5. Scheduling meetings
Nexus calendaring not only allows you to schedule meetings easily but it also allows you to see when your colleagues are free to make scheduling those meetings even easier. Using iCal with Nexus means that you can add appointments to your calendar in the same way that you have always added appointments in iCal with the additional functionality that you can invite people to your appointments and check their availability.
To schedule a meeting follow the instructions below:
In your main iCal window make sure that you have your Nexus account selected in the left hand pane.
Next bring up the new appointment window either by double clicking on the required date in the
calendar view or via the menu system by clicking [File] then [New event]. Now
fill in the required information for the appointment such as the title for the appointment and the
date, time, and duration along with any other relevant information such as location and any notes.
Once you have filled in all the details that you would normally fill in to add an event to your
calendar you can invite your colleagues to the meeting by clicking the Add invitees
link. This will open a text field in place of the link with the cursor placed within this "invitees"
field for you to start typing the name of the user you wish to invite. As you type text into the
"invitees" field a list of possible matches will appear and you can select the correct user from the
list.
Once the correct user has been selected that user account is shown as an added invitee to this appointment along with a link to "Available Meeting Times..".
To check that your invitee is available for this appointment click the "Available Meeting Times.." link which will bring up a pop up "Availability" window that shows the availability for all parties of the meeting, ie the organizer and all invitees.
If the availability window shows that some parties are unavailable you can use the navigation arrows
to step through the calendar to find a more suitable time or you can click the Next
Available Time button to allow the application to find this for you. Once you have
settled on a meeting date that you are happy has the required availability you can click the
Done to close the availability window and return to the new appointment window.
If you have changed the meeting date from the original date that you selected this new date will now
be reflected in the new appointment window.
Finally, click the Send button to send the meeting invitations. The meeting request
will now be sent to your colleagues and the appointment will be added automatically to your
calendar.
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