Outlook is one of the best and most used apps in businesses. It has many great features that make emailing and project management more effortless. It can also be integrated with other Microsoft apps such as SharePoint and Office 365.
Microsoft also has a good customer support team that helps you get started with their products. In addition, a vast online customer community can help you sort out almost any technical issue you encounter when using Outlook or any other Microsoft app.
Most people who use Outlook don’t know the power it possesses. Here, we highlight some of its best features, including creating a shared time Office calendar in Outlook.
Creating a Shared Time Office Calendar in Outlook
Sharing calendars can help you save and improve performance and productivity when working with a team. This feature also comes in handy in business and school settings. Employees can choose to share their calendars, or the human resource manager can create a single calendar and share it among all employees.
For example, you can share an Office 365 company vacation calendar with your workmates. Shared calendars also allow you to see how open people are based on their schedules and appointments. You can also quickly tell which resources, for example, boardrooms, are available at a given time or day.
Creating a shared calendar on Office 365 can be tricky if you’re doing it for the first time. Before you get started, you also need to have administrator rights.
Open your SharePoint calendar, and under the Calendar tab, go to the List Settings. Next, click on General Settings and open the Title, Description, and Navigation tab. Then, under the Group Calendar, check to Use this calendar to share members’ schedules option.
You can also add or select this calendar for resource reservations if you want to use the calendar to book shared resources or make reservations when creating events on the calendar.
The best thing about group calendars is that every member will receive a notification whenever a new event is added. In addition, you can change the permission settings on the calendar to limit who can access or view the Outlook shared vacation calendar.
Set Up New Events
You can easily create new events or tasks from the inbox window. However, shuffling between the contacts, email, and calendar windows can be pretty hectic, especially if you have an extensive contact list.
Setting up tasks from your email or inbox window is very simple. First, you must click the dropdown button next to the ‘create new email’ tab. There you will find a list of options you would like to add. For example, you can add a further contact, create a new email or task, or set an appointment or a meeting.
Manage Your Tasks
The tasks feature underrated but useful, especially if you’re using a shared calendar. It is usually easy to miss out on upcoming events or meetings. Instead, you can use the Tasks feature to automate workflows that notify you when a task is done.
You can also share your task list with other team members. Another fantastic benefit of using the task list feature is delegating tasks to other members. Automated workflows help boost productivity as people can focus on more pressing issues.
Creating and Managing Emails
If you get many emails in a day, you might miss some important ones. However, Outlook has you covered with a way of managing your emails using separate folders. For example, you may want to direct promotional emails to a different folder separate from your work emails.
This is very easy. You need to create new rules from the Rules tab. You can make as many regulations as possible based on contacts or subject lines. You can also edit the rules later on if you wish to.
Permissions on Shared Calendars
When creating an Outlook shared vacation calendar, there are different permissions you can set. These permissions will help control access and who can edit the calendar’s events. Default permission will only allow users within the organization to view the calendar.
Users can do any CRUD operations on the calendar with the owner’s permission. This means they can create, view, update, and delete events. You can also set the ‘none’ permission if you don’t want the user to access the calendar.
Bottom Line
Outlook has some pretty exciting features that can help boost productivity and efficiency in a workplace. For example, you have learned how to create a shared time Office calendar in Outlook. You have also seen other unique features in Outlook that you can use to make your inbox look good.
There is also a good Outlook community on the internet where you can get help if you get stuck.