As an alternative to implementing the ARCHIBUS Reservations application for all users, your site may choose to provide user with access to the ARCHIBUS Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook.
Note: This topic provides an overview of working from the Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook. You can also find information on working from the Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook throughout the topics on creating and editing reservations.
With the Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook, all of your enterprise users can make full-service room reservations right within the familiar Outlook client. This is particularly handy for those users who don't typically work with the ARCHIBUS application.
Having the Plugin installed gives users the choice of which application to use for creating and modifying simple reservation requests, and enables managing both people and locations. Users who require additional assets for their meeting, such as equipment and catering, can use the Web Central interface to create their reservation.
The Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook appears as an alternative panel within Microsoft Outlook's Appointment view.
You can deploy the Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook with or without Exchange integration, and with or without the Exchange listener enabled. Integrating with Exchange requires that you purchase a license for the ARCHIBUS Extension for Microsoft Exchange. See Using Exchange integration and enabling / disabling the listener.
ARCHIBUS Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook includes the following features:
Support for policies on reserving rooms; that is, whether a room requires set-up time, lead-time to reserve, lead-time for cancellation, or approval by a certain group that controls specific rooms.
The Capacity field in the Filter Console is used to show only rooms that have a room arrangement with a Maximum Capacity and Minimum Required that includes the Capacity you enter. However, this field has an additional purpose. The system saves the value for the Capacity as the # of Attendees in Room field (reserve_rm.attendees_in_room
) to indicate the number of attendees expected to be physically present in the reserved room.
For example, having this number is helpful to setup personnel as they prepare the room. If you are integrating the Reservations application with the On Demand Work application, the # of Attendees in Room field is shown on the Description field of the work request that is automatically generated by the application for set up and clean up of the room.
The # of Attendees in Room field is also used to calculate the Capacity Use shown in the Reservation Capacity Utilization per Month report.
Reservations created before the # of Attendees in Room field was added to the application will have 0 in the Capacity field in the Filter when editing these reservations. It is necessary to update this number only if tracking the # of Attendees in Room is important to your workflow.
reserve_rm.attendees_in_room
). If needed, after creating the reservation, you can edit the # of Attendees in Room field if it differs from the Capacity field you entered in the Filter.Note: The Capacity field is required if you have set the PluginCapacityRequired
application parameter to 1. If this parameter is set to 0, Capacity is not a required field. or information on setting this parameter, see Configuring Parameters for the Reservations Application and the Reservations Plugin for Outlook.
Managers often have assistants responsible for their calendar, for sending meeting invitations, and updating meeting information. These assistants have access to the manager’s calendar via Exchange Shared Calendars, which can be accessed in Outlook. As an assistant, you are able to book room reservations on your manager’s calendar, and on any calendar you are allowed to edit, according to the permissions configured in Exchange. Anytime you open a meeting from the organizer’s calendar that you, as the current user, are allowed to change, the Room Reservation Panel is enabled.
In parallel to providing Room Reservation functionality when creating and editing meetings via the appointment window, the Reservations Plugin for Outlook also monitors changes you apply to appointments directly in the calendar view. This monitoring is enabled for changes done on shared calendars.
Note this monitoring provides additional functionality only in the following situations:
In other situations, Outlook opens an appointment window where you confirm your changes done on the calendar before they are actually saved and sent to the attendees. At that point, the Reservations Plugin for Outlook’s Room Reservation panel is displayed, and changes to the meeting are handled by the Reservations Plugin for Outlook, as if they were done in the appointment window.
The Plugin has been designed with a series of prompts and messages to guide the user through the process. The Help includes working from the Reservations Plugin for Outlook for the following situations:
However, new users should be aware of the following:
However, if you have both the Reservations Plugin for Outlook and the ARCHIBUS Extension for Microsoft Exchange with the listener enabled, when you create a meeting using the Reservations Plugin for Outlook and update it in Web Central, Exchange will propagate the change, so that the change is also visible in the Reservations Plugin for Outlook. See
If the user is creating a reservation using the Reservations Plugin for Outlook, and the ARCHIBUS Web Central application stops, or the Reservations Plugin for Outlook is no longer connected to Web Central, then the Reservations Plugin for Outlook presents a message informing you of the error. The message asks you if you want to save the appointment without the reservation. If you do save the appointment, the next time you change the times or attendees, or use any of the filters in the Room Reservation pane, an error appears letting you know that a list of available rooms could not be found. To resolve this issue, click Cancel, and then click the Room Finder icon to disable the Reservations Plugin for Outlook. If you click Retry, the Reservations Plugin for Outlook will attempt to connect to Web Central again.
To cancel future reservations, you must consider both the current date and the cancellation window associated with each room. For example, suppose a room requires three days notification in order to cancel a reservation, and the reservation is scheduled to occur two days in the future; in this case, you cannot cancel this room’s reservation through Microsoft Outlook. ARCHIBUS users who are members of the Reservation Service Desk or Reservation Manager security groups are not subject to this restriction.
The Reservations Plugin for Outlook does not support Outlook’s recurrence exceptions. If you want to modify a recurring pattern that has exceptions, the Reservations Plugin for Outlook will prompt you to confirm that it must first cancel the exceptions. However, if restrictions exist in ARCHIBUS, some exception dates may not be able to be canceled. In this case, the system prompts you to ignore these dates or abort the cancellation altogether. If you choose to ignore these items, the Reservations Plugin for Outlook will disconnect them from Outlook, but retain them in ARCHIBUS.
If you change only the room in Web Central, not the date and time, then the reservation remains in sync with the meeting in Outlook. However, the Location for the meeting in Outlook still refers to the previously selected room. Note that you will not get a warning about this when opening the meeting in Outlook.
Installation and configuration documentation is available in ARCHIBUS System Management Help.
The Reservations Plugin for Outlook is not compatible with the ICS invitations generated by the Reservations Application when Exchange integration is not used. You can disable sending email invitations via the SendEmailInvitations
application parameter. However, if you want to create reservations via the Reservations Plugin for Outlook and send ICS invitations from Web Central, you should take these limitations into consideration.
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