Organizing Meetings

When organizing meetings in Outlook, it is vital to know the free/busy times for each person you are inviting to the meeting, so that you know whether or not they are likely to be able to attend. Softalk Share Server has its own Free/Busy server, which can make available the free/busy times for each Softalk Share Server user.

When the client software is installed, it automatically gives Outlook the ability to query the Softalk Share Server free/busy server. It does this by adding the following entry to the free/busy options:

http://your-server-ip:8109/%NAME%

The Free/Busy Options property sheet is accessible by selecting Tools | Options and pressing the Calendar Options button and then pressing the Free/Busy Options button. Note, your-server-ip is replaced with the IP address or name of the computer which runs Softalk Share Server.

In order for users to be able to query other users’ free busy information, each user must be assigned an email address in the Softalk Share Server administrator. You can do this by right clicking on the appropriate user and selecting Properties.

Enter the user’s email address into the Email field and press OK to save your changes.

In Outlook, select File | New | Meeting Request from the menu (note you must have an email account configured in Outlook in order to be able to do this).

Select the Scheduling tab. In the attendee list, enter the email address of the user whose free/busy time you wish to view and press Enter. The user’s free/busy information will appear in the right hand window.