Essential SharePoint 2007, 2nd Edition

Organizing Meetings from Outlook

SharePoint provides a special type of site called a meeting workspace, which can be created from meeting requests sent from Outlook. Meeting workspaces are meant to prepare attendees by publishing the objectives and agenda before a meeting is held, and they help record decisions and related documents after the meeting takes place.

Workspaces are used to organize the meeting process like this:

1. Attendees receive a meeting request in Outlook that links to the SharePoint workspace.

2. Attendees can click on the link to see details about the meeting and add items as needed.

3. Optionally, someone can open the workspace and make notes during the meeting.

4. Later, the person who called the meeting can go to the workspace to record conclusions, assign follow-up tasks, or add key documents.

Meeting workspaces aren't online meeting places, but they can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Live Meeting or other online meeting services.

The following sections show you how to create SharePoint meeting workspaces from Outlook.

Creating a Meeting Workspace

To create a meeting workspace from Outlook:

1. Select the Calendar in the Navigation pane to choose a date and time for the meeting.

2. Choose Action → New Meeting Request. Outlook displays the Meeting Request dialog box.

3. Complete the fields on the dialog box and click Meeting Workspace. Outlook displays a workspace task pane in the dialog box as shown in Figure 2-15.

4. Click Create. Outlook creates a Meeting Workspace for the meeting and ...