This article explains how Central users can gain access to creating ad-hoc requests directly in the Services Portal to ease the process of requesting services for many recurring meetings.
As part of the booking process for adding services to recurring meetings as a PA, Meeting Coordinator, or Receptionist, it is required to request services on each instance of a meeting in a recurring meeting series. This is due to the AskCody follow-the-meeting logic, where all changes to a meeting, including services requested and visitors added, follow the meeting and automatically update across both Outlook and the AskCody Platform, instantly.
Though there exist roles in organizations that handle a lot of other people's calendars and manage many recurring meeting instances with services. Minimizing just one single click in the request process can spare them a lot of time.
In AskCody, there exists a hack for this specific case!
The users who typically handle a lot of recurring meetings also have access to Central in the AskCody Web Portal. With a simple membership to a Provider in Services as a Central User, this employee will be able to "copy/paste" a service request directly in the Services Portal, instead of recreating the request from scratch every time. But there are some precautions*
How it works
A user that both have access to Central and a membership to a Service Provider will have special access to a page called "My ad-hoc requests" in the Services Portal. On this page, you can create something called Ad-hoc requests, which are requests that overrule all deadlines, policies, and logics. *They function like normal requests, but they are not attached to any meeting in Outlook and don't have the smart "Follow-the-meeting logic" that AskCody is known for.
This means that if the meeting in Outlook changes, like the time, date, or cancellation, the changes will not be applied to these ad-hoc requests in the Services Portal - they need to be updated manually.
The smart part of this hack is that you can "copy/paste", or "save and copy" as it is called in AskCody, a request, so the only thing you need to change is the date. This is quicker than moving back and forth between meetings in Outlook and adding all items and choices in the Services Add-in each time.
How to set it up
For a user to be able to request services for recurring meetings directly in the Services Portal, the user needs the following:
- Central User Role
- Membership to a Services Provider
*This is, of course, an access that needs to be cleared with the Service Provider beforehand, since the Service Provider will be delivering the service requests. They need to accept that these ad-hoc requests overrule all deadlines and policies set up for the Services Provider Portal.
How to use
This will give you an example of how the process could be for a PA, Meeting Booker, or Receptionist when booking a recurring meeting and requesting services for each instance directly in the Services Portal.
- Book the recurring meeting in Outlook as you normally do - without requesting services in the Services Add-in.
- Open the link to the Services Portal. You will land on a page called "My ad-hoc requests"
*You might be asked to log in. You simply log in with your Microsoft credentials, or your special username and password for AskCody (provided by your IT department).
Tip: Instead of remembering the link for the Services Portal, you can create the link as a home screen app, like Outlook, Teams, Word, etc. Follow the steps in this article.
- Click on "New request", and a form similar to the one in the Services Add-in will open.
- Change the "Subject" line to the name of your recurring meeting, and fill in the rest of the information like time, date (date of the first meeting in the recurring meeting series), services, delivery time, etc..
- Click "Add and copy". This will open a new request with exactly the same information - You simply change the date to the date of the second meeting in the recurring meeting series.
... and continue this process until you have the requests you want for your recurring meeting. - You will now be able to see all the ad-hoc requests you have made for the recurring meeting in the "My ad-hoc requests" list, and change them accordingly.