Seeing when people are available for meetings

When you schedule a meeting, you can check to see when the invitees are available.

About this task

The availability of invitees for meetings is based on their free time schedules and the entries on their calendars. With the dynamic scheduler widget, you can easily drag and drop to select a meeting time that accommodates attendee schedules. Times that work for all meeting attendees are shown by date in the Recommended times panel in the scheduler, and by check marks over columns in the time grid.

The dynamic scheduler also allows you to schedule a meeting in your inbox while reading email. Right-click on any document and click Find available time to open the new scheduler. Pick your meeting time and then click Create meeting to schedule the event.

Procedure

When scheduling a meeting or event announcement, add invitees and reserve any rooms or resources.
Click Find Available Time next to the meeting Starts and Ends fields.
To select a meeting time:
- Select a time in the Recommended times panel, or
- Click the time bar and drag it to the time slot that you want. If the time bar is green, all invitees are available during the highlighted time. If the time bar is pink, only some invitees are available during the highlighted time. If the time bar is gray, there is no "free time" information available for anyone. You can also drop the drag bar on a day boundary to auto-expand the time grid to 24-hour mode.
  Note: Those invitees whose free time is not available or is restricted are considered available when computing who can attend the meeting being scheduled.
  
  Note: The default time frame for recommended meeting times is four days. If the meeting times that display in the Recommended Times panel don’t work for your meeting, click Show More in the Recommended times panel to show potential meeting times for the subsequent three days. This loads another three days in the calendar grid, as well.
If you find a time that works with everyone except you, you can hover your cursor on the conflicting event in the calendar grid to see its details. Based on that information, you can then decide whether to schedule the current meeting and reschedule the conflicting event for another time. This option is available only for meeting chairs, and for managers who have the option to see details of employees’ busy times. The selected available time is shown in the dialog box, before the Recommended times panel.
Click Ok to save the selected time to the invitation.

What to do next

You can make changes to your invitee list in the scheduler widget:

Add invitees individually. In the calendar grid, right-click anywhere on the invitee list and select Add invitee. In the Add Invitee dialog box, select the invitee type (required, optional, room, or resource). Then click in the address field, and select an address from your contacts by clicking the button next to the address field.
Remove invitees. Clear the check box next to a person, room, or resource, or right-click on the invitee, room or resource name and select Remove invitee.
You can also exclude groups. For example, to exclude all optional invitees, clear the check box next to Optional.