Avoiding Conference Room Conflicts with GroupWise

Novell Cool Solutions: Tip
By Phil Cole

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 10 Apr 2002

Updated: See Other Suggestions below for more tips from our readers. If you would like to share your tip please let us know.

Here's a tip from New Jersey civil servant Phil Cole that should make conference room scheduling less of a sporting event and more of a business practice. According to Phil, he knows just enough about technology to be on his IT department's "watch closely" list. (Phil, we know the feeling).

I work in a New Jersey state government office (Department of Environmental Protection) and use GroupWise 5.5.4. Our main campus consists of 5 buildings in downtown Trenton, NJ, where many of the Department's 3,400 staffers work. Finding (and staking claim) to the few large-capacity conference rooms that are available in these buildings is a difficult task. The original system required us to visit the conference room in advance and write (in pencil) the date and time we needed the room in a calendar dedicated to the room. Many a legitimate claim was lost to an eraser, and some rooms were under-utilized because the calendar was missing or locked in a desk.

The solution to our scheduling quandry was to make each of the large conference rooms a "resource" in GroupWise. Busy search now lets us find and identify a room's availability, and an e-mail to the room can secure it. The receptionist at the main building accepts or declines each request for a room.

We love the new system because it allows us to schedule these "resources" quickly and easily. Maybe more importantly, we know our reservation is legitimate and can't fall prey to the "accidental erasure" that delayed some of our meetings in the past.

Other Suggestions

Sue Koopman - Added 1 Apr 2004
David Goon - Added 10 Apr 2002
Patrick Farrell - Added 4 Apr 2002

Sue Koopman
I was just reading up on the conference room scheduling info and wanted to share what we have done.

We have a web services account. In that account we have several conference room folders. Each room has a room administrator that has been granted full rights. The room administrator also identifies who needs read and add rights. Once rights have been granted, people can view, create, and delete their own appointments. The administrator only has to manage the calendar when they need to bump someone for an administrative meeting.

Web Services is the owner of all the accounts, that way it is not linked to a single person, in case they leave the company. We have 15 rooms set up and everyone what has rights can view them in their GroupWise client.

One problem we are having, is that the GroupWise web access does not allow for people to make appointments via the web. We are investigating GWExtranet now and it looks like it will take care of that problem :) hopefully.

Thanks, Sue Koopman

David Goon
I read the article from Phil Cole about scheduling conference rooms and wanted to share our solution. We went one step further by placing rules in the account for the conference rooms that would automatically accept or reject the appointment depending on if there was a conflict.

This eliminates the need for a person to monitor the account. We do have several people that have Read and Write access to those accounts in case there needs to be a change -- but for the most part it takes care of itself. We also use the same concept for our digital camera's and projectors.

Here's how we set up the rules:

The rule shown in this screen capture accepts the appointment if there is no conflict.

The rule shown in the next screen capture checks for a conflict. It then replies to the sender with the following message:

Your scheduled appointment (meeting) in the No View conference room conflicts with another previously scheduled appointment. To resolve this conflict:

1. Reschedule the appointment by resending the appointment
   or
2. Contact the conference room coordinator to resolve the conflict

---

Patrick Farrell
After recently reading a tip about using GroupWise resources for conference room scheduling, I thought I'd share my setup, which takes it a step further.

We have 3 conference rooms that are used heavily. I've set up 3 resources, that automatically accept appointments, notify of conflicts, and deny other message types.

First I set auto-cleanup on appointments to however far back I wish to retain a history. 3 months is plenty in my opinion. Then I set up my rules for each conference room.

Here's a typical rule set.

Rule Name:Auto-Accept
New item/Received/Appointment
Appointment Conflict Exists = No

I have 3 actions

• Accept (busy)
• Reply (with Appointment for Conference room X was accepted)
• Stop Rule Processing

Rule Name: Conflict
New item/Received/Appointment
Appointment Conflict Exists = Yes

I have 3 actions

• Reply "Conference Room X has already been scheduled for the date/time you requested."
• Delete/Decline "Conference Room X has already been scheduled for the date/time you requested." (This seems redundant, but I put it in so if the status is checked on the appointment later, it has an explanation.)
• Stop Rule Processing

Finally, I have a catch-all rule to get everything else that should NOT be sent to a resource.

Rule Name: Uh-Oh
New item/Received/Mail,Task,Reminder Note,Phone Message
Appointment Conflict Exists: Doesn't Matter

I have 3 actions for this

• Reply "This resource does not accept Mail, Tasks, Reminder Notes, or Phone messages. If you wish to schedule the conference room, please send an appointment"
• Delete/Decline (Same Text as reply)
• Stop Rule Processing.

That's it. All scheduling is automated. If a person schedules an appointment, it's automatically accepted if the room is free. The last step is to make sure you appoint responsible people with proxy rights that can delete appointments that are cancelled, or incorrectly scheduled.

You'll find this saves a lot of time and effort.

P.S. this also works great for checking out laptops, projectors, or any other resource.

Reader Comments

• The “auto accept / auto decline” concept is great BUT here’s a problem most companies have. Some users don’t know how to read the response messages. If you use any of the above rule designs, two messages are sent to the sender even if an appointment conflict exists. The first is a message to schedule the appointment in their calendar and the second indicates that the appointment has been declined due to a conflict. I personally don’t have a problem with the logic however a typical end-user may accept their own appointment before reading the declined message. If they don’t really “read” the declined message, they will assume the appointment is actually booked when it really isn’t (since it appears in their calendar). Now how do you explain to an executive user that a room is booked for another event on the day they arrive to use it. They’ll tell you it was scheduled in “their calendar” and therefore it should be available to them. How do you explain to them that they didn’t read the response message they received in the past. If there is a way to get rid of the “schedule in your own calendar” message if the appointment is declined by the resource, the rule would work great. If anyone knows a solution, I would love to see it posted.
• Here's how you solve the "2 message logic" Tell users to do a busy search before they hit send... (We all know they will listen right?) I'm not sure what company you work for, but I've had the conf room setup as I described in this article for years, and the top executives will just take a room regardless of whether or not it is scheduled by someone else. I have one resource I can't put into groupwise because we have one person that refuses to do it electronically. Unfortunately no matter what you design you will always have users that either won't get it, or won't pay attention to it. In regards to decline needing to come first. I have mine in the order listed and has worked for years. Again, in an ideal world you would not need this function because users should do a busy search first. Patrick
• We do this internally already.
• We do this too and it's great! So much easier than the pencil and paper method.
• This is exactly what I was looking for. Taking the human interaction out for basic scheduling will really speed things up.
• Great!!
• We do this too and it's great!
• Been doing this since GroupWise 5.2
• Excellent - Though I will add that the rules won't work unless, the "decline" rules must be placed BEFORE the "auto-accept" rules.
• I've had a general knowledge of "Rules" but didn't explore them much until I read this article. I have automated my conference room scheduling which helps not only me as the mailbox administrator but the users requesting the resource. Thanks for tips like this and if I ever design any I will share them also.
• We use Patrick and David's rules and have added one more. Sometimes, users will c.c. the resource instead of putting the room in the TO: line. As a result, the user ends up thinking that the room is scheduled, but in fact, the room is shown to be free (appointment is in white, not gray). So we have a rule that checks for the name of the conference room to be contained in the TO: line. That has eliminated a large number of perceived double bookings.
• How to handle conflicts with Posted Appointments - These rules do not work with posted appointments.

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