OWA (Light) Guide

10.1. Adding an appointment to your calendar

To add an appointment, click on the New Appointment button in the navigation bar above the calendar. When the new appointment window opens, add the necessary information. Click on Save and Close to add the appointment to your calendar.

The level of detail you want to add to the appointment will depend on the specific circumstances. If the appointment is merely to act as a reminder to yourself, you will probably just want to put a suitable subject, and perhaps a location. In the example above, the main text has been filled in with a schedule for the day. You can use this free text area for any notes or comments, and can even attach files. This is most useful when the appointment or meeting is to be shared with others.

You can also choose whether to mark the duration of the new appointment as Free, Busy, Tentative, or Out of Office in your calendar. Other people can use this information to help them to schedule meetings with you.

10.2. Choosing Attendees and Scheduling

To invite people to the meeting or event, open the event by clicking on it in your calendar (or create a new event). Click the Invite Attendees button.

This activates the attendees fields: Required, Optional, and Resources. You can add people to the Required and Optional fields in the same way as when sending an email message - choose them from the list of recent recipients on the left of your screen, or click the Required or Optional buttons to choose people from the Global Address Book. You might also want to add a shared resource such as a meeting room or a piece of equipment, if these have been set up in Nexus. In this case, add them to the Resources section. You do not need to add yourself, as the meeting organiser is automatically included.

Once you have finished adding attendees, click on the Scheduling Assistant tab to view free/busy times.

You will now see a list of suggested times, and information about how many attendees are available. These start from the day you have selected for the meeting, and go forward for a week. However, within a given day, the suggested times are listed in reverse order. If an attendee has a conflicting appointment, this will be noted next to the suggested time. You can choose a new time by clicking on it

You can also choose whether or not your attendees are automatically prompted to send a response, by checking or unchecking the box labelled Request a response to this invitation, on the Appointment tab.

Once you have finished, click Send at the top of the screen to send the invitations.

Responses from your invitees will appear in your inbox, unless the attendee chooses not to send a response. You can check what responses have been received by opening the meeting/event in your calendar. At the top of the screen you will see a banner telling you how many attendees have accepted, how many declined, and how many tentatively accepted.

If you need to make any changes to the meeting, you can do so and then click Send Update to inform the other attendees.

10.3. Creating a recurring event

If you have an event that occurs regularly, you can add the whole series at once, by using the recurrence options.

To add or edit recurrence options, open the event by clicking on it in your calendar, and click the recurrence icon as shown in Figure 32, Meeting Recurrence.

Use the buttons to select from a range of frequencies, and to set the date of the first occurrence, and if desired, the end date. Click Save when finished.

10.4. Responding to a meeting request

When you receive a meeting request, it appears in your inbox just like an email message.

OWA will inform you if the meeting time conflicts with (or is adjacent to) another appointment in your Nexus calendar, as in the example above (Figure 34, Receive Meeting Request). In this case, you can click the link View the conflicting appointments to see more details.

At the top of the message are buttons allowing you to Accept, Tentatively Accept, or Decline the request. Before you click one of these, decide whether you want to Send the response now, Edit the response before sending, or Do not send a response. If you choose to send the response now, OWA will send an automated response which appears in the organiser's inbox, telling them whether you can attend. If you choose to edit the response, an email message will be created which you can add your own text to. Finally, if you choose not to send a response, the meeting organiser will still be able to tell whether you have accepted or not, by looking at the Tracking tab of the meeting in their calendar. However, they will not get a message in their inbox informing them of your decision.

When you respond, the meeting request message will be automatically moved to your deleted items folder. If you accept (even tentatively) the meeting request, the event will be saved in your calendar. If you want to change your response later, open the event by clicking on it, and you can send a new response.