Confirmed! Exchange makes planning and collaboration a SNAP!

As a telecommuter, most of my days are spent in a virtual office. My connection to the physical office of our company is via technology most of the time. I rely on many different hardware and software solutions to keep me connected to my colleagues, clients and the daily business that goes on in the office.

Working from outside the physical office could leave me out of the loop in major ways, but luckily, technology can bridge the gap most of the time. One of the key solutions for me is the shared and public calendars via exchange service in Microsoft Outlook.

On the days I’m not in the office, I don’t know everyone’s routines and I can’t look across the room to see who’s door is closed or who is over at a someone else’s desk talking about the big game last night. But, by peeking at shared calendars, I can usually gauge the best time to call a manager or know when I can catch a busy salesman between appointments. (Other times, I simply have to employ the efforts of an office spy!)

As a project manager, I work with a team on setting priorities and weekly schedules. We’ve established a shared, public calendar, where we post our weekly schedules. At a glance, I know who is working on which project at a given time, which helps me in communicating internally and reporting and predicting progress for our clients. Also, if I see via email or otherwise that someone has been tied down to an unexpected task most of the day, I know we’re not going to make expected progress on a scheduled task. This is a great help in planning for the next week.

I am frequently charged with scheduling meetings for various teams that cross departments and include management, so there are a lot of different schedules to consider. With our exchange service, it is so easy! I simply open outlook and view everyone’s schedules together on one screen to find the right meeting time. Without this functionality, I’d be sending a string of emails back and forth before everyone found a matching opening in their schedules. In that scenario, by the time a consensus is reached, someone has usually filled the slot and you have to all start over. I can also be sure a meeting I’ve scheduled for my team members with a client is on all of our calendars and reminders are set!

Another great application I’ve found for shared and pubic calendars is to create calendars for spaces and resources in the office. Outlook public calendars can be utilized to schedule busy conference room time, use of shared equipment like projectors or a shared library of training films. Perhaps an intern or assistant works for several departments, his or her schedule might be on a shared public calendar. Basically, anything that is shared in an office can be tracked and scheduled via a shared MS Outlook calendar.

Outlook also allows for special permissions-based use of all shared and public calendars. Administrators can determine who can view and edit any given calendar.

But, just because you have Outlook, doesn’t mean you can start sharing today. This is a special feature of work environments that are connected via an Exchange Server or Online Exchange Service. This is a low-cost upgrade to Pop email service and worth every penny in the benefits for scheduling and collaboration within an organization!

Once you’re on Exchange, Start here to begin utilizing shared calendars in your office:

http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC010333631033