Kerio Connect now provides an electronic management of resources shared by employees of your company. Resources are rooms and devices available in the company, such as OHPs, whiteboards, cars, etc. Resource management allows to:
book a resource for a particular time,
view current resources and their reservations in the Free/Busy calendar (for details on Free/Busy calendars and information on appointments, see section 8.3 Scheduling of meetings) when planning reservations,
subscribe resource calendars by using standard sharing/delegation,
set the resource manager who can decide on priorities in case of any collisions in reservations.
Resources can be booked by using the existing calendar system. Resource reservation is based on creating of en event. The feature works similarly as appointment scheduling. The main difference is that the Attendees tab must include the resource selected from the contact list (it can naturally also include contacts of attendees). In the Free/Busy calendar you can see whether the resource is available for the scheduled time or not.
Note
To make a resource available for booking, it is necessary to create it in Kerio Connect first. If you need to create a new resource, contact your network administrator.
Note
The settings described are for Entourage 2008. If you use another version, settings may differ slightly.
To book a resource, follow these instructions:
Open a new event, enter its subject and time for which the resource should be reserved.
Add the resource(s) email address to Invite entry (e.g.
car1@company.com).In the event, go to the Scheduling tab.
If the Free/Busy calendar is working, existing reservations can be viewed in it. It is therefore easy to check right away, whether the source is free or already booked by another user for the suggested time (see figure 8.10 Resource reservation).
You may have noticed that there are also other attendees in the list shown in figure 8.10 Resource reservation. Resources can be reserved either for usual appointment or for meetings (see section 8.3 Scheduling of meetings).
Each resource created in the system has its own calendar where all reservations are displayed. Calendars of individual resources can be subscribed through the standard delegation process (delegation of folders is focused in chapter 8.6 Delegation and subscription of folders).
Most user can access resource calendars in the read-only mode. Resource calendars can be edited only by the resource manager. The role of resource managers and their rights are addressed in the following section.
In certain situations, it is necessary that a resource is booked even if it has already been reserved or that there is no other way than to make the reservation by a phone call. For such purposes, there exists a user with special rights who is a manager of the company resources. Resource managers can access resource calendars with administration rights. This implies that they can edit, remove or move reservations in the particular resource calendar. They can also create new reservations.
If you are a resource manager, first it is necessary to subscribe calendars of all resources that you would manage:
Go to .
Open the Kerio account and go to the Delegation tab (see figure 8.11 Context pop-up menu of the root folder).
In the Users I am a delegate for section, click on and in the Select User dialog, add a resource name and when the resource is found, confirm selection by clicking on .
If you manage multiple resources, subscribe to all their calendars as described above and shown at figure 8.11 Context pop-up menu of the root folder.
Once subscribed, calendars of individual resources are shown in the folder tree. Each resource calendar now shows all reservations of the particular item done by any users. The resource manager can edit reservation time, add new reservations or remove them if demanded.