Maximize your day: get Productive with Outlook Calendar

Ever feel like you're running out of time in a day? There's a secret weapon you can use to keep organized during the day: Outlook Calendar.

Stick with us to learn how to use Outlook Calendar to manage your busy schedule - and get your tasks done one after the other. We will tell you the most effective ways to manage meetings and appointments, and how to connect Outlook Calendar to other productivity tools.

Let's dive in!

What is Outlook Calendar?

This powerful Microsoft-made calendar really needs no introduction: Outlook Calendar has been around for a while, but recently, there have been a few interesting additions to its features. These additions can help you even more in your daily tasks.

What really sets Outlook Calendar apart from other tools is, of course, its seamless integrations with the entire Microsoft suite of products.

Benefits of using Outlook Calendar to keep productive

Even the most precise and organized person may need to help you figure out "What do I have to work on this week?"

Outlook Calendar is very user-friendly, with a clean interface. It keeps all your meetings and appointments in one place. In a team setting, one of Outlook's most notable and useful features is the fact that you can share calendars with other people: this way, one person (or one team) can always have an overall view of everyone's schedule.

Outlook Calendar: Initial Setup

Setting up your Outlook Calendar account is pretty straightforward. You'll need to access with your Microsoft credentials, and after that, you'll be asked to set your language and, most importantly, your timezone. You can also decide what time of layout you prefer:

(You can even customize the appearance of your calendar with different colors and backgrounds).

The Calendar visualizes the schedule in a daily, workday, weekly, or monthly view.

Scheduling meetings and appointments in Outlook Calendar

Let's say you have a project update meeting with a client at 10:00 tomorrow.

To put this event on your calendar, all you have to do is create the event.

Select the desired time and date, and if you need to, add other people in the "Attendees" field.

Outlook Calendar will also let you check your and other attendees' availability: so you won't risk any schedule clashes, or double-booking the same day.

If you want to can include a brief description of the event, attach relevant documents, and set a reminder 15 minutes before the event.

Can't seem to find a time and date that works for everyone? Try the Scheduling poll feature!

Integrating Outlook with other productivity software: Timeneye

As your schedule starts to fill up with meetings and appointments, it can feel overwhelming.

After all, meetings have been long known as the biggest culprits in costing businesses in terms of lost time, lost money, and overall stress and burnout.

To avoid wasting time on endless meetings and ultimately losing control of your schedule, we recommend connecting Outlook Calendar to Timeneye.

Timeneye is a simple and feature-packed time tracking tool to create timesheets and track productivity easily. But with its native Outlook calendar integration, you can import your events and appointments into Timeneye, to track time for them easily.

You'll know exactly how much time you spend in meetings, and you can decide if you need to charge this usually non-billable activity to your client.

How to optimize your day with Timeneye and Outlook calendar

When you sign up to Timeneye, go to its Calendar-style dashboard, from here you'll already have an overview of your week (and how you've used your time across tasks and projects). 

Look for the Link Calendar button on top:

Then after granting the necessary permissions, connect Timeneye and Outlook calendar.

When the connection is successful, Timeneye will start pulling your events and voilà! Your events appear in the software so you track time for all your meetings, events, calls, etc.

Remember how we talked about knowing how much time you spend in meetings?

Simply perform a search by "Integration info" in the Timesheets section of the workspace, and you'll see all the time you have tracked in all your calendar events.

Outlook calendar: quick tips and best practices

• Connect Outlook Calendar with other productivity tools;
• Create meetings to organize your schedule;
• Color-code your calendars and share them with colleagues;
• Use scheduling polls to avoid schedule clashes;
• You can also use labels to better visualize/ categorize your events;
• Time block your calendar to get the most important tasks done

Conclusion

By using Outlook Calendar, you can easily manage your schedule and keep track of your meetings and appointments. With Timeneye, you can track the time you spend on these activities and ensure that you are making the most of your day.

By connecting these two tools, you can optimize your workflow, and get more done in less time.

So, start using Outlook Calendar and Timeneye today, and take control of your schedule!