Tip
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If you have a conference room, company car, or equipment that everyone needs to use, then you need to come up with a way to make those resources reservable to everyone. The best way to do that is to create a room or equipment mailbox in Office 365 for each resource. You might create one for your first-floor conference room, media equipment, or a moving truck.
Once you create a room or equipment mailbox, everyone in the company can reserve it for meetings or events using Outlook. Learn how to use it and how to set it up on the next two tabs. Here are some other common questions about room and equipment mailboxes.
To use room or equipment mailboxes, open Outlook from your computer or sign in to Outlook on the web. Schedule a new meeting and add the room or equipment to the meeting like you would when inviting other employees or customers. You’ve now reserved it.
Or, from your Calendar, just select New Meeting.
TIP: In the scheduling calendar, blue means the room or equipment is reserved, or busy. Select the white, or free, area on the calendar.
When finished, select Send.
To set up a room or equipment mailbox, go to the Microsoft 365 admin center. (You’ll need to have admin permission to do this.) Create the mailbox and let everyone know they can start reserving it for meetings and events.
Note
To keep your room and equipment mailboxes secure, block sign-in to these mailboxes. For more information, see Block sign-in for the shared mailbox account.
Open Outlook and create a new meeting. Add the room or equipment to the meeting as if it were a person and select Scheduling Assistant to see a live calendar view of the room or equipment’s availability. If the hour slot is clear, it’s available; if it’s blue, it’s reserved.
Open the meeting you scheduled in Outlook and then remove the room or equipment from the meeting like you would an attendee. This will free up the room for others to reserve.
No, you don’t need someone to accept or decline requests. You can decide whether you want to let the room or equipment be automatically booked or managed by someone in your company.
No. While most people in your organization need a license to use Office 365, you don’t need to assign a license to a room mailbox or equipment mailbox.
No, you don’t need someone in charge of the room mailbox or equipment mailbox.