Finding and Booking a Meeting Room/Resource in Outlook and Exchange Online

Often your Departmental meeting rooms will be directly bookable by yourself and some rooms around BCIT are open to everyone for booking. Either way, the reservation process remains the same (see below).

Some rooms are available on request-basis only. The system doesn’t differentiate these meeting rooms so you create a meeting invitation in the same way as for Open rooms. The main difference is that you will not receive a response immediately. The room coordinator will have to receive and process your request first. Right after creating the reservation, you should receive a Tentative response indicating your request was sent for approval. Subsequently, you should receive the actual response to your request.

Privacy note

In case you are concerned with confidentiality issues when requesting a room booking, the Coordinator can only see the Chairperson’s name, the subject and dates requested. Any content included in the body of the meeting invitation is stripped before sending the booking request. The implication is that you cannot communicate questions or comments to the room coordinator as you request the resource. This would have to be done separately.

Some meeting rooms have restricted access, meaning they are only available to a select number of staff. These rooms may display in the list but will be labelled “Restricted”. Sending a meeting request to such a room will result in an automatic decline. You will need to contact the room coordinator to gain access to the room.

In Outlook:

1. Create a new appointment.
2. Choose your preferred meeting date and time.
3. Click on the Invite Attendees button.
   
4. Click on the Room Finder link to the right of the Location field.
   
5. A new pane named Room Finder will open on the right-hand side of the Appointment window. Use the Building search field to search for a campus or area of campus.
   
6. Click on the room you’d like meet in.
7. Finish updating the meeting invitees and description and send the invitation to finish booking the room.

In your browser:

1. Log in to webmail.bcit.ca using your usual login credentials (primary BCIT email address and password).
2. Click the Calendar icon on the left-hand side of the screen.
   
3. Click the New event button.
4. Choose your preferred meeting date and time.
5. Click the Search for a room or location link below the date and time fields.
   
6. Click Browse with Room Finder.
7. Room Finder will open on the right-hand side of the Appointment window. Use the Building search field to search for a campus or area of campus.
   
8. Click on the room you’d like meet in.
9. Finish updating the meeting invitees and description and send the invitation to finish booking the room.

Some departments own equipment that need scheduling capabilities to manage the use of that equipment. These resources can vary from digital gear, to computers and even vehicles. These resources are usually owned, managed and restricted to the department staff. To request the equipment, you will need to know the name of the resource (there is no way to find a list of just bookable equipment within Outlook).

1. Start by creating a meeting request as you normally would.
2. Click on the Invite Attendees button.
   
3. Click on the Required or Optional button field to bring up the Address list.
4. Search for the name of the resource you wish to book and when you see it in the list, select it and click the Resources button to add it to the invite.
5. When you’ve finished adding people, rooms, and resources to the invitation, send it. If approval is required, the process is identical to requesting a bookable room.