When you are creating a meeting, you can use the scheduling assistant and room finder to help you find a time and location that works for everyone on your meeting invitation.

Using Scheduling Assistant

To use the scheduling assistant, first enter all the required and optional attendees on your meeting invite. Then select the Scheduling Assistant from the ribbon. In the Scheduling Assistant, you will see a separate row for each attendee. You can add additional attendees at any time by typing their name or email address into a blank row in the Scheduling Assistant.

Here is the color coding you will see in Scheduling Assistant:

• White = available
• Gray = outside working hours
• Dark blue = busy
• Light blue hashed = tentative appointment

To find a time when everyone is available, you can either use the start and end time dropdowns to look at a particular date and time, or you can use the scroll bar to scroll right and left and browse different dates and times.

Scheduling Assistant will only show you availability for individuals who have shared their calendars with you. In many organizations, all company calendars are automatically shared. This means Scheduling Assistant is a powerful tool for internal meetings with others in your organization, but often not available or helpful for scheduling a meeting with someone external, like a vendor. In that case, you will likely need to email the other person to determine a good time to set up a meeting.

Using Room Finder

After you click on Scheduling Assistant, you will see the Room Finder on the right hand side of the meeting. You can use the “Show a room list:” drop down menu to select a room. These lists are only available if they have been set up by your organization.

Based on the attendees who you’ve already added and the rooms available, the Room Finder will show on the small calendar which days are Good, Fair, and Poor for scheduling your meeting. You will also see an area below the room list with Suggested times, again based on the attendees and the rooms available. You can click on any suggested time to select it.