Use of shared calendars

[David Parkes]

Hello. I'm looking for some advice. One of my customers has created a set
of user accounts which represent a 'boookable resource'. He has given a set
of users (who are call centre operatives) the ability to create appointments
in these calendars. What he wants, is to ensure that each resource is not
'double booked'. As an appointment is added he wants that appointment to be
displayed to the other operatives as soon as possible.
How fast can Schedule/Free Busy information be updated?
Is this sort of calendar usage achievable?
Were running Exchange 2000 with SP3 on Windows 2000 Server SP4.
The clients are a mixture of Outlook 2002 SP2 and SP3.
Thanks.
Dave.

 

[Nikki Peterson]

There are a few things to look at.

Are your clients set up for Offline or Cached Mode? This will effect how
often the Free/Busy is sent to the server.

You can set the clients/resource to "Publish Free/Busy" at a quicker
interval.
- Select the TOOLS menu
- Select OPTIONS
- Click the CALENDAR OPTIONS... button
- Click the FREE/BUSY OPTIONS... button

The default will probably be set for Publish 2 months every 15 minutes.
This means that if a client books the resource, the resource will send the
information to the server in about 15 minutes. It will only send 2 months
of free/busy information.

If your clients are set up for cached mode or offline, how often are they
configured to synchronize their information back to the server?

If your clients just open the calendar and look at it, then they will see
the information as soon as the server has it.

Nikki Peterson