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In today’s fast-paced work environment, seamless coordination is key. At No More Bad Mondays, we’ve noticed that many organisations aren’t making use of one incredibly useful feature in Microsoft 365—adding rooms and equipment to the Microsoft Admin Center. If you’ve ever found yourself manually typing out meeting locations or scrambling to check if a room is available, then this feature is for you.
Imagine this: You’re about to schedule an internal meeting, and instead of typing the location manually, you can choose from a pre-set list of rooms. Even better, you can instantly see if the room is free or booked, and what equipment is available inside. No more wandering around looking for a whiteboard or projector or finding your preferred room occupied.
Let’s walk through how to set this up in Microsoft 365 and why it’s such a valuable tool for your organisation.
Why You Should Add Rooms and Equipment in Microsoft 365
Whether you’re an educational institution with various meeting spaces or a business looking to optimise its resources, adding rooms and equipment into Microsoft 365 offers several benefits:
Instant Availability Check: See in real-time whether a room is booked or free.
Know What’s Inside: Understand exactly what equipment, like projectors, microphones, or whiteboards, is available in each room.
Better Coordination: Eliminate double bookings and confusion by having a shared calendar that manages room and equipment reservations across the organisation.
This feature is especially handy if you’ve previously relied on third-party solutions for room bookings. The best part? It’s easy to set up, and you can even upload rooms and equipment in bulk/create a live feed if you’ve stored the data elsewhere (we can help with that!).
Step-by-Step: Adding Rooms and Equipment in Microsoft 365
Ready to set this up? Let’s walk through the process.
1. Access the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
First, go to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Once there, select Resources from the left-hand menu, and then click on Rooms and Equipment in the submenu.
If it’s your first time using this feature, you’ll see that there are no rooms or equipment listed. Click Add Resource to get started.
2. Select Room or Equipment
In the side menu that appears, you’ll need to choose whether you’re setting up a Room or Equipment. For this example, we’ll start by setting up a room.
3. Enter Room Details
Now it’s time to fill in the details for your room:
Name: Give the room a descriptive name (e.g., Mastering Mondays Studio One).
Email Address: This may seem odd, but the room needs an email address. It’s how Microsoft 365 sends meeting invites and tracks availability.
Capacity: Enter the number of people the room can hold. For example, our podcast studio holds 5 people, so we set the capacity to 5.
Location: Add the room’s physical location, such as a building or office floor (e.g., No More Bad Mondays HQ).
Phone Number: If the room has a phone line, you can enter that here as well.
4. Fine-Tune the Booking Options
Before you finish, click on Edit Booking Options. This allows you to customise settings, like limiting bookings to business hours or setting automatic approval for room reservations. It’s worth reviewing these options to ensure they fit your organisation’s needs.
5. Setting Up Equipment
If you want to add equipment (like projectors, microphones, or other resources), repeat the process but select Equipment from the dropdown in Step 2.
For example, we added our podcast microphones as equipment. Since two people can use them at once, we set the capacity to 2.
6. Save and You're Done!
Once you’ve entered all the details, click Save. Your room or equipment will now be available for booking. Just keep in mind that it might take 20-30 minutes for everything to sync before you can see the new resources in Outlook or Teams.
How to Use Rooms and Equipment in Outlook or Teams
Now that you’ve added your rooms and equipment, here’s how to use them when scheduling meetings in Outlook or Teams:
Create a New Meeting: Open Outlook or Teams and start a new meeting. When adding attendees, search for your room or equipment and add it just like you would add a person. It will also auto populate the location field.
Check Availability: To see whether the room or equipment is available, use the Scheduling Assistant. If the time slot is clear, the room is free. If it’s blue, the room or equipment is already booked.
Cancel a Room Booking: Need to cancel the reservation? Simply open the meeting in Outlook, remove the room or equipment from the attendees list, and it will free up the resource for others to book.
Automatic or Manual Approvals: You can decide whether bookings are automatically accepted or need to be manually approved by someone in your company.
Why This Feature is So Powerful
The ability to manage rooms and equipment in Microsoft 365 goes far beyond simple meeting spaces. You can use it for:
Conference rooms: Effortlessly manage booking large or small spaces.
Equipment: Keep track of resources like projectors, microphones, and even vehicles.
Car or Hotel Reservations: If you run a car hire service or manage hotel rooms, this feature can also be adapted for those bookings.
You can even take it a step further by integrating room and equipment bookings with Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate to create fully customised solutions for your business, like a hotel booking app or car reservation system. The possibilities are endless and we can help you with any of these.
Need Bulk Uploading or Integration Help?
If you’re looking to bulk upload all your rooms or equipment, we offer a one-time bulk upload service to save you time. And/or if you need to integrate this with other third-party systems, like a student record system for live room availability updates, we’ve got you covered there too.
Adding rooms and equipment to Microsoft 365 doesn’t just save time—it improves organisation-wide efficiency. Say goodbye to the hassle of double bookings, missing equipment, or unclear availability. With a little setup, you can transform the way your team books and manages meeting spaces.
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