Outlook Scheduling Assistant

Have you ever needed to set up an outlook meeting with multiple people within your company and had trouble trying to figure out a free time in everyone's schedule?

In this quick tip, we are going to be using the Outlook scheduling assistant to see when your co-workers are available so you can schedule internal meetings hassle-free!

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How to use Outlook Scheduling Assistant video transcript:

Have you ever needed to set up an outlook meeting with multiple people within your company and had trouble trying to figure out a free time in everyone’s schedule?

In this Quick Tip, we’re going to be using the Scheduling Assistant to see when your co-workers are available so you can schedule internal meetings in a snap.

Let’s say Oscar gets an email from his boss saying that he needs to set up a department meeting sometime next week.

At first, this can seem like a big task, but Oscar can do this very quickly provided that his co-workers are a part of the same outlook exchange server and they have their permissions set to free/busy (which should be the Outlook calendar default).

We could click on the New Meeting button here, but let’s use the workweek view to pick a time that currently works with Oscar’s calendar. Find a time, Click and drag, title it, and press enter. And if you didn’t get the time just right, click on the meeting to highlight it and drag the border down.

We can change this from an appointment to a meeting by right-clicking and selecting invite attendees. This brings up the meeting window.

In the To: column type in your co-worker’s names or email addresses.

To see their availability, in the Show section, click on Scheduling Assistant

Here are the co-workers invited and their availability

You can see our meeting right there. It looks like both Wendy and Edward are busy at that time. We know this because if we click this drop-down we can see that blue means busy. So our original time is not going to work.

We can either scroll through to find another time that does work. Or you can click through the days here to find openings. Down here is a list of Suggested Times. For example, it’s pointing out that Wednesday morning is free. 9 AM looks like a great time for a department meeting.

Finally, let’s go back to the Appointment button and add a room and note and hit Send.

Now when I go back into the appointment and click on Scheduling Assistant, we can see according to the key this time slot is marked as “Tentative” on everyone’s calendar if they accept they’re calendar will be marked busy.

And that’s about it. The Outlook Scheduling Assistant makes scheduling a breeze. Now Oscar’s department has been invited to the meeting at a time that looks convenient to everybody.