Creating New Calendar Appointments

It's very easy to create a new calendar appointment in SmarterMail. You can:

Use the New button in the menu bar and select New Appointment from the dropdown. (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+2)
Simply click the day/time you want the appointment to start on your calendar. The new appointment picks up the date and time of the slot you clicked, which you can then change as needed.

Regardless of how you decide to do it, creating a new appointment pops out the appointment window.

Saving Appointment Details

When you add a new appointment to your calendar, you can save as much or as little detail about the appointment as you like. In fact, only the Subject is required — the Start and End are pre-filled for you, defaulting to the next half hour and running for whatever Default Duration you've set in your Calendar Settings. In general, appointment details are handled by a few different cards:

General Details

The first card carries the actual details of the appointment or event you're creating. It can be a lunch or dinner, a meeting, an anniversary or birthday, or virtually any other type of event you want to keep organized in your calendar. The following information is available:

Subject - The subject is the friendly name for the event you're creating, such as "Lunch with Joan" or "Weekly Marketing Meeting". This is the only field that's required to save the appointment.
Location - This is where the event will be taking place. The location can be a room or building, an address, or even some descriptive text, such as "via Webex". Note that Location is free text you enter on your own; if your organization has conference rooms set up as shared resources, those are reserved by adding them on the Attendees / Resources card instead, which also checks the room's availability for you.
Description - This space is used for details about the meeting: agenda items, web conferencing log-in details, etc. Anything typed in the Description will also be added to the appointment so attendees can see the detail as well. The Description uses an HTML editor, so items like hyperlinks and formatting can be included.

Date and Time

This card allows you to actually set the date and time of the appointment. If need be, time zones can be changed so that appointments can be created in a specific attendee's time zone.

All Day Appointment - Enable this if the appointment you're creating will last the entire day. When enabled, the appointment will move to the very top of your calendar when viewing in Week or Day view. In Month view, it will be the first appointment shown for the specific day.
Show Time Zones - Enable this setting to allow yourself the ability to create appointments in a time zone different than your own. When enabled, searchable Start Time Zone and End Time Zone dropdowns appear, allowing you to set the proper day and time based on the time zone selected. For example, when booking a call with a client in London, set the start time zone to theirs and enter the time you agreed to — SmarterMail handles the conversion.
Start and End Dates and Times - By default, appointments start at the next half hour and end based on your Default Duration setting. These fields are fully customizable.

Recurrence

Use this card to set how often this particular appointment will occur: Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly. Each frequency has its own options — for example, Daily can be every N days or every weekday; Weekly lets you pick the days of the week; and Monthly and Yearly can use either a specific date or a pattern like "The Last Tuesday" or "The Fourth Friday" of the month. You also choose when the recurrence ends: Forever, End After a set number of occurrences, or End By a specific date.

Note: When setting the End date for a recurring appointment, SmarterMail, Outlook for Mac, and eM Client all treat the "End By" date as the LAST day that a recurring instance can happen. However, Mac Mail seems to treat it as the first day that the recurrence cannot happen. That means in Mac Mail, the last occurrence of that event will be the day BEFORE the date you put in the "End By" area in SmarterMail. You will want to take that into consideration when creating recurring appointments.

Regarding the creation of recurring appointments that happen on the "last day" of the month, or "last week/weekend day", while it IS possible to create these types of recurrence rules in webmail, they may not sync to various mobile and/or desktop clients due to limitations of syncing protocols. (Exchange is the same, so it's not a SmarterMail limitation.) For example, testing a few (but not all), we found the following:

iOS - iOS Calendar does provide a way to create "custom" monthly repeating events by last day, last weekday, or last weekend day. However, it does not properly sync the recurring information through EAS.
Windows Mail - Does not provide an option to sync last day, last weekday or last weekend day.
Standard Android Calendar - Does not provide an option to sync last day, last weekday or last weekend day.
Outlook Mobile - Does not provide an option to sync last day, last weekday or last weekend day.

Note: When editing a single occurrence of a recurring appointment, a notice lets you jump to the series it belongs to. Similarly, when deleting, you can choose between deleting just that occurrence or the entire series.

Online Meeting

This card allows organizers to have an online meeting space created, automatically, to be used for the appointment that's being set up. Simply click Create Online Meeting. The online meeting will use the appointment's Subject as its name, and the meeting will appear in the Online Meetings area of the organizer. The meeting's Meeting Link is generated for you and can be copied with a click, but cannot be changed. The remaining options can be customized:

Online Meeting Password (optional) - By default, meetings do not have passwords. However, if you want to secure the meeting, a password can be added, then confirmed.
Allow attendees to start the meeting - Use this toggle if you want attendees to be able to start the meeting before you, the organizer, arrive.
File upload permissions - By default, meetings are created to allow only organizers to upload files ("Organizer Only"). However, this can be changed to "Authenticated Attendees" or "Everyone" (i.e., including guests).
End Behavior - This setting is for how you want the online meeting handled once it ends: Archive Meeting, Delete Meeting, or Keep Active, which means the online meeting can be used again at a later time. Keep Active is handy for a recurring meeting that reuses the same meeting link each week.

Note: If an appointment that has an online meeting associated to it is cancelled or otherwise deleted, the meeting is not deleted immediately. Instead, SmarterMail runs a nightly routine that will remove online meetings associated with deleted/cancelled appointments.

Attendees / Resources

Attendees are the people you want to invite to your event. When adding attendees, each will receive an event invitation that they can accept, tentatively accept, or decline, and each attendee's current response is shown right on the card with a status icon: No Response, Accepted, Tentative, or Declined. Invitees can also propose a new time; any proposals appear for the organizer in a Time Proposals card on the appointment. In addition, it's possible to see whether your invitation was sent or not: when viewing an appointment, if the invitation has NOT been sent, a banner reading "You haven't sent this meeting invitation." appears at the top. This allows you to re-save the appointment and send the invitation to your attendee(s).

To add attendees, simply start typing in the Add Attendee field. SmarterMail will suggest contacts from your various contact lists, including the Global Address List (GAL), as well as cycle through contacts you have listed in categories. You can finish typing the address or select the proper address from the options available.

If your domain administrator has added any shared resources, like conference rooms or equipment, they can be added using the Add Room/Equipment field. Both conference rooms and equipment have internal addresses created, based on their names. These do not count as actual user accounts, so there's no licensing impact. Some protocols, like MAPI, require these resources to be actual attendees of a meeting or event. In addition, having actual addresses for each resource makes it easier to gauge availability for these resources.

As for whether an invitee or shared resource is available or not: once you've added one or more attendees, or selected your resource, use the View availability link to see whether attendees are available on the day and time you're planning your event, and/or if the conference room and/or equipment you want to use is free. If there are conflicts, a "Potential conflicts" warning appears on the appointment window and the conflicting attendee or resource is marked with "(Conflict)" — so you know to check availability and pick a better time before sending invites. If a resource was reserved for an event, clicking on that room reservation in your calendar shows who made the reservation. Generally, this will correspond to the organizer of the corresponding event.

Note: Availability is only offered for users of the same domain as the event organizer. External domains, as well as information for users of free email services such as Gmail or Microsoft 365, is not accessible. This also helps with availability requests: if a resource is unavailable, the meeting organizer will receive notification letting them know the resource is unavailable.

People / Equipment Icons

In addition to simply typing in the name/address of an invitee, it's possible to select invitees from a list. To do this, simply use the "people" icon. This option opens a modal window and, from here, you can select invitees based on a folder (i.e., Contacts, Global Address List, shared Contacts, etc.) or even display contacts based on a category. When a choice of folder or category is made, contacts associated to the selection are listed in the modal. One or more can then be selected, saved, and then added as invitees as needed.

This same idea works for Rooms and/or Equipment as well. Simply use the "equipment" icon to see a list of resources available for reservation for your meeting or event. Resources can be selected and added to the invitation as needed.

Options

Source - Use the dropdown menu to select which calendar the appointment is saved to. The default calendar can be chosen in Calendar Settings.
Availability - Here you can set how the appointment affects your free/busy status: Free, Tentative, Busy, or Out of Office. This is what others on your domain see when they check your availability while scheduling their own events. By default, appointments are marked Busy (all-day appointments are marked Free).
Reminder - Setting a reminder will make a notification window appear in webmail at whatever reminder interval you set, from minutes to weeks before the appointment. Reminders are also synced to any email or calendar app you have synced to your SmarterMail account.
Email Notification - Enabling this will send an event reminder to the organizer's email address based on the time interval set by the reminder. This email is in addition to the notification in webmail or any synced client.
Private Appointment - This setting can be used for those who share their calendar with other users. Appointments marked as private will only show their details to those with full access to your calendar; those with Availability or Read-Only permission will instead see "Busy Time" and cannot view appointment details. For example, a doctor's appointment on a calendar shared with your team simply blocks the time without revealing why.

Attachments and Categories

It's possible to add attachments to any new appointment you create. Attachments can include, but are not limited to, PDF files, presentations, spreadsheets, or any other type of attachment that the attendees of the appointment may require. To add one or more attachments, simply click the paperclip button at the top of the appointment window. This allows you to browse your device for any file(s) needed.

A category provides a way to organize your appointments into manageable groups. To add a category, simply use the Mark button. When clicked, a dropdown appears that lists all of the categories that are available for the account. For more information, see Categories.

Note: The Actions (⋮) menu at the top of the appointment window offers two more conveniences: Export ICS File, which downloads the appointment in the universal calendar format, and Save As New Item, which duplicates the appointment — useful when a new meeting shares most of its details with an existing one.

Using AI Assistance

Using the AI Tools icon found in the Description editor's toolbar, you can use the AI provider that's configured for your user to generate text for an appointment. This is especially useful for crafting the description and/or details of the appointment. For example, you can use the following Input Text to create a description of your meeting: "Generate a description of this meeting pertaining to marketing strategy for Q2 of this year". Clicking on the Generate button will offer something like this:

The meeting will focus on developing a comprehensive marketing strategy for Q2, emphasizing key initiatives to enhance brand visibility and drive customer engagement. Participants will review performance metrics from Q1, identify target audiences, and discuss innovative campaign ideas across various channels, including digital, social media, and traditional marketing. Additionally, the agenda includes budget allocation, collaboration opportunities among teams, and setting measurable goals to assess the effectiveness of the implemented strategies. Action items will be assigned to ensure timely execution and follow-up.

You can then insert that text as the meeting description, or edit it as you see fit. From there, you can select that text and use preset commands to lengthen or shorten it, translate it to another language, or more. For details, see AI Assistance.