Booking Company Resources Using Apple Calendar on a Mac

Microsoft Exchange is a complete system that workgroups use to collaborate-- shared calendars can be used to reserve resources like cars, meeting rooms, or tools. If your company is using Hosted Exchange and the Resources have been configured by your Administrator, the Apple Calendar (on Mac and iOS) can be used to make reservations of those resources.

Reserving a Corporate Resource by Inviting it to an Appointment

Simply create an Appointment on your Exchange Calendar and Invite the Resource as an Invitee  Be sure to enter detailed information into the appointment:

1. The Title of the Appointment
2. The Location of the Appointment (entering a real address here can have pay-offs later if you'd like Siri to give you driving directions-- leverage the "suggestions" that the Calendar app is offering)
3. The date and duration
4. Invitees -- your Exchange Administrator may have configured special Resource Calendars that behave like an automated User. Ask your administrator for the names of the Resources in your organization OR search for them (see next image).
5. Note that once you've entered the complete name of the Resource in the Invitee section of appointment, if the Resource is not already booked in that time slot, a circled check-mark appears to the left of the resource name
6. When you're done entering all the details of your appointment, click the Send button and the Resource will be invited and will automatically accept the reservation.

Searching the Exchange Server for other Users or Resources

As you start to type the names or email addresses of other Users or company resource calendars into the Invitee section of the appointment, the App searches the Exchange Server for matching items... in this case, we started typing "Car 0" and the App has found and is suggesting 3 possible matches. Note that the results indicate there are items found on Servers.

Viewing Resource Availability

It can be helpful to see the relative availability of the resources you'd like to reserve. To do so, enter the resource in the Invitee section of the Appointment item and then click the Check Availability... link.

The resulting window is referred to as the Availability Panel. It will list the availability of all of the invitees you entered, along with your own availability.

Learn More

Apple KB Article: Invite People to Events