Meeting Manager Tutorial

Running Meeting Manager

When Meeting Manager is first started a bulletin screen may appear if the bulletin feature has been enabled. If security has been enabled a login dialog will appear. If you haven't already, contact your administrator for your user name and password. After that the Tip Of The Day screen will appear. Click OK to show the main screen. The main screen will look something like this:

Setting up your data

The first step in using Meeting Manager is to enter your resource data into the program. Your data will include information about your meeting rooms, resources, employees and contacts. The Data Manager screen allows viewing and editing of all Meeting Manager data. Open the Data Manager by choosing View | Data Manager from the main screen menu.

data manager menu

Note that if security has been enabled, you must first login as Administrator or as Superuser if the Superuser data access option has been set. The Data Manager will look something like this:

data manager detail view

When you first use the program there should be some sample data. Once you have finished experimenting with this data you should erase it and enter your own data. To delete all the records in the current table choose Records | Delete All Records from the menu.

Entering Employee and Resource Data

The first step in using Meeting Manager is to enter your resources into the program. First make sure you are in the Detail table of the Data Manager. The Detail tab shows a list of tables on left side. In the radio group to the left, select Resources. This will cause the Resources table data to be displayed in the grid to the right. Enter your resource information in this grid. Repeat this step for your contacts, topics and categories, if any. The Meeting Manager database contains sample data, so you'll probably want to delete it first.

Entering Resources

Let us start by adding a resource. To add an resource click on the Resources tab in the Data Manager. The Resources tab will look like this:

blank resource form

If the fields are not blank as in the above picture. Press the add button to add a new record. The add button is the red circular button at the top with the + sign in it. Then type in the resource data into the fields. In the example below, we added the resource D4.

resource form view

The Resource field must be a unique ID for the resource. The Resource field links to the Resource field in the Bookings table. The Description can be anything you like. It is used to assign a descriptive name to the ID. All other fields are optional. The Capacity field indicates how many people the particular room can accommodate. The Security field indicates who can book this resource. The Security field can contain A for Administrator, S for Superuser and blank or U for User. In this case you must be at least a Superusers to book room D4. The Equipment field contains a list of equipment normally found in this room. Separate each piece of equipment with a comma. The Category field links to the Category field in the Categories table. It is used to group similar resources together. If a resource is itself a piece of equipment, you must set the Category field to "Equipment". Only resources flagged as "Equipment" will show up in the Equipment pop-up selector in the Add Booking screen. The E-mail contacts or Attendees are a list of e-mail addresses separated by spaces or commas. If the Notify Attendees option is set, whenever a booking is changed or deleted, a notice will be e-mailed to the e-mail addresses listed in the Attendees booking field. The Color field indicates which color bookings for this resource will have.

The color field can have the following values:

B - Blue
A - Aqua
D - DkGray
G - Green
L - LtGray
R - Red
F - Fuchsia
M - Maroon
N - Navy
O - Olive
P - Purple
S - Silver
T - Teal

Entering Contacts

Now let us add a new contact, Jim Corba. Click on the Contacts tab. The Contacts tab will look like this.

blank contact

If the fields are not blank as in the above picture. Press the add button to add a new record. The add button is the red circular button at the top with the + sign in it. Then type in the contact data into the fields. In the example below, we added Jim Corba as a contact.

Corba contact

This table lists all the default booking contacts. The names listed in this table will show up in the Contact pull-down list in the Add Booking screen. When the Contact field in the Add Booking screen is double clicked, the contact's e-mail address will be queried from this table in order to e-mail the booking contact. The e-mail address from this table will show up in the Attendees pop-up in the Add Booking screen.

Entering Categories

The Categories tab lists all the resource categories. The names listed in this table will show up in the Category pull-down list on the main scheduler screen. When a category from this table is chosen from this pull-down list, only the bookings of resources belonging to this category will be shown.

Entering Status

The Booking Status tab lists booking status codes that will show up in the booking status pull-down list in the Add Booking screen.

Entering Topics

The Booking Topics tab lists all the booking topics that will show up in the booking topic pull-down list for the Add Meeting screen. The Color field indicates which color bookings for this resource will have.

The color field can have the following values:

B - Blue
A - Aqua
D - DkGray
G - Green
L - LtGray
R - Red
F - Fuchsia
M - Maroon
N - Navy
O - Olive
P - Purple
S - Silver
T - Teal

Other Data

The remaining data tabs are used by the software itself and normally will not need to be edited. See the Meeting Manager Tables section of the help file for detailed information on these and other tables.