Whether they’re project managers or on-the-go salespeople, remote employees need access to their teammates’ calendars. This is where an Outlook team calendar comes in handy.
A centralized team calendar will make it easy for everyone to see their own obligations and schedule meetings. Let’s take a look at some of the best options.
Shared Calendars
Organizing meetings and keeping track of team members’ schedules is a lot easier with an Outlook team calendar. This solution helps eliminate miscommunication and ensures that everyone is on the same page, especially when working remotely.
There are two types of team calendars in Microsoft Outlook. One is the Teams channel calendar that is used by Microsoft Teams, while the other is a group calendar that is designed for use across an organization and offers more flexibility.
Create a new group calendar in the navigation panel by clicking New Calendar. Select either Public folder or Shared Calendar in the Folder field. In the To field, enter a user or group to whom you want to send this calendar. Click the drop-down arrow to assign the viewing permission level of the added user or group. Once this step is complete, the calendar is ready for use and will be automatically replicated in each Outlook user’s personal calendar.
Time Tracking
Calendar time tracking is a simple and powerful way to save employees’ time, increase timesheet accuracy and employee productivity. Calendar appointments hold all the important data needed to create a timesheet entry (date, start and end times, duration) and therefore make them an ideal starting point for time tracking.
Team calendar software enables remote workers or those who spend much of their time out of the office to stay connected and informed about meetings, conference calls, projects deadlines and more. This is especially useful for project managers and salespeople who work with teams around the world.
The best way to use a team calendar is to connect it with your preferred task management tool. That way, when a meeting is planned in Outlook or another tool, it will automatically sync with the timesheet and you’ll have the latest, most accurate reporting at your fingertips. A great example of this is Tackle, which integrates with your calendar to provide a streamlined time-tracking experience.
Assign Tasks
If you click the “Assign Task” button, the current window switches to a task management view where you can assign a task to someone. This person will receive a notification when they’re assigned the task and can send status updates or progress reports to you.
Similarly, you can create tasks from emails by flagging them. Flagged emails will appear on the Flagged Emails nav item in To Do, and they’ll be editable in the same way that you can edit any other task in To Do.
You can also share a To Do list by clicking the Share List button and adding contacts. This is great for teams that work together on projects or shared initiatives and can help improve collaboration, communication, and productivity. You can also give access to individual items such as notes, contacts, signatures, and email message templates. These can be accessed from within your mailbox. Mailbutler makes this easy to do with its Collaborators feature, which allows you to share any item in your inbox.
Integrations
When a user creates a calendar event in their team’s shared Outlook calendar. The item is also automatically created in the team members personal Outlook calendar. This ensures that team members have a clear depiction of the overall work schedule.
To enable Outlook Calendar syncing. A project manager must first create an integration recipe in their board with the following steps:
Once an Outlook Calendar integration recipe is created. A new column can be added to a team’s board that links directly to each individual member’s Outlook Calendar event. By clicking on one of these links, team members can navigate to the full event details.
Events synced from Outlook will not appear in Capsule’s sidebar unless. The attendees’ email address matches an existing Capsule Contact record. However, any Meeting activity that is logged from Outlook Calendar will be displayed on the related Contact’s record. This feature is only available for Microsoft Outlook on Windows devices.
