7 Pro Outlook Calendar Tips to Boost Team Performance

After email itself, the second most used area of Outlook for most people is the calendar. Whether it’s used for appointment scheduling or task reminders, having a place to plan your days and weeks often helps keep things from falling through the cracks.

Whether your calendar is a burden or a lifesaver, often depends upon how well you can optimize it and integrate it to work with the rest of your office technology.

Outlook in Office 365 has multiple collaborative tools that can boost team performance and streamline your workflow if you know how to use them. A benefit of collaboration tools is they inherently boost productivity.

When employees are connected, organizations have seen a boost in productivity of 20-25%.

Get more out of your Outlook calendar and keep your team connecting effectively with these pro Outlook calendar tips.

Tips for Making the Most of Outlook Calendar

If you’re looking to stay organized and on top of your game when it comes to calendar management, these tips are sure to help.

1. View Two Time Zones at the Same Time

When you’re meeting with people in other countries, trying to find a suitable time can be a challenge. You can make it much easier by enabling a second time zone view in your Outlook Calendar.

Just go to Options > Calendar > Time zones > Show a second time zone

2. Create a Calendar Item from an Email

Quickly create a calendar item that includes notes from an email and send it around without even leaving your inbox.

When you’re in an email message, go to the Message tab, and in the Respond group, click Meeting.

This opens a meeting window and includes the content from the email, you can edit the date and time, attach any pertinent files, and invite others from the same window. You’ll also be able to copy the meeting to your calendar with a click.

3. Use Automatic Colors for Organization

You can organize meeting types by color so you can easily see what your schedule looks like at a glance. For example, you could put marketing meetings in purple and accounting meetings in green and set up your system to do it automatically.

You use a keyword to automate the color code, such as “marketing,” and create a rule to apply that color to meetings using that keyword.

Steps include:

• Click the View tab in the Calendar window and then click the View Settings button.

• Click Conditional Formatting and Add to create a new rule

• Enter the rule name and choose a color

• Click on Condition

• On the Appointments and Meetings tab enter the keyword in the Search For the Words control

• Retain the In Subject Field Only default setting, then click okay until you return to the Calendar window

When you create a calendar item using the keyword, it will automatically be color-coded to the color you set.

4. Share Your Calendar over MS Exchange Server

If your office uses Microsoft Exchange Server, then you can take full advantage of shared calendars and can share your calendar with those inside or outside your organization or create a calendar that’s shared by a group, so everyone knows what’s happening each day.

To share a calendar, click “Share My Calendar” on the Navigation Pane. This opens a Permissions tab in Calendar Properties.

Select the calendar to share and the permission level, then click to add users to give access to.

5. Insert Holidays (from Any Country) into Your Calendar

Save time when planning around holidays both in the U.S. and other countries. When you insert holidays into your calendar, you don’t have to Google them each time to schedule around them.

Go to File > Options > Calendar > Add Holidays, and you’ll get a list of multiple countries to choose from.

6. Start Outlook in Calendar View

By default, Outlook opens at your email inbox, but if you’d like to get a view of your day first before sorting through email, you can change this to open in the calendar window instead.

Go to File > Options, click Advanced. In the Outlook Start and Exit section, click Browse and then click Calendar.

7. Attach a Calendar Reminder to Emails

Following up with colleagues who are late for meetings or miss deadlines can be tiresome and time-consuming. Make it easier by attaching a calendar reminder to an email.

This feature will send a calendar alert to your email recipients reminding them of an important date for you.

From the Outlook Home tab, choose Follow Up and then click Add Reminder. Set the time you’d like the alert to appear and click the Reminder checkbox.

Keep Your Office Connected and Efficient

Looking for ways to better utilize your technology to keep your team connected, efficient, and productive? BrainStomp can help you streamline your workflows and choose the applications that will support your needs the best.

Schedule a free technology consultation today! Call 260-918-3548 or reach out online.