RSSAutopick Next and Suggested Times
Use AutoPick and Suggested Times to show the next available date
for attendees.
View shared subfolders in an Exchange mailboxInsert the Date and Time in an
Outlook ItemReverse
the "Never Show Dialog"
Setting Using the Windows Explorer Sendto
menuConverting to or from
Outlook or Exchange:
Messages and Calendar
or
Address books
Outlook uses Free/Busy data
so colleagues can see when you are available for appointments. However, when there are
several attendees, it can be hard to schedule the meeting around everyone's
free time and to make it easier to find the free periods, Outlook, when used
against Exchange 2003 and older, have "AutoPick". This feature finds the
next available free period for the attendees. Outlook 2007 when used against
Exchange 2007 improves AutoPick with the Suggest Times pane. The Suggested
Times pane,
shown at the right, lists the upcoming times attendees are available so you
can review availability over from several dates at once, not just one at a
time. clicking one of the time "buttons" brings that period into focus in
the Scheduling Assistant.
Not everyone likes Suggested Times and would like to get AutoPick back in
Outlook 2007. This is not possible, although there are two places where AutoPick still exists: on Plan a Meeting
(Actions menu) and Accepted meeting requests (when you are an attendee).
While I find Suggested Times makes it easier to find the best time for meetings,
it is a little "busy" and confusing at first.
Suggested Times
How it works: After adding the attendees to the meeting request, Outlook
reads the attendees free/busy and populates Suggested times with the best
times available on the selected date, listing the time and number of
attendees who are available in that time period, sorted by the time periods
with the most attendees available.
The scheduling assistant grid displays
the selected date, showing everyone's availability. Click on any time
under Suggested times and the picker moves, just like it does with Autopick.
If the selected date isn't going to work, pick another date in the thumbnail
calendar. It's color coded to make it easier - white means best
availability, darkest blue means there are few periods where all attendees
are available. When you select a date in the thumbnail calendar the
suggested times for that date fill the Suggested times pane and the
scheduling grid jumps to that date, displaying the attendees free/busy. Just
like Autopick.
