment to another person.


Busy Search is a very good tool to make sure the meetings you are scheduling work with the schedules of the attendees.

iCal Appointments

iCal is a relatively new standard for calendar information sent to Internet recipients.

When you are sending a new appointment to an Internet recipient and that person's system can work with iCal messages, the appointment will be displayed in his or her native system's calendar.

NOTE

In GroupWise 6.5, this feature only works if you are sending appointments from POP3/IMAP4 accounts (discussed in Chapter 8).


To enable iCal appointments, verify that you are in either Caching or Remote mode and then click Accounts, Account Options, General Options. Select the option Use iCal when Sending Appointments via SMTP and then click OK.



Novell GroupWise 6.5 Users Handbook
Novell GroupWise 6.5 Users Handbook
ISBN: 0789729830
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 191

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