Easier Room Booking in Outlook on the Web!
Published Jul 31 2019 10:07 AM 61.5K Views

How often have you or your users tried to find rooms that are free for your meeting time, your recurring series, that have the capacity and resources you need, and are close to you? Probably enough to acknowledge it can be a bit time consuming, especially if you are creating a recurring event or trying to book multiple rooms in different cities. To help you with this, we are releasing features that make it easier to find and identify the room you need. We also have new features to help you manage your meetings!

Let’s focus first on what the user experience looks like, then we’ll get into how you set this up behind the scenes.

Sometimes you need to find rooms with specific characteristics, and with this new feature you can now search for rooms beyond from the ones we show you. Just click on the location bar, and then go to “Browse more rooms”, this opens a right-side panel where you can search for a room by building and city.

 

Easier Room Booking Graphic 1.png

Sometimes you need a room with specific features. Now, when you are looking for a room with capabilities or trying to accommodate a group of people, you can filter for rooms based on capacity, features, and floor.

 

Easier Room Booking Graphic 2.png

Creating a recurring series already demands a lot of coordination. Outlook has resources to help you with that, the Scheduling Assistant, FindTime, and smart time suggestions. They all help you find a free time slot among your attendees but finding a room that could be booked for the entire recurring series was a little more hectic. We’re making that process easier by showing you when a room is free for the entire series or for how many instances of it so you can book with confidence. This feature is currently only available for first release customers but will be available for all users in time.

Please note that if your series extends beyond 62 calendar days, you will only see the availability inside those first 62 calendar days returned. This will be shown as “Available 26 of first 26 instances” (you can see this in the screenshot below).

 

Easier Room Booking Graphic 3.png

Outlook on the Web will show the rooms available for your series and how many conflicts they have

Book multiple rooms

Not everyone in your meeting works in the same building or even the same city. For those meetings when your team is spread across the world, Outlook lets you book multiple rooms so you can make sure everyone has a good spot for that important call. To do this, go to “Browse more rooms” and search by city, then add the rooms you need.

 

Easier Room Booking Graphic 4.png

What Do You (The Admin) Need to Make this Magic Happen?

The key piece to this new feature is the new Set-Place cmdlet. This cmdlet is only available in Exchange Online, we will not be including this feature in any on-prem versions of Exchange Server.

As the documentation here explains there are multiple properties you can set on a room mailbox that users can then use to filter room per the screenshots above.

For example;

Set-Place -Identity "Conference Room 01" -IsWheelChairAccessible $true -AudioDeviceName PolyCom -VideoDeviceName "InFocus WXGA Projector"

There are many different properties you can set, so put some time in planning those and then once you have them set your users can  use them. Here’s a full list of properties you can set;

 [-AudioDeviceName <String>]
 [-Building <String>]
 [-Capacity <System.Int32>]
 [-City <String>]
 [-CountryOrRegion <CountryInfo>]
 [-DisplayDeviceName <String>]
 [-FloorNumber <System.Int32>]
 [-GeoCoordinates <GeoCoordinates>]
 [-IsWheelChairAccessible <$true | $false>]
 [-Label <String>]
 [-Nickname <String>]
 [-Phone <String>]
 [-PostalCode <String>]
 [-State <String>]
 [-Street <String>]
 [-Tags <String[]>]
 [-VideoDeviceName <String>]

As you can see there are many opportunities here for comedy as well as helpful descriptors. It’s your choice what to do with these.

 

Easier Room Booking Graphic 5.png

Summary

Most of the features are already available to Office and Microsoft 365 users and the remaining ones will be rolling out in the next couple of weeks.

We would love to know if these features help your users plan and manage their meetings or if finding the right rooms is now easier for them.

Please, tell us what you think in the comments below, in our UserVoice channel or using the in-product smile feature.

Thank you!

The Calendaring Team

71 Comments

Not sure I got this part :" As you can see there are many opportunities here for comedy..."

Very welcome, well done Calendaring team. Hits nearly all the calendaring requirements we see from clients, with one exception. People like to see a picture of the room they will be booking, it give them confidence to know all these things these tabs will tell them.
I would also add an admin UI around rooms, roomlists and these new attributes would be very welcome.

Iron Contributor
Appreciate the new feature. Some questions: When the Set-Place command is used, will the custom parameters for rooms be in effect for existing, as well as new rooms? Will the Set-Place command replace the set-calendaring PS command? When will this be available for Outlook 2016? Thank you.
Brass Contributor

This is great but would be even nicer if they could be configured in the Admin GUI 

Copper Contributor
"This cmdlet is only available in Exchange Online, we will not be including this feature in any on-prem versions of Exchange Server" :( So thanks for nothing. I can see that Microsoft is actively working on killing Exchange on-premises in the hope, everyone will enter the O365-Train. But be assured: this will not happen...
Brass Contributor

i think this option available only on outlook for web. do we have the same option in outlook client....what we have to do to make it work on outlook client. Most of the users will like this feature but without this feature in outlook client it will make not sense. they cannot login to outlook web if they want to book the room,.,whether room finder will help on outlook client

Copper Contributor

This is awesome! Will we get this functionality in the Outlook client as well? Also, as other have stated, would be nice with an admin gui for this too! Could you post some more information on how the other properties would be used? Eg. if we enter GeoCoordinates, does Outlook (client, web, mobile) do anything with that information to make it easier for users to find the rooms? 

Copper Contributor

You said : here the full list of properties but dont mention -identity. Go to the see the link for better syntax.

Copper Contributor

Echo my colleague who said "Ohhhh, this is cool."  Implementation design question: What is best practice for indicating a room is Team Room System compatible? 

 

Options seems to be:

  1. Tagging standard and educating end users
  2. Naming convention of audio or video device
  3. User Voice suggestion for new "conferencing system compatibility" attribute

 

 

Brass Contributor

@Emy LoanzonI had the same thought about adding attributes to existing rooms but the Set-Place cmdlet page helpfully states:

 

"Use the Set-Place cmdlet to update room mailboxes with additional metadata, which provides a better search and room suggestion experience."

Microsoft

Hi everyone. Thanks for your comments and feedback. We are working on getting the admin UI updated to add all the properties listed in set-place cmdlet. Here are some reponses to questions asked.

1. @Emy Loanzon All rooms that are in EXO/AD can be updated with set-place cmdlet. Set-place will be the only way to set metadata properties on rooms. Set-user would no longer be used for room metadata but set-calendar would still be used for everything else. This functionality is only available for O365.

2. We are working on bringing this functionality to Outlook win32 client. @stiansvendsen  @office36578_rocks 

3. @Alain Sylvestre Identity is the unique identifier of a room. In this case it is the email address of the room. We will update documentation to show that.

4. @Jason_Smith_Zurich Good feedback. We can look into adding this as a separate property. For now please just use 'tags' to add 'Teams Enabled'

5. @Ben Dyke Did I answer your question? Please check #1 on this comment. 

Copper Contributor

Is it possible to access capacity and resources these through the Graph API? 

Copper Contributor

One question if I may, please? (it may also be of interest to @stiansvendsen )

 

After adding GeoCoordinates, a thumbnail map of the location appears when hovering over the meeting room to view properties.

 

The pin is in the correct location on the thumbnail according to the GeoCoordinates, however the 'City' is also set on this particular meeting room and when clicking on the map or for directions, it seems to use the 'City' to guess where the centre is, then give directions to here.

A small bugbear possibly but could quite easily end up in people going to the wrong location!

 

Loving the new attributes though, keep it up :cool:

Microsoft

1. Yes. We have a new API in Microsoft Graph called Places API.

2. @jonnyw we use the full address to determine the exact location on the map. If you do not provide full address then there is no way for us to determine where the building is. Let me know if you need help on this. I am happy to help!

Iron Contributor

Great functionality! I have two questions about it:

  • Searching for buildings is not released yet, is that correct?
  • We have a lot of locations and a lot of room lists. However only a limited set of our room lists is shown in the Browse Rooms option. Is there some limitation we are hitting. Also type ahead does not bring up the other rooms.

One comment: the documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/mailboxes/set-place?view=exchange-ps talks about the parameter 'FloorNumber' but I believe that must be just 'Floor'?

Copper Contributor

What's the ETA for Outlook on the desktop and what about the Outlook for IOS/Android client?

Brass Contributor

@vrod29 Will it also work with Microsoft Teams - when you schedule a meeting using the Team client or the add-in from Outlook client?

Copper Contributor

Great to see this feature and it will help us to collect the right information as we audit our meeting rooms globally. Appreciate it's a bit old school, but could we have some provision for whiteboards/flip charts in the future?

Iron Contributor

Looking forward to this!!  Any update on when the EXO PowerShell will be updated to be deployed in a better way?  The ClickOnce has to go.  Should be deployed the same way as the new Azure modules.

Copper Contributor
@vrod29 any plans for thorough support for dividing rooms across Exchange? Many facilities have rooms which can be split or combined. We used MailTips to suggest "if you need entire boardroom, please additionally invite room A/B" when a user selects room B/A. However now the majority of meetings are booked inside Teams which doesn't support MailTips. It would be great to have part of the place metadata to express relationships between places.
Copper Contributor
Nickname doesn't work either
Copper Contributor

@vrod29  I think I've worked out my particular problem, although it's quite frustrating.

When you click on the map or the directions link, the Bing Maps URL actually contains the Geo Coordinates but yet doesn't use them. 

 

I've been trialling the Office 365 meeting room configuration for a new building that is currently under construction. Due to the fact that the postcode has been allocated but does not exist on Bing maps, it tries to use just the first section of the postcode and points you to a completely different location.

 

Think this could do with a bit of work otherwise it's very easy to get directions to completely wrong place!

 

One more curio is regarding the DisplayName. I can see this as an attribute when viewing all details using

get-place | fl

, but I cannot set it using set-place.

 

It initially was the same as the DisplayName when using get-mailbox, but now it has become out-of sync.
Originally I called the Room "Meeting room 2 [TEST]" but then renamed it to "Meeting Room 2" using set-mailbox.

The DisplayName attribute displayed after running get-place does not update now, whatever I change it to, and inside the meeting room chooser on Outlook web access, the name shown is still "Meeting room 2 [TEST]"

Is this a bug?

Copper Contributor

Could you please clairify how to enter the geocoordinates? 

 

I'm trying with the geocoordinates in the example but get this back: 

 

 

Set-Place -Identity "Hemmaplan" -VideoDeviceName "Logitech Meetup" -AudioDeviceName "Logitech Meetup" -Floor 4 -PostalCode 21762 -Street "Eric Perssons Väg 21" -CountryOrRegion "Sweden" -City "Malmö" -Building "Malmö Stadion" -GeoCoordinates "47.643546;-122.12316;4385.732"
Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'GeoCoordinates'. Cannot convert value "47.643546;-
122.12316;4385.732" to type "Microsoft.Exchange.Data.GeoCoordinates". Error: "The latitude specified in
 '47.643546;-122.12316;4385.732' is invalid. Latitude must be a number between -90.0 and 90.0."
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (:) [Set-Place], ParameterBindin...mationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentTransformationError,Set-Place
    + PSComputerName        : outlook.office365.com
Copper Contributor

Hi @Andreas Lännerberg 

 

Just plugging the address details into Bing Maps, it looks like your GeoCoordinates are not correct. Should be 2 numbers separated by a single semicolon.

EDIT: Just realised I ended up right-clicking a few buildings away from the intended location, but hopefully you get the idea :smile:

 

coords.png

Copper Contributor

I am trying with Bing, still not working: 

 

 

Set-Place -Identity "Hemmaplan" -GeoCoordinates "55.584203, 12.987404"
Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'GeoCoordinates'. Cannot convert value "55.584203, 12.987404" to ty
pe "Microsoft.Exchange.Data.GeoCoordinates". Error: "The geocoordinates in '55.584203, 12.987404' has an invalid format
. You must specify either "latitude;longitude" or "latitude;longitude;altitude". Example: "47.643546;-122.12316" or "47
.643546;-122.12316;4385.732"."
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (:) [Set-Place], ParameterBindin...mationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentTransformationError,Set-Place
    + PSComputerName        : outlook.office365.com
Microsoft
 

The issue with Set-Places is separating the values with a comma instead of a semicolon.

"55.584203, 12.987404" Fails

"55.584203; 12.987404" Works

 

I have asked the Dev team if we can accept either or make the error msg more clear.

Thanks

 

 

Copper Contributor

Hi Shanefe, 

Thank you for the help, but it still fails: 

 

 

Set-Place -Identity "Hemmaplan" -GeoCoordinates "55.584203; 12.987404"
Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'GeoCoordinates'. Cannot convert value "55.584203; 12.987404" to ty
pe "Microsoft.Exchange.Data.GeoCoordinates". Error: "The latitude specified in '55.584203; 12.987404' is invalid. Latit
ude must be a number between -90.0 and 90.0."
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (:) [Set-Place], ParameterBindin...mationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentTransformationError,Set-Place
    + PSComputerName        : outlook.office365.com

 

I am in Sweden and have Swedish keyboard settings, could that have any affect? 

Copper Contributor

There doesn't need to be a space following the semicolon. Can you try 

Set-Place -Identity "Hemmaplan" -GeoCoordinates "55.584203;12.987404"
Copper Contributor

Same thing: 

 

Set-Place -Identity "Hemmaplan" -GeoCoordinates "55.584203;12.987404"
Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'GeoCoordinates'. Cannot convert value "55.584203;12.987404" to typ
e "Microsoft.Exchange.Data.GeoCoordinates". Error: "The latitude specified in '55.584203;12.987404' is invalid. Latitud
e must be a number between -90.0 and 90.0."
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (:) [Set-Place], ParameterBindin...mationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentTransformationError,Set-Place
    + PSComputerName        : outlook.office365.com
Microsoft

@Andreas Lännerberg 

I have tried a Copy and paste of both your coordinates and JonnyW's, and both work fine on my setup.
Can you share your regional settings and/or switch to US Eng to see if that solve the issue and let us know?
 
 
From the error they system seem to be processing the "." differently than on our system.  
 
 
 
 
Copper Contributor

Hi!

That was the problem, I had Swedish regional settings and that was not letting me push it in that forward. Should I report it somewhere or should I consider it reported here? :) 

Brass Contributor

Great addition to O365 and agree with most of the commentors above. Two additional thoughts:

 

I'd love an admin role to manage these and other room attributes (e.g. Set-CalendarProcessing) in a GUI. The purpose would be to provide our Facilities team ability to view and adjust room settings without involvement from IT.

 

I would love to have customized attributes to filter on. E.g whiteboards, seating types (lounge/standing/seated), rooms with natural light...

Microsoft

@Andreas Lännerberg if you could file an issue with the Exo Admin Center (or other way), it would be great so we do not lose the issue.

Microsoft

@JustAnotherITGuy We created a new role for this cmdlet it is called TenantPlacesManagement. This will allow facilities to also run the cmdlet. We will work on getting the admin portal updated soon. 

Copper Contributor

I added -countryorregion and now my room seems to be crippled. Everytime I run set get-place command I´am getting

+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:)

[Get-Place], TaskException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=DB7PR02MB4251,RequestId=5ac5fddc-42b0-46de-be69-c34008f7dd82,TimeStamp=23.08.201
9 13:59:06] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-TaskException] AD4E12B9,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.GetPlace
+ PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com

 

This is reproducable. Every room I feed with this option isn´t accessible anymore with the get-place command :(

 

 

Copper Contributor

How can i know who books the room?

 

whether it will work in outlook client or it is available only on web...
Copper Contributor

One more comment related to location if I may:

 

When I click on the link to show directions, for the location I've chosen, it takes me to a point within the city, rather than the specific place where the room is located.

 

Looking at the URL in Bing maps, it's because it's using the Meeting Room Name in the location search, which unless public knowledge, would always be a problem?

 

Example: 

Bing URL for 'directions' is 

https://www.bing.com/maps?v=2&rtp=~pos.[longitude]_[latitude]_[Street],%20[City],%20[PostalCode]_[DisplayName]

However, if I take the _[DisplayName] (meeting room name) from the end of the URL, the correct location is displayed on Maps. 

 

https://www.bing.com/maps?v=2&rtp=~pos.[longitude]_[latitude]_[Street],%20[City],%20[PostalCode]

 

Is this a bug?

Steel Contributor

@vrod29   What is the purpose of supplying device names and tags? This information is not exposed to the user  when searching for an appropriate room or elsewhere or is it and we just haven't found it yet? 

 

Microsoft

Hey @Kreera House, you will see this functionality show up in Outlook soon. Stay tuned!

Steel Contributor

@vrod29  Thanks for the quick reply!  Just to clarify, we're seeing the filters for audio, projector, video, accessibility, and they can be selected for the rooms we have already updated with the new cmdlet. We're just not seeing the actual information that was entered in Outlook and you're saying that information will become available soon? Along with the "tags"? No clues on what that will look like? ;)

Microsoft

@Kreera House The device names will be available in an updated version. For now you can rely on the generic names Outlook is using. Tags will also be available in the same updated version. 

Brass Contributor

While a great new addition to the OWA users cannot actually see / filter on the actual Audio/Video devices that are listed against each room even with all these attributes being populated. Is it something that is going to be available / on the roadmap? What's the point of populating the rooms with the details of the actual devices if people can't search for them. For example if someone needs a room with an extra large TV vs a room with a small / normal TV screen. And this is certainly something that would be a welcome addition to the Outlook client's Room Finder feature. 

Steel Contributor

@vrod29 

 

I'm unhappy about how some attributes like capacity are handled.

 

With this new feature and Set-Place you now have two places where those attributes must be managed. At the same time, you have the same attributes on the Mailbox itself (e.g. New-Mailbox -ResourceCapacity -Office -City)

 

When set on the mailbox they are displayed in the GAL. When set on the new place they're displayed in OWA. There is no sync between them, so you always have to manage both sides. Especially for the phone number this should be a thing. For Teams room systems I shouldn't have to assign a phone number via Set-Place. The number should originate from the underlying mailbox resource account / teams account.

 

That is administrative overkill. Please find some way to have this set on either side and let it sync. Or remove it from one of those sides.

Steel Contributor

Another thing I noticed is that you cannot set a room number with Set-Place. So many informations, but the most important, the actual room, is just missing. Do we have to get used to half-cooked implementations? Because every new feature I'm looking at is implemented poorly, to say the least. And when you point it out, the silence is deafening.

Copper Contributor

I'd like to come back to the second comment from Steven above: I there a already a feature (e.g. a room attribute or something similar) that enables the display of a room picture like a floor plan? That would be very helpful because many users would like to see the room layout like shape, windows, chairs etc. before booking it. I know there are tons of add-ons available, but it would be great to have this as a built-in feature... thanks!

Copper Contributor

Just like user  Andreas Lannerberg, 

 
I had same problem with running commands on a PC that has Serbian Latin regional settings. Running (and not copy/paste but typing) from cmd shell or powershell or new windows terminal app nothing worked I always got  error: "Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'GeoCoordinates'. Cannot convert valu
e "44.494222;20.272701" to type "Microsoft.Exchange.Data.GeoCoordinates". Error: "The lat
itude specified in '44.494222;20.272701' is invalid. Latitude must be a number between -9
0.0 and 90.0.""       The thing that worked was NOT to use En-US keyboard but to actually use Serbian-latin keyboard and change command line into this>    Set-Place -Identity place1 -GeoCoordinates "44,494222;20,272701"                               
 
  If you look carefully you will notice there is no . but in coordinates.                           
                 This has everything to do with regional settings and character encoding BUT this is actually checking the regional settings on local pc and doesn't care what shell client you are running which is a new kind of HELL for administrators. 
 ... So MS dev team can you PLEASE  decide what encoding you are using unicode-wise   are you going to accept UTF-8 like rest of normal world or are you going to torture users with UTF-16LE/UTF16BE BS  ? 
 
 
 
Brass Contributor

Showing when a room is free for the entire series is a great help and the number of available instances improves the functionality further.  Do you know if you have any plans for Outlook on the Web to display which instances are conflicting?

For example,

If I book 10 instances and 2 are booked, I will see that for that resource that its available for 2 of 10 instances, but it won’t identify which 2 are booked.  

Iron Contributor

Set-Place -Identity Mainroom -IsWheelChairAccessible $true -FloorLabel "New Space Area" -GeoCoordinates "XX" -City "Melbourne" -CountryOrRegion "Victoria" -Tags "<Display>"
No errors, but in Outlook OWA, I cant see the change. It shows me still basic information. 

Iron Contributor

Ok it takes a while until it is showing in OWA. But FloorLabel is not showing and the map is wrong. It puts the room label before the address, so "Mainroom, XXX, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia" which makes nonsense. It only happens in bing map. In Google OWA it shows me the address without the room label (aka Identity), but when I click on thie address link, then not.

Co-Authors
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