Outlook for iOS users globally, will now be able to easily see their coworkers’ availability and find a time that works for everyone, via — you guessed it right — a new, in-meeting scheduler. The feature starts rolling out for iOS users today.
This upgrade, along with the previous calendar update to the Outlook, are all part of a suite of upgrades which Microsoft plans to roll out to the Outlook app. If you’d forgotten, the calendar upgrade brought you things like Maps and Skype for Business integration.
To use this new in-built meeting scheduler, you’ll have to first create an event. Post creation of your meeting/event, you add your colleagues/coworkers into the event.
Once you’ve created an event from your calendar and added your coworkers to the People field, tap the date picker.
Times that work for everyone show in white, yellow indicates availability for one or more people in the group, and red indicates times with no availability. Next, tap the time picker and just drag and drop until it turns green—indicating everyone is available at that time.
Once you’ve found the date and time that are just right, fill in the other fields and tap the checkmark at the top to save and send your event. It’s as easy as it sounds.
This latest in-meeting scheduler might be a pretty small addition, but it is highly significant. The significant of such features can be gauged from the fact that there are entire app companies built around creating apps for such tasks.
For Microsoft itself, this shows how the company is ready to work in the direction, this app initially started with. Just to refresh your memories, Outlook’s mobile app came into existence with Microsoft’s much-in-the-news Accompli acquisition two years ago. Accompli was built around the idea that email on mobile has to be much similar — in fact better and more intuitive — than the ones we access on desktop. While the latter still offers a more integrated experience, we are getting towards making it better on our mobile devices as well.
The in-meeting scheduler feature is currently available on Outlook for iOS when connected to Office 365 or the latest versions of Exchange. Check your phone today to see if it’s available for you. It will follow shortly on Android and Windows 10 mobile.
Oh, and Microsoft is also accepting feedback on this and the other upgrades in this suite. You can prove the Redmond giant with the same, via company’s in-app support by going to Settings > Help & Feedback.
