Managing Communications on Your Intranet

Publishing Calendar Information on an Intranet or the Web

By using Microsoft Outlook 2000, you can publish your Calendar information to a site on your intranet or the Web. When you open your Calendar and then click Save As Web Page (File menu), Outlook 2000 creates a calendar in HTML — complete with links and graphics. This feature allows you to do the following:

• Post an internal calendar of events on your intranet.
• Publish a calendar to advertise sales or new products on the Web.

Note   When you save your Calendar as a Web page, you can use File, HTTP, and FTP protocols to specify the address to use.

Outlook 2000 supports the iCalendar (iCal) free/busy standard, which allows you to see when people outside your organization, or people using a different personal information management product that supports iCalendar, are free or busy. This support for the iCalendar standard allows you to schedule meetings with people across organizations, or across the Internet.

System Policy Tip   You can set free/busy options for all your users at one time by using system policies. In the System Policy Editor, set the policies in the Microsoft Outlook 2000\Tools | Options\Preferences\Calendar Options\Free/Busy Options category to control these options for your users. For more information, see Using the System Policy Editor.

To specify the location for an individual’s free/busy information

1. Open the contact, and then click the Details tab.
2. In the Internet Free-Busy area, in the Address box, type the location of the free/busy iCalendar file.

When you invite a contact to a meeting, Outlook retrieves the iCal free/busy information and displays the availability of that person.

You can publish free/busy information to an iCalendar file automatically by setting the free/busy options for Outlook.

Note   Before your users can publish their free/busy information in iCalendar format, you must set up Microsoft Posting Acceptor. Posting Acceptor is included with Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 (in the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack), with Microsoft Site Server 3.0, or with Microsoft Visual Studio® 6.0.

To publish free/busy information to an iCalendar file

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. Click the Preferences tab.
3. In the Calendar area, click Calendar Options.
4. In the Calendar Options box, click the Free/Busy Options button.
5. Select the Publish my free/busy information check box, and then type the URL in the Publish at this URL box.

You can also schedule a specific meeting in iCal format by clicking on Forward as iCalendar on the Actions menu.

System Policy Tip   If you want all of your users throughout your organization to send meeting requests using the iCalendar standard by default, you can set this option through a system policy. In the System Policy Editor, select the Microsoft Outlook 2000\Tools | Options\Preferences\Calendar options\Meeting Requests using iCalendar policy. Then under Settings for Meeting Requests using iCalendar, select Send meeting requests using iCalendar by default. For more information, see Using the System Policy Editor.