Self Scheduling Meetings?

[AdelphiaX]

I schedule meetings with people across the globe using the new meeting and scheduling assistant in Office Outlook 2010 all the time. It's basic built in functionality if you're running email on an exchange server.

I think you're misunderstanding or I'm explaining it wrong.


I'll tailor it to what you're thinking and we'll see if this matches up. I'm probably not explaining it in enough detail.

You send out a meeting invite. You're free all week. You want to schedule a meeting with 5 people, who for the most part are outside of your organization. You send out the meeting request, proposing the entire week is good for you. It is then up to those 5 people to decide when to get together. Without emailing each other (which would include tentative and suggest a new time replies), once all 5 have responded to the meeting creation object (which would have to be done via the WebApp Outlook, not client), it's only at that point you as the meeting creator get a response that highlight possible meeting times. You make the selection and the final meeting invitation goes out.

I've never seen Outlook do that. This one particular issue stems, apparently, from non-stop emails outside of the meeting invite, tentative responses and/or an overflow of suggest a new time replies. They want to avoid that.

[caveman-jim]

I schedule meetings with people across the globe using the new meeting and scheduling assistant in Office Outlook 2010 all the time. It's basic built in functionality if you're running email on an exchange server.

[AdelphiaX]

If you're running Office Outlook connected to Exchange or Small Business Server then this is simple to do through the office calendar appointment functionality. If you set up your meeting rooms and equipment you can ensure you have all the necessary resources for supporting the meeting.

If you're not using Exchange or SBS then looking office 365, google mail, etc. because what you describe is simple and available - you just might need an IT guy on contract to set it up and train users.

It's not though. I've never seen Outlook do this. The users are part time and the meeting places are not internal. A website call whenisgood.net does what I'm looking for... but I'm hopeful more professional options are out there. I haven't found anything for Outlook or even via a plugin that does this.

[caveman-jim]

If you're running Office Outlook connected to Exchange or Small Business Server then this is simple to do through the office calendar appointment functionality. If you set up your meeting rooms and equipment you can ensure you have all the necessary resources for supporting the meeting.

If you're not using Exchange or SBS then looking office 365, google mail, etc. because what you describe is simple and available - you just might need an IT guy on contract to set it up and train users.

[AdelphiaX]

So here's a scenario.... looking for a software/plugin to Outlook that may do this.

Secretary 1 wants to schedule a meeting for anytime from Monday to Friday. This meeting request goes to Users 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. User 1 is not available on Monday but is free anytime else. Since User 1 is not available on Monday, it blocks it out from Users 2, 3, 4, 5. After each User has made their availability known, the possible meeting times then get sent back to Secretary 1 for scheduling.


Apparently, one of our office had something like 100 emails going back and forth, just to decide a single meeting time. They want a central meeting object that each person interacts with independently and updates itself each time. Users 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 aren't really full time... better described as part time, only deciding to work based on when these meetings are scheduled.




Ideas?