Rooms and resources
Everything a meeting needs besides the people in it — a room, a projector, a pool car — and the machinery an organization puts around those things: who may book them, who has to agree first, and how to see what one of them is doing all week.
Book a room or equipment
Enterprise
Summary A meeting room, a projector or a company car is added to an appointment the same way a person is: by name in the participants field, or picked from the address book. It then sits among the attendees with its own participation status, and the appointment holds it for the time it runs.
Why it matters The room is what meetings fall over. When reserving one is a separate errand — a wall chart, a spreadsheet, a word with whoever keeps the key — the second step is the one that gets skipped, and two teams arrive at the same door. Booking the room in the step that invites the people makes the reservation a byproduct of scheduling rather than an extra task. A conflict over a resource is also treated more strictly than a conflict over a person: it cannot be waved away, so the room stays single-booked even when someone is in a hurry.
Description
- Add a resource by name in the participants field, or pick it from the address book
- The resource appears among the attendees, with its own participation status
- A conflict caused by a resource cannot be ignored — the conflict dialog offers no way past it
- Resource availability can be compared alongside people's in the scheduling view
Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Requires calendar. A resource is invited through the same mechanism as a person, described under People and invitations; comparing free times before booking belongs to the scheduling view, described under Seeing your day.
Managed resources
Enterprise
Summary Some resources are not handed out automatically. Booking one raises a request to the people responsible for it — its delegates — who approve or decline it from their notification area. Until they do, the appointment itself says that approval is still outstanding.
Why it matters First come, first served works only while there is enough to go around. For the one room with the video wall, or the single demo laptop, it means the booking made furthest ahead wins and the one that mattered loses, with no one able to weigh the two against each other. A delegate puts that judgment back in human hands. It also gives the person booking an honest answer: an appointment whose resource is still pending says so, instead of looking settled until someone finds the door locked.
Description
- A booking request reaches the delegate in the notification area, to approve or decline there
- The appointment's detail view states when the user's own approval is still required
- The resource's participation status is shown alongside the people invited
- Only the resource's delegates can answer on its behalf
Availability Since 8.13. Requires calendar. Feature toggle managedResources, on by default, and requires Middleware 8.13 or later. Which resources exist and who their delegates are is maintained by a context administrator, described under Sharing and delegation.
Resource calendars
Enterprise
Summary A resource can be given a calendar of its own in the folder list, so that what a room is booked for reads like any other calendar. Resource calendars are arranged into named groups the user creates, and a single group or a single resource can be shown on its own.
Why it matters Without this, finding out what a room is doing on Thursday means opening appointments one at a time, or asking whoever booked them. For anyone who looks after a floor of meeting rooms that is the whole job — which rooms are idle, which are stacked back to back, and what is actually happening in them. Grouping is what keeps it workable in a building with fifty rooms, where one flat list would be no better than the wall chart it replaced.
Description
- Add a resource calendar to the folder list, picking the resource from the directory
- Arrange resource calendars into named groups, and rename or delete a group
- Show one group, or one resource, on its own
Availability Since 8.9. Requires calendar. Feature toggle resourceCalendars, off by default — a deployment opts in.