How to Book a Breakout Room in Outlook

Before you begin

• Breakout rooms are for the exclusive use of Johnson MBA and Johnson MPS in Management students.
• You are signed in to the Outlook desktop app with your Cornell account.
• Know which building you need: Sage Hall or the Breazzano Center.
• Have your date, start and end time, and the number of people ready.
• Breakout rooms are intended for academic teamwork and study groups, group work tied to Johnson co-curricular and extracurricular activities, and in-person, phone, or video interviews with corporate recruiters. They are not for individual study.
• You can book up to 4 hours at a time. Concurrent and consecutive bookings are against school policy, and reservations that break this rule may be cancelled.
• These steps were written for the Outlook desktop app included with Microsoft 365 (version 2205). Steps in other versions may vary slightly.

Steps

1. In Outlook, open the Calendar view.
2. Click New Event.
   
3. In the Title field, enter a name for your meeting.
4. Add the people you are meeting with to the Required and Optional fields.
5. Set your Start time and End time.
6. Click Add a room or location.
7. Select Browse all rooms.
8. In the Building box, enter the room list for your building:
   • JCB-Sage-RoomList-Students for Sage Hall
   • JCB-Breazzano-RoomList-Students for the Breazzano Center
9. If you want to filter by group size, adjust Capacity using the up and down arrows.
10. Wait a few seconds. The rooms available in your date and time window are listed under Conference rooms. Select the room you want.
11. Close the Room Finder pane. The room you selected now appears next to the Location icon.
12. Click Send.
13. Check your Inbox for the confirmation email from the room.

Expected result

You receive an email with the subject Accepted followed by your meeting title, confirming that the room accepted your request. The message includes the room name, the date and time you booked, and a reminder of the breakout room usage policy.

Your reservation is not complete until you receive an email confirming it was accepted. If you do not receive one, you do not have the room.

Troubleshooting

Before you report a problem, try these quick checks:

• No rooms are listed: wait a few more seconds for the list to load, then confirm the room list name in the Building box is spelled exactly as shown in step 7.
• Still no rooms: lower the Capacity filter, or choose a different date or time. Rooms already booked in your time window are not listed.
• Your request was declined: check that your booking is 4 hours or less, and that you do not already have another breakout room booked at the same time or in a back-to-back time slot.
• No response at all: open the meeting on your calendar and confirm the room appears next to Location, then send the invitation again.
• Questions about a reservation or the room policy: contact the Office of the Registrar, Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, at gm-roomrequests@cornell.edu.

Still need help? Contact the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Helpdesk at itrequests@business.cornell.edu.