Question:
How do you set up Outlook 2000 and Exchange 5.5 to use resource scheduling accounts, such as conference rooms? There are several posts about how to do this without one of these two tools, but nothing that answers this question.

Answer:
According to Microsoft this should be fairly trivial: just create the Conference Room as a regular mailbox under Exchange 5.5.

On a workstation create an Outlook 2000 profile that logs into that mailbox and start Outlook.

Go into Tools > Options > Calendar Options > Resource Scheduling and tell it to Automatically Accept Requests and Process Cancellations and also to Automatically Decline conflicting appointments. You may also want to have it decline recurring appointments, but that’s up to you.

Once that’s done, OK your way back out and close Outlook. In theory you’re finished and can set that workstation back to whichever user you borrowed it from. You shouldn’t need to log into that profile again unless you need to make other changes.

I say “in theory” because I haven’t tested it myself. According to my sources at Microsoft that’s how it’s supposed to work, however.