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 6.9 Appointments) 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 provided for MS Outlook 2007. If you use another version, settings may differ slightly.
To book a resource, follow these instructions:
Open a new event and specify its subject.
Click on the Scheduling button in the new event's toolbar (see figure 6.25 Resource reservation).
Add the resources email address to the list of attendees (e.g.
car1@company.com). If you do not know the address of the resource, you can find it in the public contact folder called Resources (click on under Resources — Public Folders).Note
If the folder is missing in the list, it is necessary to add it for search. You can do it quite simply by following these guidelines: In MS Outlook, go to section Contacts, right-click on Resources and select Properties. On the Outlook Address Book tab, check the Show this folder as an e-mail Address Book option (see figure 6.23 Show this folder as an e-mail Address Book).
If the Free/Busy calendar is working, information about the source is shown in the right section of the dialog. 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 6.25 Resource reservation).
You may have noticed that there are also other attendees in the list shown in figure 6.25 Resource reservation. Resources can be reserved either for usual appointment or for meetings (see section 1.8.7 Appointments).
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 sharing process (subscription of shared folders is focused in chapter 6.5.1 Sharing and mapping 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:
Right-click on the Kerio Outlook Connector Store root folder and select the Properties for Kerio Outlook Connector Store option from the context menu.
In the dialog just opened, go to the Folder Mapping tab.
In the User Name field, enter name of the resource. If the resource is not created in the primary domain, insert its full name including the domain (e.g.
car1@company.com) and click on (see figure 6.26 Context pop-up menu of the root folder). This adds the resource to the list of subscribed folders.If you are a manager of multiple resources, subscribe all calendars as described in steps
1to4.
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.