Notes on calendars and “schedule polls” and booking time with co-workers.

It’s good to see folks putting their collective backs into trying to use these new-generation scheduling tools. They are pretty squirrely to get running but can save time and energy in the long run. Keep it up.

Using these tools has been covered before, but for a refresher, check out Microsoft’s support documentation for a start. Note: I acknowledge it is not helpful that Microsoft changes the name of, or outright replaces, the scheduling assistant product every three days.

A crucial element to this process is for folks to keep their calendar up to date with their actual availability, including personal appointments and commitments that need to be blocked off. Important Note: If you share your calendar to “People in my Organization” with “Can view when I’m busy” everybody will be able to see what your availability is, but not what the details of the appointments or meetings are. Any time that is unavailable should be reflected as such in your calendar.

Days out of the office, whether personal or for travel/conferences, should be on be on your calendar too. Be sure to use the “all day” attribute of anything that is all day and set it to “busy” or “out of the office” if you want that time to be unavailable for meetings.

There are two strategies for including your personal commitments and appointments in your viewable calendar.

  1. Include these events in your primary Outlook calendar. Note: putting them in other calendars you create will not be seen by the scheduling tools. It might feel odd to put your personal stuff in your work calendar, but setting your sharing permissions to “can view when I'm bus” your privacy should be protected.
  2. Outlook has a feature where one can sync their personal Google Calendar to their Outlook Calendar. By toggling the “include in my work availability” option, those times will be protected alongside you work meetings and commitments. This allows them to keep your personal and work calendar somewhat separate, while still helping your colleagues schedule meetings.

With some effort, and some product stability by our Microsoft overlords, we should be able to say goodbye to the days of 43 messages between six people (half of which read “oh wait sorry I’m actually traveling that day”) to schedule a meeting.