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By Jim Boyce

When setting up a work schedule for yourself and your team members, you need to know when each team member is available. After all, to schedule a meeting, you need to know when members of your team are away on a business trip or on vacation. That's where free/busy status information comes in handy.

What free/busy status looks like in Outlook 2003

In Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, free/busy status information refers to the status of a block of time in someone's schedule. You can designate time as Busy, Tentative, Open, or Out of Office. Tentative indicates that someone has tentatively accepted or scheduled an appointment during a particular block of time, and Open indicates that the block of time is free. The terms Busy and Out of Office are self-explanatory.

Outlook 2003 incorporates different color coding and shading to indicate the free/busy status for schedules. There is a legend at the bottom of the Meeting dialog box.

When you're managing a schedule, you can use the free/busy status to know when team members are available for meetings or other time-specific tasks.

Note  If you're not using Microsoft Exchange Server, all non-Open time is shown as Busy.

For organizations that use Exchange Server

To be used effectively, the free/busy status information for each user must be stored where Outlook 2003 can access it to update users' schedules. Exchange Server automatically stores free/busy information for each user and requires no setup on your part to use Outlook 2003 to schedule group events and meetings. If your organization uses Exchange Server, you don't need to configure free/busy status settings. You are already set up to manage group schedules.

For organizations that do not use Exchange Server

If your organization is not using Exchange Server, you need to set up your computer so that Outlook 2003 can access users' schedules. Before you can access your team members' schedules or allow them to access yours, all team members need to publish their free/busy information and set their free/busy search locations.

Publish your free/busy information

Free/busy status information can be stored on a local server on the LAN or on a remote server by using a file path, FTP, or HTTP. Where you store the information depends on whether everyone in your organization is on the same network.

If everyone in your organization is on the same network, you can just share a folder on a computer and then have everyone publish their free/busy information to that folder. If team members are located outside your network, everyone can publish their free/busy information to an FTP or HTTP server. Or you can use a combination of the two publishing methods if needed.

To set up Outlook to publish your free/busy information for an e-mail account that does not use Exchange Server, follow these steps:

1. In Outlook, on the Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options.
3. In the Calendar Options dialog box, click Free/Busy Options to open the Free/Busy Options dialog box.

   

4. Click Publish at my location, and then click in the box that's below the option.
5. Type the URL for the location where you want to publish your free/busy information. Here are some examples:
   • ftp://myName:myPassword@ftp.tailspintoys.com/schedules/%name%.vfb

     This example assumes that you use file transfer protocol (FTP) to publish to a server and that you must enter a user account name and password (myName and myPassword in this example). The server administrator must set up the FTP site and the destination folder where the schedules will be published, and set permissions on the folder so that team members can save to the folder.

   • ftp://ftp.tailspintoys.com/schedules/%name%.vfb

     This example uses anonymous FTP. The server administrator must set up the FTP site and the folder where the schedules will be published and set permissions on the folder so that team members can write to the folder.

   • F:\Schedules\%name%.vfb

     This example uses a mapped network drive to publish to a shared network folder.

   • \\myServer\schedules\%name%.vfb

     This example uses the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to the server and shared folder.

     In all of these examples, the %name% variable permits Outlook 2003 to use the first part of the e-mail address as the file name. If your e-mail address were jim@tailspintoys.com, the file name for your free/busy status information would be jim.vfb.

   Note  Outlook 2003 also supports publishing free/busy information by using an http:// URL, but this method requires some extra setup at the server.

6. Click OK in the three dialog boxes.

By default, Outlook 2003 publishes two months of free/busy status information to the server every 15 minutes. You can force Outlook 2003 to update the free/busy status information on your server and test the connection between Outlook 2003 and your server.

To test the connection between Outlook 2003 and your server

Note  The raw FTP folder path where you need to publish the free/busy information might be different from the path you see when you open the FTP site in your Web browser — you might need to include the parent folder in the path. For example, assume that you host your Web site, www.tailspintoys.com, with a hosting service. The hosting service set up your hosting account by using the account name johnsmith. You have created a folder named schedules in the root directory of your Web site. It's likely that the raw path you need to use is ftp://johnsmith:password@www.tailspintoys.com/johnsmith/schedules/%name%.vfb. Check with your provider or administrator if you're not sure what path to use.

Set the free/busy search location

Outlook 2003 needs to know where to look for other users' free/busy information. Follow these steps to specify the default search location:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options.
3. Click Free/Busy Options.
4. In the Search location box, type the file or FTP URL for the location where the free/busy data is stored. In most cases, this is the same URL you entered for publishing your own free/busy information. Remember to include %name%.vfb at the end of the URL.
5. Click OK for each of the next three prompts that appear.

The default search location works for all users whose free/busy information is stored in that location. If the free/busy information is stored elsewhere for specific contacts, you can designate the location for those contacts.

To specify a free/busy location for specific contacts

Using Outlook 2003 to manage group schedules

If your organization does not use Exchange Server, all members of your team should publish their free/busy information and set the free/busy search location. After everyone completes these setup tasks, your team is ready to start group scheduling by using Outlook 2003. Using Outlook 2003, your team can easily schedule group events and meetings.

About the author   Jim Boyce has authored over 50 books about computers and technology; many of these books are about the Microsoft Office System. He regularly contributes to several online sites and publications. His latest book is Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Inside Out, which is available from Microsoft Learning.