Making a booking on a Lab calendar 2015

Making a booking on a Lab calendar in 2015

Making a booking is pretty straight forward.  Your experience will be slightly different to mine as I am an administrator of the calendar... so we will see slightly different options.  But again... try to hum along.


First, find the correct calendar for the lab you are working in.  (see above)

Turn the calendar on so you can view its days. Adjust your view to either day, week or month as you prefer. 

Find the day that you wish to make the booking on and Right click on it.  You will see a "New" option.  Select this to create a new booking.
Click on the "New" item in the top left corner below the blue "office 365" bar.   You will then see the form for a new event open.

You can now fill in the form fields as you need and save the booking.

Form Fields

Event - Put YOUR NAME and some code about your participant or the activity you will be running.  DO NOT PUT YOUR PARTICIPANTS NAME IN THIS FIELD.  Use their initials at most.

Location - You must use the "Add room" button to select the Lab you wish the event to be in.

Step 1. Click the "Add room" button on the right side. This will start looking for availible rooms.

Step 2.  Find the Lab that you wish to use for the location (This list may get jammed if there are no rooms free.  You may need to close the whole booking and create a new one to get this working again)

This will add the lab as a Location and as an Attendee.  This is correct.

Attendees - If you want to schedule other people into this event... then include them and let outlook send them messages and reminders.  I would tend not to include participants email addresses as this is confidential information and should not be included in a public calendar.

Duration/Start - Set the start time and the duration as you need.  Try not to block book the lab beyond a reasonable period as this will conflict with other lab users.

Reminder - set this as you see fit.

Show As - Set this to Busy.

Calendar - This will only allow you to create the event in your personal calendar.  This is correct.  (The location step above will create the event in the lab calendar)

Repeat -  Set this to Never.

Mark as Private - Do not set this field or other lab users will not be able to see your booking.

Notes Field -  Use this for your own purposes.  DO NOT PUT CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION IN THIS FIELD.  DO NOT PUT YOUR PARTICIPANTS NAME IN THIS FIELD.


When you are happy with the booking, click "Save" in the top left corner of the booking dialogue to save and close the booking editor.

You should now see the booking visible in your personal calendar and in the lab calendar.

NOTE - This new booking may take some time to Synchronise with other people.  Various times have been observed by different users.  

Editing a Booking 

Participants re-schedule.  Life gets in the road.  You need to change a booking.

First find the booking in the calendar (note if you have added yourself as an Attendee to the event, it may now be in both the lab calendar and your personal calendar... but its the same event)

Select the booking and you should see some options appear.

Click the "Edit" option to display the booking property fields and change the field values as you require. Then click "Send" in the top right corner to save and update all the attendees.

By editing the booking in the lab calendar, you should also see the changes applied to your personal calendar. 

Cancelling a Booking

Previously we had a policy of not deleting bookings that were cancelled.  This was so we could track activity in the labs.  This policy is now pointless as it creates additional chaos in the calendar system and make lab users lives more difficult.

If you need to cancel a booking.. do so. 

Simply click on the event in the calendar as above, but select the "Cancel" option rather than "Edit".  Where you have multiple Attendees, you will be given the option to send them a message about the cancellation. It would seem polite to use this opportunity.. but its up to you.

Afterword

Please let me know if you have problems following this guide or you have problems getting the results you wish from the system. The TS help desk can provide additional assistance in the use of the Outlook system if you require support.

Thanks.