Creating New Calendar Appointments

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

Use the New button in the menu bar,
Select Appointment from the New menu dropdown, or
Just select a day/time you want to create the event in your calendar. Alternatively, you select ANY day/time in your calendar, then just change them as needed.

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

Saving Appointment Details

When you add a new appointment to your calendar, you can save as much or as few details about the appointment as you like. 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. To create an Event, you will need to include the following information.

Subject - The subject is the friendly name for the event you're creating, such as "Lunch with Joan" or "Weekly Marketing Meeting".
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". Regarding "Conference Room" versus "Location", these are mutually exclusive, yet compatible fields. That said, while the Location is something you enter on your own, the Conference Room will be a shared resource that was set up by your domain administrator.
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 card uses an HTML editor so that items like hyperlinks can be included.

Note: The Subject, Start and End dates are the only fields required to save an appointment.

Date and Time

This card allows you to actually set the date and time of the appointment. If need be, the 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 list when viewing in Week or Day view. On 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, a Time Zone drop down appears beneath the Start and End dates for the Appointment, allowing you to set the proper day and time based on the Time Zone selected.
Start and End Dates and Times - A Start Date is required to save the event. By default, Events start as the current date and time and end 1 hour later. These fields are fully customizable.

Recurrence

Use this card to set how often this particular appointment will occur: Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly.

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.

SmarterMail also offers some flexibility when setting up recurrence rules. For example, it's possible to set the event Frequency based on some criteria. For example, an event can be scheduled to occur on a specific day, or a certain day of the month like the last Tuesday, on the fourth Friday of the month, etc.

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.

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. 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.

Once clicked, a few options are available, some of which can be customized for the meeting. (The Meeting Link cannot be changed.) These include:

Online Meeting Password (optional) - By default, meetings do not have passwords. However, if you want to secure the meeting, a password can be added, the 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. However, this can be changed to allow just authenticated users or "Everyone" (i.e., guests) to upload files.
End behavior - This setting is for how you want the online meeting handled once it ends. It can be ended and archived, it can be deleted, or it can be "kept active", which means the online meeting can be used again at a later time.

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 either accept or reject. You will receive notifications back regardless of whether attendees accept or reject the invitations. In addition, it's possible to see whether your invitation was sent or not: When viewing an appointment in your calendar, if it has NOT been sent, there is a banner at the top referencing this fact. This allows you to re-save the appointment and send the invitation to your attendee(s).

To add attendees, simply start typing their email address. 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 will be listed in this dropdown. Just as with attendee availability, if a conference room, or piece of equipment, is already reserved for a specific day and time an Event is to be set, this information will display in the Conflicts field of the new appointment window. Conference room and equipment availability will also show when users select View availability on the Attendees card. In fact, both conference rooms and equipment will have internal addresses created, based on their name. 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 in one or more attendees, or selected your resource, you can use the "View Availability" to let you know 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 available. If there are conflicts, either with an attendee or with a resource, a yellow warning will appear on the New Event window letting you know so you can use "View availability" to see the conflicts. If a resource was reserved for an event, when clicking on that room reservation in your calendar you can see 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 event is for. The default calendar can be chosen in Calendar Settings.
Availability - Here you can set your own availability - either Busy or Free. Setting your status as Busy will be reflected if others within your Global Address List try inviting you to their own events.
Reminder - Setting a reminder will make a notification window appear in webmail at whatever reminder interval you set. 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 event - This setting can be used for those who share their calendar with other users. Events marked as private will only be shown to those with Full Access. Those with Availability-Only or Read-Only permission will instead see "Busy Time" and cannot view appointment details.

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 new appointment window. This allows you to browse your device for any file(s) needed.

A category provides a way to organize your Events 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.

Using AI Assistance

Using the AI Tools icon 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.