Exchange Calendar Survival Tips 1/5/2009

• Resources Available for Use
  
• Sharing & Viewing Others' Calendars
  
• Synchronizing Your Exchange Calendar with a PDA/Smartphone to Prevent Duplicates
  
• Scheduling Meetings Using the GAL to See Free/Busy Time
  
• All Calenar Additions, Changes, & Changes are Delivered via Email
  
• Questions?

RESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR USE
All resources are now available for scheduling. Scheduling resources is slightly different than it was in CorporateTime. If you need help learning how to schedule resources correctly in Exchange, please visit http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/invitingresources.shtml.

Remember, anyone can schedule a resource right now, so please be respectful of what resources you use until everyone can adjust the access rights appropriately.

SHARING & VIEWING OTHERS' CALENDARS
In order for others to view your calendar, you need to share your calendar to others. Please go to http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/shareyourcalendar.shtml for details on sharing your calendar.

To view detailed calendar information for a calendar that has been shared, follow the instructions available at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/viewcalendar.shtml.

To view free/busy time on a calendar that has not been shared, open a meeting request and click the Scheduling Assistant. Click add attendees and select the person/resource desired. The free/busy time is displayed in the grid. Alternatively, if you commonly view several schedules at one time you can create a group schedule. Go to http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/usinggroups.shtml for instructions on creating and viewing group schedules.

SYNCHRONIZING YOUR EXCHANGE CALENDAR WITH A PDA/SMARTPHONE TO PREVENT DUPLICATES
If you have a PDA or smartphone that you would like to synchronize with Exchange for your email, calendar, and/or contacts, you'll want to be cautious on the first synchronization. Make sure you backup any previous contacts and calendar entries that exist on the device! Then clear the contacts and calendar on the PDA or smartphone. After that, synchronize your Exchange account with the device. This will ensure that you don't end up with duplicate contacts and calendar entries in Exchange. If you need to re-enter any contacts or calendar data that were previously on the phone, you can refer to the backup that you made. Instructions on how to configure our PDA or smartphone for Exchange are available at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/smartphone_setup.shtml.

SCHEDULING MEETING USING THE GAL TO SEE FREE/BUSY TIME
The Global Address List (aka: the GAL) contains all people and resources in the Exchange environment here at Notre Dame. When adding people to a meeting request, it is recommended that you use the GAL to search for and add people to ensure you are correctly inviting each individual. If you attempt to add the name of the person by typing his/her name in the "To" field, only your local address book is searched. The information contained in your local address book may not be in sync with the GAL and could result in people not being added to your meeting requests.

ALL CALENDAR ADDITIONS, CHANGES, AND REMOVALS ARE DELIVERED VIA EMAIL
Scheduling in Exchange works differently than it did in CorporateTime. These simple guidelines can help get you through these first few days:

• All calendar invitations, changes, deletions, etc. are handled via email. This means you're going to get more email than you used to - both as the meeting invitee, and as the meeting owner too.
  
• In order for the meeting owner to see your attendance status, you must choose to send a response when you accept, tentatively accept or decline a meeting. Meeting owners - this means that you'll have lots of email responses to your meetings.
  
• Declined meetings don't show up on your calendar, so if you want to keep an entry on your calendar, we suggest tentatively accepting the meeting instead of declining.
  
• When someone cancels a meeting, you must remove that meeting from your calendar, or you will still show as busy during that time.
  

QUESTIONS?
Many questions can be answered by reviewing the information found on the OIT Exchange web site at http://oit.nd.edu/exchange. The OIT has also created Quick Reference Guides that will walk you through these types of questions, as well as many other common calendaring functions. Quick reference guides are available for Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Entourage 2008, OWA with IE, and OWA with other web browsers, and you can find them all at: http://oit.nd.edu/exchange/training.shtml#qrg

If you need further assistance, please contact your departmental IT support staff or the OIT Help Desk at 574-631-8111 or oithelp@nd.edu.