How to Manage Recurring Meetings for Enhanced Productivity

Using Outlook offers a better solution to booking recurring meetings 

Meetings take up a lot of time for employers around the world. In the United States alone, there are around 55 million meetings held each week. That’s over 1 billion per year, and when you look at the time spent in each, over 30% of workers reported they spent 31 hours a month on average in meetings.

Even more concerning is that Zippia also reported:

With so much time and focus spent on meetings, managing them efficiently is critical. And this is especially true when handling recurring meetings where staff run the risk of double booking meeting rooms and resources.

Below we look at double booking and how to use Outlook for recurring meetings to avoid costly double bookings that can hurt employee productivity, increase stress and administrative burden, and lower a business’s reputation and profits as customer satisfaction takes a hit.

Why Businesses Should Avoid Double Booking Meetings

Double booking often results in employees feeling more stressed, unfocused, and fatigued. Moreover, for businesses, double booking can make their customers feel undervalued, neglected, or unsatisfied. This can hurt a businesses’ reputation and profits long-term.

Plus, double booking meetings, especially meetings that are back-to-back, creates a frenzied environment. There are mad dashes and phone calls to get double booked times covered. Clients could be left hanging. Projects could get put on hold and rescheduling with clients can harm a long-term relationship and the company’s profits. Now the company has made even more work for employees, and more time is wasted on meetings for the day.

One of the best things an employer can do to avoid the costly consequences of double booking is to help its workforce avoid double booking appointments and meetings. A meeting room booking software connected to employees’ existing Microsoft Outlook®, Exchange and Microsoft 365 solutions can accomplish this while also reducing time spent on meetings and administrative tasks.

Avoid Double Bookings Easier with a Meeting Room Software Solution

With a meeting room booking software that works with existing Microsoft solutions, employees will have the office’s meeting rooms connected directly to their calendar and email applications.

This makes it easier to both find and book available rooms and times, and to avoid layering meetings on top of each other.

Add-On Products’ Resource Central meeting room booking solution, for example, enables an organization to:

1. Know what meeting rooms are available for recurring meetings
2. Book recurring meetings only for available dates without canceling the whole series.
3. Create a recurring meeting series in Microsoft Outlook® and Exchange easily
4. Flag warnings around bookings in advance to prevent double bookings
5. Automatically handle Microsoft Exchange’s settings for conflicting meetings by adjusting the tool’s rules for conflict percentage to enable you to still book only the available dates without worrying about the series being declined due to a 0% or 50% or other conflict percentage. 

Product Deep Dive: Icons in Resource Central Alert Recurring Meeting Availability Status

When you book recurring meetings using Resource Central, employees will see two icons to help them quickly identify potential recurring meeting conflicts.

• A red icon is displayed if the booking conflicts with your Exchange settings, and the resource is unavailable for your series.
• A blue icon is displayed if you can book some of the meetings in your series.
• If no icon is displayed, you can book the whole series.

The icons visualize if there are conflicting occurrences. The icons are shown to employees when trying to set up recurring meetings to help prevent double bookings in the office. Additionally, unlike other scheduling tools that may employ a strict 0% conflict rule that would prevent any series from being booked if duplication is present, Resource Central helps employees to book a recurring meeting series and resources by booking only the available dates. This streamlines the meeting scheduling process and makes it easier to adjust and schedule the one-offs.

See how the Municipality of Faxe avoids double bookings by using Resource Central in combination with another booking system.

How to Schedule Recurring Meetings in Outlook

Here is how to organize recurring meetings with Outlook and Resource Central:

1. Use the Outlook Add-In, displayed in the same window as your Outlook meeting request
2. Pick the time length and time/day of the week you want to set the meeting for
3. A list of meeting rooms will be automatically provided.
4. Any conflicting dates will be displayed.
5. Select the meeting room you want to use.
6. Choose alternative rooms if there are any conflicts.
7. Book the meeting space by sending the final request.

Interested in taking this feature of our meeting room booking system for a test drive? Contact us to schedule a free trial or free online demo!