On 10.07.29, In Often times, Microsoft gives multiple ways of accomplishing a task. In the early days of computing this was quite an “innovative” idea. Old DOS (TTY) software was plain text with a menu, and to accomplish a process required a certain precise set of steps.
Today, we no longer live in a "menu driven" world, this has it’s benefits and it’s liabilities and Microsoft Office / Sharepoint integration is no exception to this rule.
This tutorial is designed for people who use Microsoft Office and Microsoft Sharepoint and who want to make the most of a "Meeting Workspace"
The Scenario:
You wish to hold a training session with a group of individuals in your workplace. You want to keep track of everyone who is attending, and a common place to share related training material, survey results, group dicussions etc.
Requirements:
To use this scenario you must have:
- Microsoft Office (2003 or 2007)
- Microsoft Sharepoint (v 2.0, MOSS 2007, or Sharepoint Portal Server 2003)
- Approperiate Permissions/Previledges to add calendar items to the sharepoint site
Note: For best results, everyone in your office should have the same version of Office, and a “compatible”version of Sharepoint (MS Office 2007 works best with MOSS 2007, and Sharepoint version 2.0 works best with Office 2003)
Optional: If possible, the sharepoint site should be setup to recieve incoming emails and convert them to appointments. Although not a requirement, it will save you a few steps when generating your training item.
Recommended Process:
- From Outlook, Open a new Meeting Request (New-> Meeting Reqeust) or (CTRL-SHIFT-Q)
- In to “To:’ of you meeting request, enter all of the people you wish to attend, (Note: by clicking the “To:” button you can also specify if they are ‘required’ or ‘optional’ attendees.
- Enter the usual meeting details (Start End/Time Subject/Location, etc)
If your sharepoint site and calednar is email enabled, you can also add the email address of the sharepoint calendar to add the request to. (Otherwise you will have to add it manually later)
- Choose the ‘Meeting Workspace’ (Differs a bit in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007)
- In the meeting workspace tab, choose the Sharepoint Site where you meeting workspace is to be created, and the workspace template you wish to use “Basic Meeting Workspace” is pretty good if you don’t know what to choose here.
- Click ‘Create’ to create a new workspace, or ‘Link’ to link to an existing meeting workspace.
- Click Send to send the meeting request.
Just like a regular Outlook Meeting request, your request will be sent to all those in the “To:” The difference is they will also have a special link to the meeting workspace site, to review the content on that site.
Outlook will also setup the workspace site and automatically add all of the attendees that were in the meeting request and give them a basic permission to view the site.
When users accept the meeting request, sharepoint will be updated automatically with this acceptance **
Related Reading:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831055
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/keep-it-together-with-a-meeting-workspace-HA001088264.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/view-and-update-a-sharepoint-calendar-HA010081987.aspx
Notes:
**Sharepoint does not always correctly update the meeting attendee responses. Often this is because it requires sharepoint to automatically authenticate to the site to update the information. This requires that all attendees have the sharepoint site set to ‘auto login’ with a specific username/password combination prior to accepting the meeting request.
If this is not easliy setup in your organzation, attendees may also click the link in the request and udpate their status manually on the site.
