Overview

All New River employees have Microsoft Outlook installed and most use it for checking email, but it is capable of also keeping track of your appointments and calendar. Let's say that you need to schedule a meeting with 4-5 other folks at New River and you don't know when they are available. Rather than calling them or emailing them to find out, it is far more efficient to send them a Meeting Request (or an Appointment). The benefits are (1) you can send one request and include all the recipients, (2) you can preview the calendars of your invited guests before sending the request to see if they are available, and (3) the recipients will be able to click one button to respond to your request and the appointment will then automatically appear on their calendar (if they accepted).

The Steps

There are basically five steps to sending your Meeting Request (or Appointment) and they are:

1. Open Outlook, click on your File menu, and choose New, Meeting Request (see image).
2. Click the TO button to locate the folks you want to invite from the Global Address List (see image).
3. Decide whether their presence at your meeting is required (see image) or optional (see image) and click that button.
4. Choose the day (see image) and time (see image) for your meeting.
5. Click on Scheduling to see if they are available (see image). If they are unavailable then choose a different day/time before sending your request.