We have a technical overview of which settings we support. But unless you're an expert on Exchange, it can be hard to know which ones you need.
Most of these changes need to be made in Exchange. During the next synchronization, Planner will read this setting and use it going forward.
Table of content
- Requirements
- How far in the future can you book the meeting room
- How to set up Exchange, so Planner supports recurring meetings where the meeting room is only available for some meetings
- How to restrict meeting rooms to specific people, also known as Planners Vip feature
- How to set up approval – or request in policy
Requirements
- All features require exchange integration so that your meetings room are both in Planner and in Exchange.
- Some features require O365 integration, it is noted at the specific features.
- We do not support Infinite meeting series. This external guide explains why it's bad and how to disable it disable infinite meeting series in your exchange
How far in the future can you book the meeting room
This setting deserves an honorary mention as it can alleviate a lot of future issues. If a user leaves your organization, it can be hard to delete their future meetings. By limiting how far in the future they can book, you can limit how many empty meetings will be in the system when a user leaves.
Booking far into the future also means you might forget about your booking and have a meeting room that you don't use. To avoid this, we recommend our feature Room cancellation that emails you a few days ahead of your meeting and asks you if you still require the meeting room. This can open up pre-booked meeting rooms that won't actually be used.
BookingWindowInDays parameter specifies the maximum number of days in advance that the resource can be reserved.
Valid input is an integer from 0 through 1080. The default value is 180 days. The value 0 means today.
How to set up Exchange, so Planner supports recurring meetings where the meeting room is only available for some meetings
This is affected by the two Exchange settings:
- ConflictPercentageAllowed
- MaximumConflictInstances
Do not touch “AllowConflicts” as it allows double bookings
ConflictPercentageAllowed is based on percentages. If you want to enable a 20% maximum conflict, then the value should be 20. It means that a meeting series with 10 meetings can have 2 conflicts, since 2 is 20% of 10. This setting is more flexible for series with more meetings in them, such as daily meetings.
MaximumConflictInstances is based on numbers. No matter how long your series is, it can only have a certain number of conflicts. If you fill in 5 then a series with 25 meetings are allowed 5 conflicts. And a series with 50 meetings is also only allowed 5 conflicts.
When Exchange creates a meeting series, it will assume that the meeting room is available for all instances of the series. This means that the location field will contain the original meeting room unless updated. This can lead to confusion about what meeting room you have on a given meeting and is an Outlook problem Planner can't overrule. If you open your meeting and then save it, the location field will get updated.
Because of this issue, consider limiting the amount of conflicts (which means instances in the series that have a different meeting room than the original) to reduce confusion. Sign In Workspace (SiW) can support a 100% conflict rate, but as mentioned it might cause confusion with the location field.
How to restrict meeting rooms to specific people, also known as Planners VIP feature
Fill in a list of users in the field BookInPolicy. Users in this list will be able to book the meeting room. Users not in the list will not be able to book the meeting room and won't see the meeting room if booking through Planner.
You can also use ad groups to maintain the list. This can make it easier to maintain several meeting rooms with BookInPolicy.
How to set up approval – or request in policy
To set up a meeting room that everyone can book tentatively and requires approval is done with two settings in Exchange.
- ResourceDelegates
- RequestInPolicy
RequestInPolicy is a list of users who are allowed to book the meeting room.
ResourceDelegates is a list of users who can approve a booking in the meeting room.
Both lists support using AD groups for easier management.
SiW handles the booking of a meeting room with approval, just like Outlook. When a user books the meeting room, they have it unless it is rejected.
Outlook sends the approver an email each time a meeting room is booked. But Planner has a nice overview to let you see all the bookings that require approval, so you can have an overview.
Note that to access the view in Planner, the approvers have to have the Planner right called facility manager.
Do not use the setting RequestOutOfPolicy as Planner does not support it, and you will have issues.
Preparation and follow-up time
- Preparation and follow-up time requires O365 integration or non-integrated meeting rooms.
When you enable preparation or follow-up time, you get a buffer between meetings. During this time you can clean up and setup for the next meeting. This setting is setup on each room. This allows each room to have individual settings.
Note that if you setup 5 minutes of preparation time and 10 minutes of follow-up time then you will effectively gain 15 minutes between meetings.
You can setup preparation and follow-up time in Planner.
Go to administration -> resources
Find your meeting room
Click the pencil by the meeting room
Note! There are 2 situations where the settings for preparation and follow-up time for exchange integrated meeting rooms are unsupported:
- An existing appointment with a room booking is moved in Outlook by dragging and dropping the appointment at another time/date. If this results in the same room being booked for 2 different meetings ending and starting at the same time, the preparation/follow-up time will not be enforced. Both meeting owners will still have the room for their meetings, but there will not be time blocked for preparation/follow-up time.
- An existing appointment with a room booking is extended, resulting in the same room being booked for 2 different meetings ending and starting at the same time, the preparation/follow-up time will not be enforced. Both meeting owners will still have the room for their meetings, but there will not be time blocked for preparation/follow-up time.
We have some recommendations to give the best experience.
We recommend hiding the meeting room in Exchange. See this chapter on how to How to set an Exchange meeting room as hidden in Exchange. The users are then forced to use the O365 add-in. This avoids a situation where the meeting room will appear available in Exchange despite preparation or follow-up time being in progress. If a user books a meeting room during the preparation or follow-up time the meeting will be rejected, which is a bad user experience.
Setup our MailTip functionality. An example of the text could be:
“Important: This room requires [XX] minutes for preparation/follow-up time. Back-to-back bookings in this room is not possible.”
Exchange also allows for custom messages. In Exchange it is named Custom Decline message sent through EWS. An example of the text could be:
"As per the previous booking notification for this room, we are sorry to inform you, that the meeting room is not available due to insufficient preparation and/or follow-up time. Please reschedule the meeting and take the necessary time into consideration."
How to set an Exchange meeting room as hidden in Exchange
Go to your Exchange admin center
Go to Resources
Pick your meeting room
Under general settings there is a box called Hide this from the global address list. Click that box
User will still be able to type in the meeting rooms email address and invite it, but it won't appear in the global address list.
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