ZCS Administrator Guide 7.2.1

Open Source Edition

Managing Resources

A resource is a location or equipment that can be scheduled for a meeting. Each meeting room location and other non-location specific resources such as AV equipment is set up as a resource account. The Addresses> Resources section in the administration console shows all resources that are configured for ZCS.

User accounts with the Calendar feature can select these resources for their meetings. The resource accounts automatically accept or reject invitations based on availability.

Administrators do not need to monitor these mailboxes on a regular basis. The contents of the resource mailboxes are purged according to the mail purge policies.

A Resource Wizard on the administration console guides you through the resource configuration. You can configure the account with the following details about the resource:

Type of resource, either location or equipment

Scheduling policy

Forwarding address to receive a copy of the invite

Description of the resource

Contact information. This can be a person to contact if there are issues.

Location information, including room name, specific building location including building and address, and room capacity

When you create a resource account, a directory account is created in the LDAP server.

To schedule a resource, users invite the equipment resource and/or location to a meeting. When they select the resource, they can view the description of the resource, contact information and free/busy status for the resource, if these are set up.

When the meeting invite is sent, an email is sent to the resource account, and, based on the scheduling policy, if the resource is free the meeting is automatically entered in the resource’s calendar and the resource is shown as Busy.

Setting up the Scheduling Policy

The scheduling policy establishes how the resource’s calendar is maintained. The following resource scheduling values can be set up:

Auto decline all recurring appointments. This value is enabled when the resource can be scheduled for only one meeting at a time. No recurring appointments can be scheduled for this resource.

Auto accept if available, auto-decline on conflict. When this option is selected, the resource account automatically accepts appointments unless the resource is already scheduled. The free/busy times can be viewed. You can modify the auto-decline rule to accept some meetings that conflict

Manual accept, auto decline on conflict. When this option is selected, the resource account automatically declines all appointments that conflict. Appointment requests that do not conflict are marked as tentative in the resource calendar and must be manually accepted. If you set this up, configure the forwarding address so a copy of the invite is sent to the account that can manually accept the invitation. You can modify the auto-decline rule to accept some meetings that conflict.

Auto accept always. The resource account automatically accepts all appointments that are scheduled. In this case, free/busy information is not maintained, thus more than one meeting could schedule the resource at the same time. Because the resource always accepts the invitation, the suggested use for this policy would be for a frequently used location off premises that you want the location address to be included in the invite to attendees.

No auto accept or decline. The resource account is manually managed. A delegated user must log into the resource account and accept or decline all requests.

Conflict Rules.

For accounts that include the auto decline on conflict value, you can set up a threshold, either as a number of conflicts or as a percentage of all the recurring appointments to partially accept recurring appointments. Maximum allowed number of conflicts and/or Maximum allowed percent of conflicts are configured to allow a recurring resource to be scheduled even if it is not available for all the requested recurring appointment dates.

The resource accepts appointments even if there are conflicts until either the number of conflicts reaches the maximum allowed or the maximum percentage of conflicts allowed. In order for partial acceptance of a series to work, both fields must be set to nonzero values.

Managing Resource Accounts

The Resource Accounts Preference>Calendar tab can be configured to let users manage the Resource’s Calendar. You can configure the following options to manage the resource.

An address to forward invites. If the forwarding address was set up when the account was provisioned, you can change the address

Who can use this resource. In the Permissions section, Invites, select Allow only the following internal users to invite me to meetings and add the appropriate users’ email addresses to the list.

To fully manage a resource account’s calendar, you can share the resource calendar with a user who is given the Manager rights. Users delegated as Manager have full administrative rights for that calendar. They can view, edit, add, remove, accept or decline the invites.