Booking Company Resources Using Apple Calendar on an iOS Device

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 (tap the plus sign) 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. The Calendar on which the Appointment should appear -- it should always be your Calendar on your company Exchange Server
5. 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). 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, tap the Add link and the Resource will be invited and will automatically accept the reservation.

Searching the Exchange Server for other Users or Resources

When adding Invitees, 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 "car0" and the App has found and is suggesting 3 possible matches.

Tap the resource you'd like to reserve to add it to the list of invitees. Note that it might make sense to add all 3 cars to the list of invitees in order to see if they are available for the chosen time slot (see the next screenshot for details).

Confirming the Availability of Resources

Adding a Resource to your list of invitees will query the Exchange Server and indicate with a small icon whether the Resource is available-- a check-mark (1) indicates positive availability, and a question mark indicates it is not available.  (2) It is important to remove all but the one resource that is available so that the other resources aren't booked as well.

Learn More

Third Party Article:  How to Send and Accept Calendar Event Invitations on iPhone and iPad