Booking a room using the GoBright Outlook plugin
Benefits of having Outlook integration
One of the many benefits of having your O365/Exchange room resources integrated with GoBright is the ability to continue use Outlook for the booking of meeting rooms. While it is possible to book a room using Outlook's native Room finder tools, GoBright's Outlook plugin allows for a simple search facility to find the right room for your activity. You can filter by time, duration, room type, capacity and equipment, and select from a shortlist of match rooms. You can also book services for the room, and pre-invite your external visitors to the building.
The guide below will demonstrate how easy all of these features can be used:
Booking a meeting room
Launch a new meeting in your Outlook calendar.
From the toolbar select the 'Organise Meeting' GoBright icon. For more information on installing the Outlook plugin - https://support.gobright.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022384973-Outlook-Plugin.
The time and date can be set as normal within the Outlook invitation - the GoBright plugin auto-adjust to changes made. You can then choose room capacity, location, and room attributes/equipment.
Once applied, a list of rooms will be shown, ordered by lowest matching capacity first. There will also be time slots shown next to each, indicating that day's availability. Click on one of the time slots to add the room to the booking. If choosing a timeslot outside of the original time selected in the invite, the Outlook invitation start time will be adjusted automatically.
The meeting invitation can now be sent, the room booked and attendees notified of their meeting.
N.B - You can also combine the process with other Outlook plugins, such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, to add conference details to the invitation, once the room has been selected and added to the invite.
Adding Services/Pre-registering visitors
As part of the GoBright plugin, we can extend way beyond just meeting invitations - it is possible add services such as sandwiches and coffee to the meeting invitation. With visitor licences, the pre-registration of visitors makes for a seamless sign-in experience upon their arrival. Notification to the host is automatically sent when the visitor has scanned their QR code invitation at reception..
To add services to a room, click 'add' within the Services tab:
Select the appropriate category and item, choose a quantity, delivery time, and provide any additional comments. Click 'Add' to add to the room booking request. Attendees on the invite will not be able to see service items booked.
To pre-register a visitor, click 'add' within the Pre-registrations tab.
Date and location will be set automatically, but if the visitor is signing into another location, or arriving outside of the start date, this can be amended.
If the attendees for the meeting are already added to the Outlook meeting invite, select 'Add attendees from booking'. Tick the box of those who will be arriving as visitors to the building:
The name and email address fields will be automatically completed for all ticked users. Once the remaining fields have been completed by the user, click 'Add' to register all the selected visitors as pre-registered attendees. Each user will receive both the calendar invitation as normal, but also a QR code via a separate email, to be used when signing into the building.
