Scheduling meetings in dividable conference rooms

[JeffP]

I my organization we have quite a few conference rooms that can be used
either as a whole, large room or divided into two (or more) rooms with a
soundproof divider for smaller groups. Think of this as "Conference Room 1"
that can be used as "Conference Room 1A" and "Conference Room 1B". We
currently have each smaller room set up in Outlook as individual calendars,
which generally makes sense but leads to a couple of problems.

First, some (less sophisticated) users tend to schedule 1A only, thinking
that they are reserving the whole room: 1A and 1B. Sometimes this happens
because another person has already reserved 1B and didn't need 1A, and
sometimes they just didn't remember to check 1B. Either way can lead to
misunderstandings.

Next, some of the users try to use the scheduling features to find a room
automatically. This generally works fine, but if they need all of room 1
(not just 1A or 1B), there is no way to automatically determine the larger
room's availability. In other words, the system will look for ONE available
resource (such as 1A or 1B), but is not able to recognize that Room 1 is only
available if BOTH 1A and 1B are available and that room 1 is unavailable if
EITHER 1A or 1B is already taken.

Also, if they do a little extra work and look for an available timeslot
manually, they can find a time in which both 1A and 1B are available, but if
they use the "Make Meeting" feature, only 1A will be included in the meeting
invitation UNLESS they remember to explicitly add 1B to the list. They tend
to forget this which also leads to confusion.

What I would like to see is a way to configure calendars such as 1A and 1B
that somehow links them together logically into a virtual "Room 1". I would
like to be able to do two things:

1) request a meeting for a small group that would still see 1A and 1B
individually, but show them as Busy if Room 1 is reserved;

2) request a meeting for a large group that would show Room 1 as Busy if
either 1A or 1B is reserved.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

Thanks....

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[Mrs. Soup]

I agree--that's a fabulous idea. We have a similar situatio with "classrooms
Q, R and S. Together they form one very large room. Q can be used
separately. R & S can be used together or separately. The problem I have is
that people misue the conference rooms. People will schedule a meeting for
4-6 people in Classroom Q -- which holds 25+ people and refuse to move
because all of their "stuff" is stored in the closets in the room. Did
anyone every think about putting together the four or six packets of
materials and taking those packets to the appropriate size conference room?
Does anyone else have this problem and how have you resolved it?

Mrs. Soup