University Computer Help Desk

Rooms and Equipment in Exchange

Exchange allows you to manage the scheduling and availability of rooms and equipment provided by your department or unit. Rooms and equipment are sometimes referred to as resources.

• Rooms - Rooms in Exchange can be reserved for meetings and other events. This includes conference rooms and other meeting spaces.
• Equipment - Equipment can also be reserved through Exchange. This typically includes things like laptops and projectors, but could include any type of equipment.

As a representative of your department, you can request that your department's meeting rooms and equipment be added to Exchange so that others can schedule and reserve their use.

Scheduling Rooms and Equipment

Rooms and equipment can be set up to handle reservation requests in one of two ways:

• Moderated - Requests to reserve the resource must be approved or denied by a person (delegate).
• Auto-Accept - Requests to reserve the resource are automatically accepted, based on availability.

A room or equipment resource has its own calendar, which can be viewed and modified just like a person's calendar. When a request for a room or piece of equipment is accepted in Exchange, an event is added to the resource's calendar.

Moderated

If a room or piece of equipment is set up as a moderated resource, requests to reserve the room or equipment must be accepted or declined manually. This provides you with oversight to the resource and allows you more control over who has access to the resource and at what times.

A moderated resource must have at least one delegate who is responsible for accepting or declining reservation requests, and it can have many delegates associated with it if you desire. When a request to reserve a room or piece of equipment is made, an email is sent to the delegate(s) for the resource. A delegate can accept or decline requests to reserve the resource, just like a person accepts or declines meeting requests for his or her own calendar.

Auto-Accept

A room or piece of equipment which is configured to auto-accept reservation requests handles its own calendar automatically. No one is responsible for accepting or declining reservation requests on behalf of the resource. This provides you with an easy way to manage resources that are up for grabs in a first-come, first-serve way.

Exchange will always accept reservation requests so long as the following criteria are true. If one or both of the criteria cannot be met, Exchange will automatically decline the request.

• The room or piece of equipment is available (i.e. someone else has not already booked the resource for the requested date and time).
• The request falls within the resource's booking window.

Booking Window

All room and equipment resources in Exchange have a booking window, which defines how far in the future you can reserve a resource. By default, the booking window is 180 days.

As indicated above, if a room or piece of equipment is configured to auto-accept and a request is made to reserve the resource outside of the booking window, Exchange will decline the request.

For example, if you try to reserve a room one year from now (i.e. 365 days from now) and that room is set up to auto-accept, your request will be denied because it falls outside the booking window (which is 180 days by default). However, if you try to reserve that same room three months from now (i.e. 90 days from now), Exchange will automatically accept your request because it falls within the booking window.

Request a New Room or Equipment Resource

As a representative of your department, you can request that new room and equipment resources be added to Exchange so that others can schedule and reserve their use.

To request that a new room or equipment resource be added to Exchange, do the following:

1. Go to the Support & Requests page on the University Computer Help Desk website.
2. Click the Exchange tab.
3. Click Room and Equipment Request.
4. Complete the form.

The Exchange administrators will receive your request and process it. You will be notified once the request has been completed and the new resource is available in Exchange.

Advanced Options for Rooms and Equipment

The information above provides a general view of how rooms and equipment are handled in Exchange. It is possible to configure rooms and equipment in other ways.

The following advanced options for room and equipment resources can also be considered:

• Extend or reduce the booking window for a resource
• Customize the response message that the meeting organizer will receive (for example, to provide instructions regarding a room or piece of equipment)
• Configure the resource to not send calendar-related emails to delegates
• Do not allow recurring meetings to be scheduled in conjunction with the room or equipment
• Set a room capacity (for example, specify that the room can hold 20 people)
• Configure the room to auto-accept for certain people, but require a delegate to moderate reservation requests made by all other people

If you are interested in having a room or equipment resource set up using these advanced options, please submit a request as described above, but in the Comments box at the bottom of the request form, please describe how you would like the room or equipment resource to work. The Exchange system administrators will review your request and may contact you to discuss it further.