Scheduling meetings is painful, time-consuming, and complicated.
By now, however, you’ve hopefully heard of & used Microsoft FindTime™, Microsoft’s self-service solution for Office 365 users that facilitates meeting scheduling between both internal & external participants by automating the process of sending inquiries regarding each person’s availability for a meeting. This solution has been readily available for Exchange Online/Outlook 365 & delighted Office 365 users for more than 2 years!
Introducing Calendar.help (Preview)
Move over FindTime. There’s a new assistant in town to both automate & expedite the scheduling of meetings for Office 365 users and it’s called Calendar.help.
Calendar.help does one thing really well: Quickly schedule meetings for you with other people based on everyone’s availability. You simply put “Cortana” on the cc: and instruct her in the email body as to what you want to schedule.
- “Cortana, can you help us book a 30 minute call next week?”
- “Cortana, can you find us an hour for coffee at Starbucks at 5th Ave and Broadway?”
- “Cortana, schedule Tuesday at 3pm for us to Skype.”
Calendar.help’s intelligence addresses most meeting scenarios:
- Need to schedule a meeting quickly based on each team member’s schedule availability?
- Want to invite external participants, not part of your organization?
- Need to find an available room or want a specific conference room?
- Want to schedule a Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams meeting?
- Need to specify an external location like “the Starbucks on 5th & Broadway”?
- Want to work around other people’s timezones?
- Need to schedule a meeting between a job candidate & a hiring manager?
Why Calendar.help?
- Saves you time – To use Calendar.help, cc: Cortana in an email with other people and ask her to schedule a meeting. Cortana handles all the back-and-forth emails to find a time when everyone can meet and then sends out an invite on your behalf.
- Schedules intelligently – With the speed of artificial intelligence and the personal touch of a human assistant, it’s the best of both worlds. Cortana communicates with your contacts by email to provide a natural, almost human, scheduling experience.
- Knows your calendar – Calendar.help works with your Office 365, Outlook.com, or Google calendar. Cortana, using Calendar.help, knows your meeting preferences and uses them to find the best times.
Here’s a video demonstration of Calendar.help:
Calendar.help comes with Office 365 & requires that your mailbox be in the cloud. (i.e. Exchange Online) Interested in giving it a try? Here’s the sign up page:
- Calendar.help – An artificially intelligent agent for Office 365 users from Microsoft
https://calendar.help/
(Note: This technology accesses user’s calendars for availability as well as others in your organization. Usage of Calendar.help is predicated on your IT organization’s participation. In order to facilitate this process, an Office 365 Administrator needs to kick off this authorization process by going to: https://calendar.help/AdminConsent/Microsoft?bp=Auth)
kurtsh
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 