GroupWise Busy Search for Windows

The “Busy Search” feature of GroupWise helps you when you are trying to schedule an appointment for a group of people. It assists you in determining when “free time” is available among the included participants. GroupWise is able to do this by comparing the calendars of the participants involved and identifying the available times for you. Obviously, the GroupWise calendars of the participants must be up-to-date for the busy search to be most effective. Using “Busy Search”, you are then able to then select a time that will “fit” with the many schedules involved, and send an appointment requesting participation. When your sent appointment request reaches the intended mailboxes, the recipients can then accept or decline the request.

To see how to perform a “Busy” search in GroupWise, follow the guidelines below.

NOTE: these guidelines begin with Busy Search for PC users. The Mac users guide follows.

PC Users Guide:

Create a new appointment by clicking on the “Schedule New Appointment” button on the GroupWise toolbar ; or click the “File” menu and choose “New”, “Appointment”

Address the appointment to the necessary users (including yourself if appropriate) in the “To” box (use the Address book if necessary). Fill in the “Place”, “Subject”, and “Message” boxes as needed.

Specify the first possible day for the appointment in the “Start Date” box. Your can type in the starting date, or use the Calendar tool to the right of the start date input box:

Also, adjust the length of the meeting (its starting time and duration), by clicking on the “Time control” buttons.

Now click on the “Busy” button on the right side of this screen

The following screen will appear:

At the Busy search screen, you can see the names of the users that you have included in the search. At the top of this screen, you will see two “tabs”: “Individual Schedules” and “Available Times”. “Available Times” shows a visual mapping of all involved schedules over a period of time and where the “free openings” occur. “Individual Schedules” show each person’s schedule, and any scheduled times for a user will be shown in a “grayed” pattern. A “legend” at the bottom of these screens shows you how to interpret the patterns. Scrolling to the right will move these screens across “future” days.

HINT: if you need to extend the search across a greater number of days, click on the “Invite to Meeting” button and change the “Number of days to Search” to a value that suits you.

At this point, you are ready to let GroupWise help you decide on the best appointment time. You can be in either the “Available Times” view or “Individual Schedules” view; but the “Available Times” view is best for taking in the “Big picture”.

Now, click on the “Auto-Select” button and notice that GroupWise selects the first available time-frame that will accommodate all users. Continuing to click on the “Auto-Select” button will advance to the next available schedule “fit”. Once you have found a suitable time frame, you can click the “OK” button on the busy search screen, and you will be returned to the appointment screen. Now, click on the “Send” button and the appointment request will be delivered to the intended recipients. The recipients will see the appointment request in their incoming mailbox, and can respond with either an “Accept” or a “Decline”. Comments can be included with the response.

That’s all there is to a Groupwise “Busy Search” so what are you waiting for; get busy -- searching.