I sometimes wonder how I ever functioned without my smart phone to hold all my contacts and my calendar. Do you ever feel like that? Well, if so, I wanted to highlight a few of the key features that I use on a day to day basis with the Outlook Calendar.

The first feature that I want to discuss is virtual sharing of my calendar with my smart phone. The beauty of this feature is that you are able to schedule appointments on your computer or smart phone and it will virtually share the information between each other. I can make an appointment while I am out with a client on my smart phone and check my computer upon returning to my office and see or change that appointment from my Outlook Calendar. This feature has required the use of a Microsoft Exchange server that can be costly until this year with the new release of Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 is a “cloud” based program that is currently being beta tested and will only require a small monthly fee to gain all of the features of having your own Microsoft Exchange server without the hefty price tag. If you would like more information on this service and to see the many more features that it will give you, please click on the following link: http://office365.microsoft.com/en-US/office365-beta.aspx. There are pros and cons to using the Outlook Calendar, the pros are that it will help keep you on track with your day to day appointments; the cons are that it will run your life!

The second feature that I find extremely helpful is Meeting Request. Meeting Request are designed for you to be able to create a meeting date, time, and location and virtually schedule it on your own calendar at the same time send out Meeting Request invitations to all that you are inviting to attend. The invited attendees will receive an email that request their attendance and they are able to accept or deny the meeting at the click of a button. If they accept the Meeting Request it will instantly schedule it on their own Outlook calendar and will have all the provided meeting information. If they deny the request they will be able to reply back via email with their denial of the request. The Meeting Request feature will also automatically send updated information about the meeting to accepted recipients if you need to make any changes after the initial Meeting Request has been sent out. This is a great feature to keep track of all of those that will be attendance to your meetings.

I hope you find this information useful and I hope that it will make your life easier in staying on top of all of your appointments and meetings.